AI and Ways of Seeing: Q&A with Lauren Tilton

In a Q&A after her recent lecture for the CDH, Lauren Tilton (Distant Viewing Lab, University of Richmond) remarks on the humanities' role in shaping AI, her work with the Distant Viewing Lab, and her concerns and hopes for AI.

What does "Humanities for AI" mean for you?

I find the idea to be a nice broad framing that centers on the role of the humanities in shaping AI. AI is often celebrated through a capitalistic, economic, and technological lens that centers on profit, innovation, and progress. Less frequently do we ask: Why are we building X and what is the social impact? Who is profiting, and who isn’t? Innovation according to whom? Progress from whose perspective? The humanities, particularly areas such as American Studies and Science and Technology Studies (STS), offer important frameworks, theories, and histories to address these questions. The humanities also allow us to imagine more creative possibilities for our AI future.

Read it on the blog

Upcoming Events:

Nov 22, 4:30 pm: We're closing out this semester's African Languages in the Age of AI (AAA) Speaker Series with "Towards AI Models That Can Visually Understand the World's Cultures," a lecture by Graham Neubig (Carnegie Mellon) in Friend Center 006, A Level. The respondent for this final talk will be Christiane Fellbaum (Humanities Council, Program in Linguistics, Computer Science).

Please RSVP if you plan to attend! CDH newsletter subscribers will also receive a recording in their inbox soon after the event.

Dec 5–6: The CDH is among the co-sponsors for the Phoenix of Gaza VR Exhibit + Symposium, "connecting everyday acts of resistance with longer term world-building and freedom dreaming."

The symposium includes two keynotes at 4:30 pm, both followed by roundtables: Noura Erakat (Rutgers) will speak on Thursday, and Sohail Dahdal (American) will speak on Friday. RSVP for the keynotes.

View all events

Opportunities:

For Graduate Students

Have you considered our Graduate Certificate in Digital Humanities? Through coursework, original research, and engagement in a colloquium series, certificate students will expand their methodological toolkit and build a community of praxis as they learn about cutting-edge theories, methods, and computational approaches transforming fields from medieval history to media studies.

Want to know more? Contact Grant Wythoff with questions.

If you want to learn about DH beyond Princeton, apply for a Graduate Training Grant to support your endeavors.

For Graduate and Undergraduate Students

Thinking about the spring semester? Check out our semiannual list of Princeton courses on media studies, technology, data and culture, and more!

Among the featured courses are three courses with the Computational and Data Humanities (CDH) code:

CDH 507 / HUM 507: Data in the Humanities, taught by CDH Assistant Director Jeri Wieringa
HIS 387 / ENG 389 / CDH 387: Data and Culture, taught Matthew L. Jones and Meredith Martin
NES 317 / HIS 312 / HUM 314 / CDH 317: Text and Technology: from Handwritten to Digital Formats, taught by CDH / MARBAS Postdoc Christine Roughan

For Job Seekers

We're hiring! Our new Research Software Engineer will be an integral member of a collaborative team that designs and implements high-quality, sustainable software to advance research in the humanities. For this position, we are looking for a team member with expertise in data analysis and visualization, particularly from a humanities perspective.

Princeton University is continuing its multi-year search for tenured and tenure-track faculty in interdisciplinary data science across all science, engineering, social science, and, yes, humanities areas! Application review begins December 1.

For Everyone

Coming on February 22–23: Envision, "a student-led conference that explores the intersection of AI, tech, policy, and ethics," to be held on Princeton's campus (CDH is proud to be a partner!). Students, fill out the interest form to learn more (and, others, share the interest link with your student friends!).

CDH Lead RSE Rebecca Koeser shared a great opportunity from the DH Research Software Consulting Unit (DHReSCU!), which comprises RSEs from Arizona State University, Harvard, and, yes, Princeton: DHReSCU consultations! Submit your early-stage DH project to get advice from these great people. If you're selected, you'll also receive a $1500 stipend.

As always, CDH staff are available to consult with Princeton faculty, staff and students on a variety of DH research and professional development questions. Sign up!

Links We're Digging Lately:

On October 24, we hosted Ernest Mwebaze, executive director of Sunbird AI in Kampala, Uganda, as part of our African Languages in the Age of AI (AAA) Speaker Series. If you missed the event (or want to see it again!), the recording of "End-to-End African Language Technology" is now available on the CDH website. Watch it now!

👏 We're super excited about a new piece in PMLA by CDH Faculty Director Meredith Martin: "Command Lines for the Humanities"!

Meredith's piece is part of a cluster of articles by participants in the MLA 2024 Convention seminar on "Reading Generative AI: Theory, Data, Critique." Scroll down to the "Theories and Methodologies" section here to read them all!

Speaking of Meredith, she shared "The New Artificial Intelligentsia" by 2024 MacArthur Fellow and former CDH affiliate Ruha Benjamin. Writes Benjamin: "Breathless buzzwords like 'efficiency,' 'novelty,' and 'productivity; conceal a self-serving vision: the future imagined by AI evangelists is meant only for a small sliver of humanity."

Also from Meredith: "Unweaving the Web: Can we make an Internet fit for people again?" "Don’t cry for the old web," writes the author, noting the decline of hyperlinks and the rise of machine-generated text. "It may be dying but we can find something new, something more human, more humane, to take its place."

Turning from the future of technology to its history, we read this article remembering Ward Christensen, "co-inventor of the computer bulletin board system (BBS)," who passed away in October.

What do statisticians do when they're missing data? To find out, check out this piece in Quanta Magazine.

And, finally, we enjoyed this #TellUsTigers post by CDH friend Nikitas Tampakis '14, now at Penn Libraries. Check it out to learn about Nikitas's engagement with Princeton's Greek music community!

The CDH Newsletter template was designed by Kate Carpenter, Princeton PhD student in the History of Science.