“We looked up from our verses like blindfolded captives,

Sent out to seek the light; but it never came

A needle and thread would be necessary

For the completion of the picture.

To view the poor creatures, who were in misery,

That of a hawk, eyes sewn shut” Ai-Da

This poem was written by Ai-Da a robot with a literature “talent”.

>> Link to CNN Article about Ai-Da

A.I has gone a long way in creating texts that feel human. Just try this application that writes essays, by searching the net and composing likely paragraphs. It follows a dialectic process through which the user is offered alternative paragraphs to choose from and guides the bot to write a custom essay.

>> Link to Essaybot

And if this is not advanced enough for you, scientists asked an advanced A.I. whether A.I.s could ever be ethical. Here is its answer…

>> Link to Futurism article about AI and ethics

Last but not least, this is a short story within the Metacities storyworld, written by an A.I. in collaboration with our own Penny Papageorgopoulou. The A.I. is called Inferkit. Thank you Penny for this amazing idea. Enjoy!

“Athens 2070, the city has changed in ways unbeknownst to men of my generation and younger. Gone is the once – immense urban bustle and congestion of decades past. The streets painted in grey lie empty, still and silent, as though one were on a promenade in some place where the natives hold court and summer is a time of great gaiety. Not here.

There is an emptiness and purposelessness to it all, which we have to get used to, as I do. It is a far cry from the past, almost enchanted feel of back in the day, back when my father would stop the car as we would cross the street and let us listen to the old gentleman playing the violin before the National Library building.

But where we once had some sense of place, now all we have is the arbitrary yellow and white signs all the way down Panepistimiou Street, starkly suggesting that we are all going in one direction – an alienating picture in a psychedelic fog. We found our way into the ruins of metal and glass edifice of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Centre, opened decades ago, in 2009 and a flagship project of the new administration of the Greek government.

Architecture, it has to be said, was considered an outlier in the corporate, neo – liberal mould of the pre – crisis Greek state. But now it was obvious that the people in power have only recently come to know what they had in their hand before. As one would walk into the courtyard of the centre and the mosaics (by Makis Voridis) started moving about in an unsettling dance. Decades ago, the government invested a lot of money at the place, this project at least, in the hope that it would inspire a new generation of Greeks.

It failed. Greece was at the crossroads, a modern society, a historical setting ripe for its future renaissance. It could have gone either way. The country had to choose. And chose the road less travelled, for reasons unknown. But all of us now see this house of dreams for what it is.”