Text Generation and Other Uneasy Human-Machine Collaborations

Abstract

Since the rise of mainframe computing, literary authors and critics alike have expressed anxiety about the computer’s ability to write narrative prose and poetry as well as or better than humans. With the recent emergence of publicly accessible AI authoring platforms such as ChatGPT these fears may appear to have been well-founded. In this article I will situate contemporary digital literary practices of reading, writing, rewriting, and performing computer-generated variable texts within broader social and historical contexts. Experimentation with generative, permutational, and combinatory text began long before digital computers came into being. How and why does experimentation with generative or in other ways variable text emerge within certain human and machinic generations? How do our attempts to make writing machines help us understand how we write ourselves?