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Podcast: New Books in Literary Studies
Episode: Mark Seligman, "AI and Ada: Artificial Translation and Creation of Literature" (First Hill Books, 2025)
Description: Taking recent spectacular progress in AI fully into account, Mark Seligman's AI and Ada: Artificial Translation and Creation of Literature (Anthem Press, 2025) explores prospects for artificial literary translation and composition, with frequent reference to the hyperconscious literary art of Vladimir Nabokov. The exploration balances reader-friendly explanation (“What are transformers?”) and original insights (“What is intelligence? What is language?”) with personal and playful notes, and culminates in an assortment of striking demos
The book’s Preface places the current AI explosion in the context of other technological cataclysms and recounts the author’s personal (and not always deadly serious) AI jour...