ENG 200VLiterature vs. AI

Catalog

ENG 200V Literature vs. AI - Was this written by a human? So what? As we enter the "age of AI," we find ourselves asking questions like this, perhaps more than ever before. This course explores how works of fiction and film from the late nineteenth century to the present have engaged with and anticipated ideas about art, mindedness, emotion, and agency at the heart of contemporary debates about the cultural impact of generative AI. Moving from Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James to science fiction about robots and mind uploading by Philip K. Dick, Jennifer Egan, Spike Jonze, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Ted Chiang, we'll analyze how literature reflects on what sets its meaning and artistry apart from mere algorithms and marketing. Readings in literary and critical theory will attune us to the relationship between abstract questions like "what is meaning?" and historical processes like capitalist automation.