Department of English

How can writers adapt to the onslaught of artificial intelligence, machines so good at writing that they threaten to make our craft obsolete? Instead of fearing the machine, let’s learn to engage it, as both collaborator and antagonist, as a sort of literary frenemy. This class will explore a panoply of strategies for constructing AI-based poems, short stories, memoirs, plays, novels, and other literary forms. In a field as new and as rapidly evolving as AI, the questions we ask will be as important as the answers we receive: Is literature as simple as pushing a button? Might we use our human-based resources and creativity to make a literary end-run around the machine? What is the future of literature and what is our place in it? Every time literature has been challenged by a technology — be it Gutenberg, the telegraph, the typewriter, or word processing — it’s had to adapt in order to survive. And survive it did. One thing is sure: AI isn’t going away. This class will seek to define and employ a new set of literary tools that will help us move — and thrive — towards the inevitable future.