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Hello!
I'm a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, leading a research groups on artificial humanities. We focus on the intersection of humanities and AI across three research areas: cultural imaginary, writing creativity, and philosophy of science and technology.
Books
My book Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI (University of Michigan Press, 2025) is available under open access here.
Order from the press with a 30% discount code UMWEB30.
Also on Barnes & Noble and Amazon (where it's #1 in Hot New Releases in Comparative Literature and Media Studies as well as for Kindle formats, where it's currently free).
European orders via Liverpool UP.
Chinese translation to follow with East China Normal University Press.
Awarded the Artificiality Institute Award. Listen to our conversation here.
The book presents my research program on how the study of fiction and the humanities can contribute to the development of technologies. It focuses on the history and future of AI-based language technologies - ranging from chatbots, virtual assistants, social robots, to neurotech and large language models - and draws parallels with both canonical and lesser-known science fiction texts and films.
More about the book on BIDS website, YouTube, Book chat, and HigherEd talk.
I edited and wrote an introduction to a volume of essays by professional writers on AI's entrance into writing and reading, titled First Encounters with AI, forthcoming in October 2026 a public-facing book series Writers on Writing with the University of Michigan Press. Preorder from the press, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.
This book asks how has the entry of AI into writing and reading changed these practices. Ranging from personal meditations to critical provocations, from philosophical investigations to playful experiments, the essays reveal how writing tools shape writing itself—and what is at stake when those tools begin to imitate us.
Contributing authors are Hannes Bajohr, Qiufan Chen, Ted Chiang, Joseph Dumit, Gerardo Con Diaz, Jasmin B. Frelih, Annelyse Gelman, Katy Ilonka Gero, Sheila Heti, Ken Liu, Nicholas Nardini, Allison Parrish, Alex Saum-Pascual, Sasha Stiles, Iain S. Thomas, and James Yu.Together with Anat Weisman and Nana Ariel, I'm co-editing the first book-length conversation with the chatbot ELIZA by David Avidan, conducted in 1974 and forthcoming in 2028 with MIT Press.
My next book lies at the intersection of bioethics and fiction. An example of this research is my essay titled 'The Identity Problem' in Prenatal Testing, which won the Voices in Bioethics award.
I'm also writing a book with Eoin Brodie on planetary information flows, grounded in thermodynamics and the Earth system science approach.
Editing
I serve on the advisory board for SpringerBriefs on AI and Education.
I'm a guest editor for the special issue on AI and World Literature in the Journal of World Literature. See the Call for Papers here.
Research Groups and Grants
I'm affiliated with the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society (CSTMS), Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (IEEES), Berkeley Institute of Data Science (BIDS), the University of Washington, Antikythera, and TEXT - Center for Contemporary Cultures of Text at Aarhus University, for which we have been awarded the Danish National Foundation Grant.
At UC Berkeley, I'm co-leading
- NarrAItion: Bridging Humanities and AI in collaboration with the University of Bergen's Center for Digital Narrative, funded by Peder Sather Center
- The Latent Spaces of Culture with Sorbonne Nouvelle University, funded by Berkeley-France Fund
Public Engagement
My research has been covered by The Independent, The Financial Times, Scientific American, CNN, Nautilus, and similar media outlets.
Please see more on the Media Coverage section.
Our work on latent spaces, Latent Spacecraft - in collaboration with Metahaven, Riccardo Petrini, and Gašper Beguš - was presented at the 2025 Biennale under the Next Earth exhibition in Palazzo Diedo (Berggruen Arts & Culture).
The visual work is accompanied by an academic paper and the GAN models publication in the Antikythera journal, titled "Latent Spacecraft: Brains, GANs, Finnegans" (2/2026).
We presented this work also at OpenAI, Beaux-Arts de Paris, Modes of Reading, Cultural AI, and AI and the Creative Condition, among other venues.
Industry Collaborations
I am the founder of InterpretAI, a consulting and product development company with a focus on understanding and interpretability of AI.
Previously, as a Senior Researcher at the Berggruen Institute and ToftH, I helped to implement a novel method of process-based consulting for startups and big tech companies.
I co-organized a symposium on Understanding AI through UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, aimed at bringing together research on interpretability from academia, industry, and think tanks, and the Schmidt Sciences convening on main research questions in AI, hosted at UC Berkeley (white paper coming soon).
Service
I serve on the CSTMS Executive Committee and the Public Interest Corpus.
I am a part of the MLA Task Force groups on generative AI and world languages and on AI and research.
I've been involved in collegiate residential life since 2013, first as a Graduate Commons community advisor, then as a resident tutor in Mather House, and most recently in Bowles Hall.
Recorded Talks
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