Language and the Life of the Mind in the Age of AI

The Department of English and the Zabel Lectures present the essayist and critic Meghan O'Gieblyn, author of God Human Animal Machine: Technology, Metaphor, and the Search for Meaning (Vintage). The New York Times described the book as "a remarkably erudite work of history, criticism and philosophy, but also, crucially, a memoir"; the Los Angeles Review of Books called it "nothing less than an account of not just how the mind interacts with the world, but how we can begin to ask that question in the first place.” 

This even is free and open to the public. For accessibility services and questions about the venue, contact Terri Sutton at [email protected] or 612-626-1528. 

The rise of generative AI has destabilized the way we typically think about the relationship between language and thought. Given that large language models can produce cogent, even creative text via statistical mimesis, many have asked whether human "output" is really original, or whether we're even thinking at all. Do we mean what we say? Or are we just "stochastic parrots"? While these questions may seem new, a number of writers, artists, and philosophers (many writing long before the age of AI) have explored both the creative possibilities and the ethical risks that arise when language becomes uncoupled from conscious attention. Their insights anticipate many of the moral and creative challenges of the digital age and call attention to the more ordinary ways in which writing and speech often fall into patterns of automaticity. 

Co-sponsored by the Departments of Computer Science & Engineering, Cultural Studies & Comparative Literature, Electrical and Computer Engineering, History of Science, Technology & Medicine, Philosophy, and Religious Studies, and the the Institute of Linguistics, the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science, and the Center for Faith & Learning at Anselm House.

Meghan O'Gieblyn is the author of God Human Animal Machine and the essay collection Interior States, which won the 2018 Believer Book Award for nonfiction. She is the recipient of three Pushcart Prizes and the 2023 Benjamin H. Danks Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She writes essays and criticism for Harper's Magazine, The New Yorker, WIRED, n+1, The New York Review of Books, and other publications, and her essays have been included in The Best American Essays and the Contemporary American Essay anthologies.