Reddit reviews Galatea 2.2

Galatea 2.2 by Richard Powers.

It's a novel about a group of university professors, linguists, literature professors, philosophers, and cognitive scientists, who collaborate in the creation of a complex neural-network based program. Their intention is to create an artificial intelligence which could pass a Turing test by writing an essay indistinguishable from one written by a student in the literary criticism department. They create version after version, sometimes ending up with nonsense, sometimes seeming to get closer to intelligence, or even an emotional response. Finally, the program seems to be asking introspective questions, but the cognitive scientists don't quite believe it.

Something like that happens in Galatea 2.2.

Very bleak novel.