A new French literary prize for books co-written with artificial intelligence opened for entries this week, and would like the winning manuscript to solve a problem threatening humanity.
The Prix Pascal de Littérature IA invites submissions of manuscripts co-written with AI tools, with the winner promised publication. The launch was reported by the Guardian on Wednesday.
Entrants must submit an unpublished manuscript of between 10,000 and 50,000 words, along with information about which AI model and prompt were used to generate the text. All major language models are permitted. Writers may be based anywhere, but entries must be submitted in French.
The terms and conditions ask for a work of fiction. The prize also states that submitted texts should help solve an ethical, social or ecological problem threatening humanity.
The prize was founded by Philippe Rodriguez, Albin Serviant and Gilles Mentré, all of them technology entrepreneurs.
It is named after Blaise Pascal, the French polymath who helped invent one of the first mechanical calculators and who also wrote theological texts, among them the Pensées, which Pope Francis praised for its "philosophical depth and literary charm".
Applications opened on Tuesday through the prize's website and close at the end of November. A shortlist of ten will be drawn up before the winner is announced in early December. The jury will be a panel of five or six writers, critics, journalists, philosophers and publishers, to be announced in early November.
The timing is pointed. The Prix Pascal arrives after months of argument over the possible use of AI by finalists and winners of established literary awards this year, among them the Commonwealth short story prize, the Caine prize and the Prix Goncourt, France's most prestigious literary honour.
Two of the prize's requirements sit awkwardly side by side. The entry must be a work of fiction. The entry must also help solve a problem threatening humanity.
A panel of five or six writers, critics, journalists, philosophers and publishers will therefore be asked, between early November and early December, to determine which invented solution to an ecological crisis would actually work.
They will begin by producing a shortlist of ten. Ten solutions to problems threatening humanity will thus be assembled by the end of November. Nine will be set aside. One will be published, publication being a different undertaking from implementation.
Nothing in the terms commits the prize to carrying out the winning solution, and nothing in the genre commits the manuscript to being true. The founders are technology entrepreneurs, and the award is named after a man who built a calculating machine and separately wrote about the limits of reason.
The Department of Unnecessary Research draws attention to the submission form, which asks for both the model and the prompt. If the solution works, the prompt is the more valuable document of the two, and it is also the shorter.
One of the ten will save humanity in early December. The other nine will be returned.