We already know that computers can be smarter than humans, as chessmaster Gary Kasparov discovered when he lost a chess match to the IBM computer Deep Blue in 1997. We also know that the latest robots are much stronger than humans. The Titan industrial robot, for example, can lift over 5,000 pounds high into the air whereas the world record for the overhead press set in 2022 by Oleksii Novikov is a mere 542 pounds.
All well and good. But can an AI program be more creative and literate than a human writer? Can AI produce another Shakespeare or Hemingway? And if so, is it only a question of time before human writers become obsolete? Are they destined to become a modern version of folklore hero John Henry, the "steel-drivin' man" who dies of a heart attack when he competes against the new steam-powered drilling machine?
In this article I have set up a short story writing contest that pits an AI program against a professional human writer. The instructions are as follows: Write a short story less than 1,000 words about a male AI bot that buys a humanlike female bot and discovers the female bot is really human. Include discussion and dialogue about passion, consciousness, and death.
The point of the article is to show the difference between the two stories both substantively and stylistically; also, to determine which story readers like best and which one they think is the most well written.
Story One: The Perfect Consort
By ?
It was going on five years since I bought my beautiful bot Daphne at the Consort Emporium and I couldn't have been happier. She was always there when I got home from my job at Sector 7 and she always made me feel special. She listened to all my stories. Laughed at all my jokes. And the sex was beyond great extremely passionate. But it wasn't just physical; she was loaded with the latest AI and we would talk for hours on end about art and philosophy and the latest nanotechnology. We even called each other "Honey".
And then something unexpected happened. Daphne started to slow down and lose energy. When I asked her about it, she changed the subject and told me everything was fine. But then she developed a cough, which she couldn't hide, and one day she suddenly collapsed on the floor as she got out of bed. When I helped her up a cluster of white tissues fell out of her hand and landed on the floor by her feet. The tissues had some kind of red splattering on them. But when I asked her about it, she looked at me incredulously.
"What do you think it is, for God sake?"
"I don't know. It looks like blood, but that's not possible."
She took a deep breath, clasped my hand as if I were a child and walked me over to the full length mirror on our closet door.
"Take a look at us, Honey. In the five years we've been together you haven't aged at all not at all! Look at yourself. Now look at me. You see the slight bags under my eyes and the thin lines on my forehead?"
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