Vee, Annette
(2023)
Automating Writing from Androids to AI.
In: Pitt Momentum Fund 2023.
Abstract
This application requests funds for two research activities related to a book in progress and to be conducted over the next year: 1) travel to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia to examine the Maillardet Automaton (~1800) and 2) subscriptions to three of the commercial AI text generation services currently offered online. My book, Automating Writing from Androids to AI, asks: What does it mean to be a human writer in the midst of faster and more prevalent machine writing? How must we change our writing and teaching practices to account for these new forms of computational writing? I connect the recent developments in AI and writing (natural language generation, or NLG) to a longer history of automation. Drawing on histories of 18th automata, 19th century science and fiction, accounts of amanuenses in the 19th and 20th centuries, poetic, business and computing experiments in the 20th century, and contemporary developments in NLG, Automated Writing provides a humanistic and historical context for the quest to automate writing. My interdisciplinary research expertise in computing and writing positions me to carry out this project. Microgrant funding will cover the trip to Philadelphia and the cost of several online subscriptions to explore current NLG technology.
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