The story of getting this computer to write is rife with unexpected turns. But finally Bringsjord, colleague Dave Ferucci and their team at Rensselaer came up with a program that can write an original story on the theme of betrayal. But before writers and poets the world over turn in their pens and seek real jobs, take heart. It took us eight years to get betrayal down, and that's only one emotional concept out of dozens. He laughs about it now, but it was a fool's errand in artificial intelligence terms.
Stories engage people on a number of levels.
Defining that would be like defining all of those emotional levels. The single theme of betrayal, however, is a lot simpler to define in computer terms. End of story. The actual computer code that defines betrayal isn't that long, Bringsjord says. It can get a little complicated.