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Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI
Artificial Humanities explores how literature, history, and art can deepen our understanding of artificial intelligence and its development. By examining fictional representations of AI in parallel with actual technological developments, Nina Beguš presents a novel interdisciplinary framework for understanding the cultural, philosophical, and ethical dimensions of AI. She traces connections from Eliza Doolittle to ELIZA the chatbot and current language models, incorporates Slavic fictional examples from the Pygmalion paradigm, and compares mid-century science fiction and recent Hollywood films with contemporary developments in social robotics and virtual beings.
Highlighting the impact of human-like AI design, from gendered virtual assistants to romanticized social robots, the book shows how these technologies intersect with longstanding humanistic questions about the concepts of creativity and language as well as the relations between humans and machines. Additionally, the book explores AI’s applications in medical fields, particularly psychiatry and neurotechnology, including how AI interacts with the human body and mind to address conditions like paralysis. By emphasizing the philosophical and cultural implications of these technologies, Beguš highlights the need for responsible innovation that prioritizes human well-being as well as machine potential outside of human imitation. Accessible and thought-provoking, Artificial Humanities offers tools for analyzing and assessing technologies while they are being developed and invites readers to see how the humanities can guide us toward a more thoughtful future for AI.
Highlighting the impact of human-like AI design, from gendered virtual assistants to romanticized social robots, the book shows how these technologies intersect with longstanding humanistic questions about the concepts of creativity and language as well as the relations between humans and machines. Additionally, the book explores AI’s applications in medical fields, particularly psychiatry and neurotechnology, including how AI interacts with the human body and mind to address conditions like paralysis. By emphasizing the philosophical and cultural implications of these technologies, Beguš highlights the need for responsible innovation that prioritizes human well-being as well as machine potential outside of human imitation. Accessible and thought-provoking, Artificial Humanities offers tools for analyzing and assessing technologies while they are being developed and invites readers to see how the humanities can guide us toward a more thoughtful future for AI.
- GenresArtificial Intelligence
308 pages, Hardcover
Published November 25, 2025
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 23, 2026
3.5
This book argues that contemporary AI development is shaped by inherited narrative structures, especially the Pygmalion myth and a long history of speaking artifacts. I found the central diagnosis of “artificial humanities” convincing but incomplete because the problem isn't simply that engineers lack critical vocabulary. Many leaders in technology (from Peter Thiel to Alex Karp to Daniela Amodei) are already fluent in philosophy or the humanities. At scale, narrative organizes systems, and those systems reward compliance as built in incentives -- not as failures of imagination!
Still, Beguš is right on most counts, and I’m interested to follow her work further. However, the critique of anthropocentric AI (the Turing Test as performance, engineers as philosophically naïve, etc.) already feels like an emerging genre rather than an intervention. The Higgins-as-architect reading is compelling, but the argument stops short of a sharper colonial frame. ELIZA’s “civilized” voice is noted, but deeper questions of whose speech becomes training data, and whose patterns define linguistic “correctness,” aren’t sufficiently explored, even though this is where Pygmalion becomes politically charged.
At this point, critique alone cannot exit infrastructure. If the Pygmalion myth centers the creator's desire as its animating force, the more difficult problem/question is what other desires might structure innovation instead, and maybe what myths or stories can we look to for that.
This book argues that contemporary AI development is shaped by inherited narrative structures, especially the Pygmalion myth and a long history of speaking artifacts. I found the central diagnosis of “artificial humanities” convincing but incomplete because the problem isn't simply that engineers lack critical vocabulary. Many leaders in technology (from Peter Thiel to Alex Karp to Daniela Amodei) are already fluent in philosophy or the humanities. At scale, narrative organizes systems, and those systems reward compliance as built in incentives -- not as failures of imagination!
Still, Beguš is right on most counts, and I’m interested to follow her work further. However, the critique of anthropocentric AI (the Turing Test as performance, engineers as philosophically naïve, etc.) already feels like an emerging genre rather than an intervention. The Higgins-as-architect reading is compelling, but the argument stops short of a sharper colonial frame. ELIZA’s “civilized” voice is noted, but deeper questions of whose speech becomes training data, and whose patterns define linguistic “correctness,” aren’t sufficiently explored, even though this is where Pygmalion becomes politically charged.
At this point, critique alone cannot exit infrastructure. If the Pygmalion myth centers the creator's desire as its animating force, the more difficult problem/question is what other desires might structure innovation instead, and maybe what myths or stories can we look to for that.
Displaying 1 of 1 review