Pub Date : 2023-04-28DOI: 10.1215/00029831-10679293
Eric J. Lott
{"title":"The Origin of OthersGoodness and the Literary Imagination: Toni Morrison","authors":"Eric J. Lott","doi":"10.1215/00029831-10679293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10679293","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45756,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-04-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46312962","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-17DOI: 10.1215/00029831-10575021
Rita Raley, Jennifer Rhee
At first glance the most striking aspect of Anna Ridler’s 2018 installation Myriad (Tulips) is the highly ordered array of tulips themselves—thousands of photographs taken over the course of three months in the Netherlands, their meticulous gridded arrangement presenting as geometric abstraction at a distance (fig. 1).1 Up close the colors, shapes, and textures of the individual flowers become apparent, this subjective perceptual frame underscored by the handwritten labels—not didactics with botanical metadata but, rather, a registering of attributes as processed by the human eye: dead, blooming, some stripes, no stripes. The digital photographs themselves comprise a training data set for Ridler’s subsequent artwork,Mosaic Virus, which uses a generative adversarial network (GAN) for an iterative production of “fake” tulips that reflect on speculative forms of value.2 The technical and conceptual complexity of Mosaic Virus might seem to overshadow the photographic installation, but of course that data set is its necessary precondition, and, taken together, the two works make visible the end-to-end apparatus of artificial intelligence (AI), from the human labor of image classification, data curation, and machine learning (ML) model architecture design to the material infrastructural support of GPUs (graphics processing units) and the management and manipulation of generated output. The rationale for drawing on Ridler’s mediated tulips as a frame for this special issue of American Literature on the emerging field of critical AI is perhaps intuitive— this is, after all, an aesthetic engagement with ML that delights and instructs, translating machinic instrumentalization (still the bête noire of the humanities) into the lexicon of cultural critique, situating AI within intertwined genealogies of capitalism
{"title":"Critical AI: A Field in Formation","authors":"Rita Raley, Jennifer Rhee","doi":"10.1215/00029831-10575021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575021","url":null,"abstract":"At first glance the most striking aspect of Anna Ridler’s 2018 installation Myriad (Tulips) is the highly ordered array of tulips themselves—thousands of photographs taken over the course of three months in the Netherlands, their meticulous gridded arrangement presenting as geometric abstraction at a distance (fig. 1).1 Up close the colors, shapes, and textures of the individual flowers become apparent, this subjective perceptual frame underscored by the handwritten labels—not didactics with botanical metadata but, rather, a registering of attributes as processed by the human eye: dead, blooming, some stripes, no stripes. The digital photographs themselves comprise a training data set for Ridler’s subsequent artwork,Mosaic Virus, which uses a generative adversarial network (GAN) for an iterative production of “fake” tulips that reflect on speculative forms of value.2 The technical and conceptual complexity of Mosaic Virus might seem to overshadow the photographic installation, but of course that data set is its necessary precondition, and, taken together, the two works make visible the end-to-end apparatus of artificial intelligence (AI), from the human labor of image classification, data curation, and machine learning (ML) model architecture design to the material infrastructural support of GPUs (graphics processing units) and the management and manipulation of generated output. The rationale for drawing on Ridler’s mediated tulips as a frame for this special issue of American Literature on the emerging field of critical AI is perhaps intuitive— this is, after all, an aesthetic engagement with ML that delights and instructs, translating machinic instrumentalization (still the bête noire of the humanities) into the lexicon of cultural critique, situating AI within intertwined genealogies of capitalism","PeriodicalId":45756,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44325421","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-17DOI: 10.1215/00029831-10575063
N. K. Hayles
The human aura is now being subverted by a variety of simulacra. OpenAI’s language-generation program GPT-3 illustrates the challenges of interpreting algorithmic-generated texts. This article advocates interpretive strategies that recognize the profound differences (in the case of GPT-3) of language that issues from a program that has a model only of language, not of the world. Conscious robots, when and if they emerge, will have profoundly different embodiments than humans. Fictions that imagine conscious robots thus face a similar challenge presented by the GPT-3 texts: will they gloss over the differences, or will they enact strategies that articulate the differences and explore their implications for humans immersed in algorithmic cultures? The author analyzes three contemporary novels that engage with this challenge: Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous, Kuzuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, and Ian McEwan’s Machines like Me. Each interrogates how the human aura is subverted by conscious robots. The article concludes by proposing how a reconfigured human aura should be constituted.
