Cultural Politics Seminar: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Hybrid)
Date and Time
Location
"In the Company of AI (Cultural Computation)"
Speaker:
Jeffrey Schnapp, Carl A. Pescosolido Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature; Chair, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Contact:
Charles Gaillard
cgaillard@fas.harvard.edu
Chair:
Panagiotis Roilos, Faculty Associate. George Seferis Professor of Modern Greek Studies, Department of the Classics; Professor of Comparative Literature, Department of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.
Attendance Information:
This event will be held in person in CGIS S354 with a hybrid option. Please register online to attend virtually.
Abstract:
AI will soon "replace all human labor," "achieve sentience," "automate all human thought processes," save or destroy civilization: these are the now-familiar claims of a hype cycle propelled to the front page of dailies over the years since the launch of ChatGPT. The reality of AI is different. However powerful and transformative, AI is aligned with and embedded in a much deeper and enduring history of technologies that prove transformative precisely because, rather than replacing human functionalities, they enable new models of human-machine collaboration, thinking, and interaction that gradually alter the fundamental contours of selfhood, society, culture, knowledge production, and creativity. In this talk, Jeffrey Schnapp will reflect on some experimental uses of AI and Machine Learning techniques in cultural historical projects such as metaLAB (at) Harvard's Curatorial A(i)gents and in a course that he is teaching this semester: Computing Fantasy - Imagination, Invention, Radical Pedagogy (Munari / Rodari / Calvino).