The Literary History of Artificial Intelligence is a collaboration between the Columbia English Department, the Columbia University Rare Books & Manuscript Library, and Columbia University’s Digital Scholarship department.
This exhibition explores the long, shared history of literature and computation through the Columbia Library’s holdings. We present texts that participate in early debates about whether writing was a skill to be honed or a gift to be appreciated and whether the skills of writing could be learned and even made into repeatable algorithms. Is writing like any other craft that can be learned and taught? Following a timeline from circa 1890–1970, this exhibition explores professional manuals, devices, and techniques that promised to make writing easier—and even to automate it. The Literary History of AI showcases examples of algorithmic composition, such as prose and poetry written by machines, alongside literature written with the aid of algorithmic and combinatorial devices. This exhibition broadly tracks two broad stories related to the literary history of AI: production and analysis. Learn More…
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