{"title":"Subversion of the Human Aura: A Crisis in Representation","authors":"N. K. Hayles","doi":"10.1215/00029831-10575063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575063","url":null,"abstract":"The human aura is now being subverted by a variety of simulacra. OpenAI’s language-generation program GPT-3 illustrates the challenges of interpreting algorithmic-generated texts. This article advocates interpretive strategies that recognize the profound differences (in the case of GPT-3) of language that issues from a program that has a model only of language, not of the world. Conscious robots, when and if they emerge, will have profoundly different embodiments than humans. Fictions that imagine conscious robots thus face a similar challenge presented by the GPT-3 texts: will they gloss over the differences, or will they enact strategies that articulate the differences and explore their implications for humans immersed in algorithmic cultures? The author analyzes three contemporary novels that engage with this challenge: Annalee Newitz’s Autonomous, Kuzuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, and Ian McEwan’s Machines like Me. Each interrogates how the human aura is subverted by conscious robots. The article concludes by proposing how a reconfigured human aura should be constituted.","PeriodicalId":45756,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45800004","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-17DOI: 10.1215/00029831-10575204
R. Scannell
{"title":"The Black Technical Object: On Machine Learning and the Aspiration of Black BeingThe Digitally Disposed: Racial Capitalism and the Informatics of Value","authors":"R. Scannell","doi":"10.1215/00029831-10575204","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575204","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45756,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44765122","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-17DOI: 10.1215/00029831-10575119
Melody Jue
{"title":"The Many Ecologies of AI","authors":"Melody Jue","doi":"10.1215/00029831-10575119","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575119","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45756,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42882362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-17DOI: 10.1215/00029831-10575148
Luke Stark
{"title":"Breaking Up AI Ethics","authors":"Luke Stark","doi":"10.1215/00029831-10575148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575148","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45756,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49197510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-17DOI: 10.1215/00029831-10575035
A. Slater
This article examines early Cold War attempts to generate poetry using computers. Set between the end of World War II and the rise of personal computing, computer-generated poetry from this period was shaped not only by artists but also the university lab, the defense-contactor, and the corporation. Computer-generated poetry from this era often participated in the larger project of fostering public conception of the power and prestige of computers. This ethos of “post-automation poetics” was also informed by computer science experiments with computation’s powers of linguistic-processing powers—from machine translation to early AI. This article contextualizes the computer poetry of Alison Knowles, Nanni Balestrini, and others within the scientific concerns of mathematicians like Theo Lutz and linguists like Margaret Masterman. Framed by governmental power, university funding, and corporate ambition, “post-automation poetics” engages with computation’s relevance to literary production: from Cold War mainframes to contemporary large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3.
{"title":"Post-Automation Poetics, or How Cold-War Computers Discovered Poetry","authors":"A. Slater","doi":"10.1215/00029831-10575035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575035","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines early Cold War attempts to generate poetry using computers. Set between the end of World War II and the rise of personal computing, computer-generated poetry from this period was shaped not only by artists but also the university lab, the defense-contactor, and the corporation. Computer-generated poetry from this era often participated in the larger project of fostering public conception of the power and prestige of computers. This ethos of “post-automation poetics” was also informed by computer science experiments with computation’s powers of linguistic-processing powers—from machine translation to early AI. This article contextualizes the computer poetry of Alison Knowles, Nanni Balestrini, and others within the scientific concerns of mathematicians like Theo Lutz and linguists like Margaret Masterman. Framed by governmental power, university funding, and corporate ambition, “post-automation poetics” engages with computation’s relevance to literary production: from Cold War mainframes to contemporary large language models (LLMs) like GPT-3.","PeriodicalId":45756,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":"39 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41286063","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-17DOI: 10.1215/00029831-10575176
S. Vint
{"title":"Literary AI: Are We Ready for the Future We Imagine?","authors":"S. Vint","doi":"10.1215/00029831-10575176","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575176","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":45756,"journal":{"name":"AMERICAN LITERATURE","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2023-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43417309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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