JOURNALISTS beware. In just a few years’ time, a piece of software might make
you obsolete. It is already capable of writing convincing fairy tales. Newspaper
articles may be next, the American Association of Artificial Intelligence heard
last week.
The intelligent system, called Author, was developed by Charles Callaway and
James Lester at North Carolina State University in Raleigh to help children get
over literacy problems. By changing details about characters, props and plot, it
generated new takes on fairy tales. The software can already tell a mean version
of Little Red Riding Hood. But, given a different knowledge base,…
