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Academic Book Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI
University of Michigan Press, 2025.
Open acess here. Google Books link.
Order on the press website with a 50% discount code HOLIDAY25.
Also on Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Via Liverpool UP for Europe.
The book is getting translated into Chinese (East China Normal University Press).
Humanities have studied the human and language for centuries and bring necessary depth to the creation and implementation of AI, focusing on cultural and philosophical implications.
In the book, I present my research program on how to bring the humanities into the very creation of technologies on the case of AI-based language technologies: chatbots, virtual assistants, social robots, communicative neurotechology, and large language models.
Looking at actual and fictional representations of AI, based primarily on the Pygmalion myth, I argue against the humanlike trajectory in the development of this technology.
Book launch on December 2 at the Commonwealth Club, featuring a conversation with Ted Chiang and James Yu.
Book flyer. Recording of a book talk at BIDS. HigherEd talk.
An interview on the value of the humanities in the age of AI.
Book featured in Berkeley News, The Science of Fiction, Scientific American and again in Scientific American, New Books Network, Cal Alumni Association, TechExplore, Colloquy, 96 Layers (text), Berkeley News, Mirage News, Napkin Poetry Review (English), Radio Prvi, Delo, El NorMal, Outsider, Radio Študent (Slovenian), Haaretz (Hebrew), Deutschlandfunk Kultur (German).
Recommended by Colloquy, Claire van Leeuwen, Tamara Pavasović Trošt, and Hannes Bajohr.
Responses in Speculative F(r)iction in Speculative Data Governance and LUD Literatura.
Book taught in Critical Topics in Digital Discourse (U of Gothenburg) and Questions of Theory (Harvard U), Stanford U, Cornell U, Oregon State U, and the Federal U of Juiz de Fora. I am teaching a course based on the book at Berkeley's College of Computing, Data Science, and Society, titled Artificial Humanities: AI, Language, and Fiction, next year.
AGNIESZKA KURANT, SEMIOTIC LIFE (2022-25)
Trade Volume First Encounters with AI: Writers on Writing
Forthcoming in Fall 2026 in a public-facing series with the University of Michigan Press.
I solicited, edited, and wrote an introduction to a volume of essays by professional writers, reflecting on how the entry of AI into their space has changed reading and writing.
Contributing authors are Hannes Bajohr, Quifan 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.
Please see more on the First Encounters with AI tab.
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