Overview

Chatbots are sure to have a significant impact on the way we read, write, and think. For better or worse, they are being used to find information, influence public opinion, diagnose illness, and shape political discussion online. How did we get to this point, and what can we do to prepare? Literary Theory for Robots reveals the hidden history of modern machine intelligence, taking readers on a spellbinding journey from medieval Arabic philosophy to visions of a universal language, past Hollywood fiction factories and missile defense systems trained on Russian folktales. In this provocative reflection on the shared pasts of literature and computer science, former Microsoft engineer and professor of comparative literature Dennis Yi Tenen provides crucial context for recent developments in AI, which holds important lessons for the future of human living with smart technology.

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Reviews

Reading this book is like taking a walk in a literary forest. You will see up close trees whose names you never knew and discover paths that lead your mind in new directions. Tenen guides us along the way, by putting in historical context how machines started out as voracious readers and emerged as creative writers.--Jeannette M. Wing, Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University Literary Theory for Robots is many things--brainy, chatty, charming, disarming--but, above all, it is great fun to read. Dennis Yi Tenen's cast of 'lovely weirdos' and their wheels, charts, templates, schemas, and links will stay with me for a long time. So will his insistence that intelligence is a social and collective phenomenon, one whose history reveals the human presence behind every machine.--Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing Literary Theory for Robots serves as an alternative to the breathless utopian or apocalyptic hallucinations of the tech bros funding the AI revolution, instead offering a highly relatable perspective on thinking machines grounded in history, literature, and lived human experience. Tenen shows that truly understanding the future of our digital augmentation depends not on more STEM but on more liberal arts. This book will be remembered as the moment thinking people realized how to raise better robots: read them good stories.--Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

"""Reading this book is like taking a walk in a literary forest. You will see up close trees whose names you never knew and discover paths that lead your mind in new directions. Tenen guides us along the way, by putting in historical context how machines started out as voracious readers and emerged as creative writers."" -- Jeannette M. Wing, Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University ""Literary Theory for Robots is many things—brainy, chatty, charming, disarming—but, above all, it is great fun to read. Dennis Yi Tenen’s cast of ‘lovely weirdos’ and their wheels, charts, templates, schemas, and links will stay with me for a long time. So will his insistence that intelligence is a social and collective phenomenon, one whose history reveals the human presence behind every machine."" -- Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing ""Literary Theory for Robots serves as an alternative to the breathless utopian or apocalyptic hallucinations of the tech bros funding the AI revolution, instead offering a highly relatable perspective on thinking machines grounded in history, literature, and lived human experience. Tenen shows that truly understanding the future of our digital augmentation depends not on more STEM but on more liberal arts. This book will be remembered as the moment thinking people realized how to raise better robots: read them good stories."" -- Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires"

"""Literary Theory for Robots is many things—brainy, chatty, charming, disarming—but, above all, it is great fun to read. Dennis Yi Tenen's cast of ""lovely weirdos"" and their wheels, charts, templates, schemas, and links will stay with me for a long time. So will his insistence that intelligence is a social and collective phenomenon, one whose history reveals the human presence behind every machine."" -- Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing ""Literary Theory for Robots serves as an alternative to the breathless utopian or apocalyptic hallucinations of the tech bros funding the AI revolution, instead offering a highly relatable perspective on thinking machines grounded in history, literature, and lived human experience. Tenen shows that truly understanding the future of our digital augmentation depends not on more STEM but on more liberal arts. This book will be remembered as the moment thinking people realized how to raise better robots: read them good stories."" -- Douglass Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of Tech Billionaires"

"Timely and original, this is an essential resource on the history of text generating AI, and its future.-- ""Publishers Weekly"" Intriguing. . .Yi Tenen, stirring some wit and anecdotes into the story, sets out the material in non-technical terms, making for an entertaining, informative read. An eclectic and erudite tale of how wide-eyed visions become smart, interactive tools.-- ""Kirkus"" Reading this book is like taking a walk in a literary forest. You will see up close trees whose names you never knew and discover paths that lead your mind in new directions. Tenen guides us along the way, by putting in historical context how machines started out as voracious readers and emerged as creative writers.--Jeannette M. Wing, Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University Literary Theory for Robots is many things--brainy, chatty, charming, disarming--but, above all, it is great fun to read. Dennis Yi Tenen's cast of 'lovely weirdos' and their wheels, charts, templates, schemas, and links will stay with me for a long time. So will his insistence that intelligence is a social and collective phenomenon, one whose history reveals the human presence behind every machine.--Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing Literary Theory for Robots serves as an alternative to the breathless utopian or apocalyptic hallucinations of the tech bros funding the AI revolution, instead offering a highly relatable perspective on thinking machines grounded in history, literature, and lived human experience. Tenen shows that truly understanding the future of our digital augmentation depends not on more STEM but on more liberal arts. This book will be remembered as the moment thinking people realized how to raise better robots: read them good stories.--Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires"

Author Information

Dennis Yi Tenen is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Originally a software engineer at Microsoft, Tenen is now an affiliate at Columbia’s Data Science Institute. He lives in New York City.

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