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The article explores the perceived connection between readers and authors of literary texts in the context of large language models (LLMs) used in artificial intelligence (AI) text-generation software. Critics argue that LLMs lack true understanding and produce derivative and unoriginal texts, potentially diminishing the human connection in literature. However, the author argues that readers' interpretations and connections with texts are more important than the source of the text, whether human or computer-generated. The article emphasizes the agency of readers and the need to shift the focus from text as a connector to text as a catalyst for connection. [Extracted from the article]

This article proposes the notion of the 'Lovelace Effect' as an analytical tool to identify situations in which the behaviour of computing systems is perceived by users as original and creative. It contrasts the Lovelace Effect with the more commonly known 'Lovelace objection', which claims that computers cannot originate or create anything, but only do what their programmers instruct them to do. By analysing the case study of AICAN – an AI art-generating system – we argue for the need for approaches in computational creativity to shift focus from what computers are able to do in ontological terms to the perceptions of human users who enter into interactions with them. The case study illuminates how the Lovelace effect can be facilitated through technical but also through representational means, such as the situations and cultural contexts in which users are invited to interact with the AI. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper outlines an example of Special Collections materials being used to support master's-level students' data and digital skills development. It evidences positive student learning outcomes through an unconventional interdepartmental collaboration between a digital media teaching team and Special Collections staff, which combined digital practices and tangible Special Collections material. This paper outlines the readings used for the course under review, the assignments used to evaluate students, student experiences of those assignments, and staff observations of student success and the logistics of course delivery. Findings show that in completing their assignments students (a) negotiated uncertainty; (b) increased understandings of data and digital methods; (c) embraced the lifeworlds of data; and (d) blurred the boundaries of analog and digital. More generally, this work finds that Special Collections material can be effectively used to support data and digital skills development, as well as help students gain broader understandings of digital contexts and media. Value is, however, dependent upon embracing uncertainty: something that universities tend to avoid. But, as is shown, staff and students alike can thrive in states of bewilderment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2021, the San Francisco Chronicle released a feature article about a man who chose to resurrect his deceased fiancée by training a chatbot system built on OpenAI's GPT language models on her old digital messages. He then had emotional conversations with this chatbot, which appeared to accurately mimic the deceased's writing style. This case study raises questions about the communicative influences of thanabots: chatbots trained on data of the dead. While thanabots are clearly not living conversational partners, the rhetoric, everyday experiences, and emotions associated with these system have very real implications for living users. This paper applies a lifeworld perspective to consider the hermeneutics of thanabots. It shows that thanabots exist in a long lineage of efforts to communicate with the dead, but acknowledges that thanatechnologies must be more thoroughly studied for better understanding of what it means to die in a digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through I Intermediate Horizons: Book History and Digital Humanities i , editors Mark Vareschi and Heather Wacha curate a collection of chapters by scholars representing a variety of bookish interests. Some chapters (e.g., Pottroff, Yahr, Leaner, Alvis) complement gentle introductions to questions about digitality and digitization for settled book historians. For Alvis, book history and bibliography may serve as conceptual lenses for digital phenomena; Alvis likens institutional and individual contributions to the #LibraryTwitter hashtag to the various textual and visual elements in medieval books of hours. [Extracted from the article]

This article examines the place of computer-generated literary texts within the boundaries of modern literary analysis. Any act of reading engages interpretive faculties; modern readers assume a text to embody human agency. With this assumption, readers assign authorial intention and hence develop a perceived contract between the author and the reader. Yet computer-generated texts bring this contract into question. Drawing from historical examples of conceptual writing, this article shows how computer-generated fiction calls into question current conceptions of authorship and what it means to be a reader, but it nevertheless fits within a longstanding literary lineage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that we should shift our consideration of natural language generation systems as tools for manifesting human intent to natural language generation systems as agents in themselves. Such a semantic shift would permit a more holistic conversation about the transformative social power of these systems’ output. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]