Fortune cookies are as American as baseball and apple pie. Initially popularized in California at the turn of the 20th century, these after meal treats have long counseled casual diners with sage advice, prophetic phrases and lucky numbers. But why should humans have all the fun in crafting these meditative Mad Libs? For his latest project, Alex Reben, the digital artist behind works like the psychedelic Joy of Painting and the voice-controlled violence of Google Shoots, has trained a neural network to generate original one-line maxims like those above. "I trained the system on thousands of fortune cookie fortunes," Reben wrote to Engadget via email.