Since fall 2024, the Center for Digital Humanities has led the “Humanities for AI” initiative through a series of events, projects, and conversations. We explore how humanistic values and approaches are crucial to developing, using, and interpreting the field of AI. As part of this effort, we publish a Q&A series with our guest speakers to further investigate perspectives on the impact of AI on humanities scholarship.
In April, we invited award-winning novelist Nnedi Okorafor to Princeton to discuss her new novel, Death of the Author, and the future of storytelling. In her “book-within-a-book,” a disabled Nigerian-American woman writes a successful sci-fi novel where “androids and AI wage war in the grown-over ruins of human civilization.” During the conversation, Nnedi expressed hope that storytellers of all kinds understand the necessity of process, particularly experience as process, and are not “seduced” by the convenience of AI. Fascinated by tech and robots (she has several in her home!), and the ways they can help people with disabilities, she is optimistic that great stories will shine through the AI slop.