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A review by moholub
Literary Theory for Robots: How Computers Learned to Write by Dennis Yi Tenen
4.0
Yi Tenen offers a thorough and thoughtful analysis of the near-entire history of human inclination towards automation: we have always, for various reasons, sought out ways to automate labor, and the conversation around automating intellectual labor did not start just because ChatGPT can now generate your entire English essay "from scratch."
The connections made between literary movements and the industrialization of literature--in the form of templates, universal outlines, skeleton forms, etc.--is an especially interesting point to add to the discussion of art and writing created by AI tools vs by human labor. The growth of automation into what we see as the creative and academic spheres is inevitable, and the challenge will be adapting how we measure success and learning in this new world, and how we regulate the use of these evolving tools. Yi Tenen follows with the equally interesting comparison of factory-made products to AI-generated literature, and how the movement from hand-crafted to machine-crafted also served to make products more universally accessible, if not as unique and meaningful (meaning, as discussed, is not something a computer can really grasp). Just like story templates made writing things like screenplays more formulaic and easier to teach, automation in writing like spell check and sentence completion has made a standard of writing more accessible across the board.
While I'm sure a certain amount of the machine-language-specifics still went over my head, Yi Tenen's perspective is a fresh and more positive take on the coming AI revolution, and his cast of smart-furniture and their programmers is an entertaining history lesson. The future of automation belongs to more than just the tech bros and Silicon Valley: we are all, collectively and collaboratively and universally, building the path forward.
The connections made between literary movements and the industrialization of literature--in the form of templates, universal outlines, skeleton forms, etc.--is an especially interesting point to add to the discussion of art and writing created by AI tools vs by human labor. The growth of automation into what we see as the creative and academic spheres is inevitable, and the challenge will be adapting how we measure success and learning in this new world, and how we regulate the use of these evolving tools. Yi Tenen follows with the equally interesting comparison of factory-made products to AI-generated literature, and how the movement from hand-crafted to machine-crafted also served to make products more universally accessible, if not as unique and meaningful (meaning, as discussed, is not something a computer can really grasp). Just like story templates made writing things like screenplays more formulaic and easier to teach, automation in writing like spell check and sentence completion has made a standard of writing more accessible across the board.
While I'm sure a certain amount of the machine-language-specifics still went over my head, Yi Tenen's perspective is a fresh and more positive take on the coming AI revolution, and his cast of smart-furniture and their programmers is an entertaining history lesson. The future of automation belongs to more than just the tech bros and Silicon Valley: we are all, collectively and collaboratively and universally, building the path forward.