Credit: Hexus

Ever wondered how Google can seemingly “read your mind” when you query searches? Behind the millions of lines of codes are some algorithms, like SyntaxNet which was released open sourced the other day, that Google uses to understand natural language. It got very good at it by learning from millions of interactions, either on the web or in other formats. Google engineers are basically feeding tomes of books on every subject to its algorithms to make the A.I. a better, more convincing communicator. The ultimate goal is to make A.I. interactions indistinguishable from inter-human ones.

It will take a while before this happens, though. For instance, some Google engineers tasked their A.I. to complete sequences in an open space. Using a neural network language model, the A.I. had to basically generate sentences that naturally flow in between two other sentences that were randomly given, at the start and the end. In other words, the machine was given an introduction and conclusion. Here’s how it fared in some instances.

this was the only way.
it was the only way.
it was her turn to blink.
it was hard to tell.
it was time to move on.
he had to do it again.
they all looked at each other.
they all turned to look back.
they both turned to face him.
they both turned and walked away.

there is no one else in the world .
there is no one else in sight .
they were the only ones who mattered .
they were the only ones left .
he had to be with me .
she had to be with him .
i had to do this .
i wanted to kill him .
i started to cry .
i turned to him .

no .
he said .
“ no , ” he said .
“ no , ” i said .
“ i know , ” she said .
“ thank you , ” she said .
“ come with me , ” she said .
“ talk to me , ” she said .
“ do n’t worry about it , ” she said .

im fine .
youre right .
“ all right .
you ’re right .
okay , fine .
“ okay , fine .
yes , right here .
no , not right now .
“ no , not right now .
“ talk to me right now .
please talk to me right now .
i ’ll talk to you right now .
“ i ’ll talk to you right now .
“ you need to talk to me now .
“ but you need to talk to me now .

In the grander scheme of things, this A.I. is supposed to one day write proper fiction. Despite these tentative first steps definitely look like a work in progress, don’t look so stunned when you’ll learn about the first best-selling novel written by a robot. It all starts now.

It’s also pretty clear that the machine was influenced by the 2,865 romance novels it binged, too. Pretty creepy, if you ask me, too. What do you think?