Dartmouth contests showcase computer-generated literature, poetry, music sets

Can an algorithm pass for an author? Can a robot rock the house? A series of contests at Dartmouth College is about to find out.

Dartmouth is seeking artificial intelligence algorithms that create "human-quality" short stories, sonnets and dance music sets. The results will be pitted against human-produced literature, poetry and music selections and will be rated by judges who won't know which is which. The goal is to determine whether people can distinguish between the two, and whether they might even prefer the computer-generated creativity.

The contests, dubbed DigiLit, PoetiX and Algorhythms, will run through the upcoming academic year, with prizes awarded in April. Dan Rockmore, director of the Neukom Institute for Computational Science, says they aren't meant to be dismissive of human creativity but rather a new way of investigating it.