An artificial intelligence built and based in Japan constructed a short meta-driven novel that came third in a prestigious literary contest.

The very best literature can provide us with a deeper understanding of the human condition. The creation of a novel is a labour of love and it takes novelists hours of painstaking research and countless rewrites before the work reaches completion.

Now, all of that means nothing. This innately human feat has been added to the ever-expanding list of things artificial intelligence will soon sequester. An AI built by Hitoshi Matsubara and his team from the Future University Hakodate in Japan wrote a short meta-driven novel sardonically titled, "The Day A Computer Writes A Novel", or “Konpyuta ga shosetsu wo kaku hi” in Japanese. To add insult to injury, it came third in the Nikkei Hoshi Shinichi Literary Award ceremony.

Though the degree of human input used on this occasion did extend to the formation of sentences and issuing of words, plus a structured guideline for the robot to follow, in the future the human influence is sure to decrease as the technology rapidly improves and becomes more self reliant. Ray Kurzweil, Google’s Ai developer, predicted that by 2029 AI would be capable of outsmarting even the brightest of human minds. This literary advancement feels like the first step down that path.