This lecture is part of the Global Arts + Humanities' Society of Fellows 2025-26 event series, "Artificial Intelligence: Propositions from the Arts + Humanities" — a series of lectures by artists and scholars whose work foregrounds the ethical obligations arising from the simulation of human intelligence and increased surveillance.
Dennis Yi Tenen is an associate professor of English at Columbia University, where he co-directs the Narrative Intelligence Lab. Recent publications include Literary Theory for Robots (W.W. Norton, 2024) and Author Function (forthcoming, Chicago UP). A long-time affiliate of Columbia’s Data Science Institute and former Microsoft engineer and fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Tenen’s code runs on personal computers worldwide.
The notion of artificial intelligence implies its obverse and improbable quality: something like “natural” intelligence. In this talk, Tenen will examine the role artifice plays in cognition, and specifically in the cognitive tasks related to textual authorship. This change of perspective leads us to reexamine the history of literature from the standpoint of authorial technique, while also bearing important consequences for our own contemporary academic practices of writing and research.
Moderator: Jacob Risinger, Associate Professor of English
Other events in this series
- OCTOBER 10, 2025 a lecture from Simone Brown
- NOVEMBER 13, 2025 "Artisanal Intelligences," a lecture from Katherine Behar
- APRIL 2, 2026 "Becoming Auto," a lecture from Lauren Lee McCarthy