Poetry Will Not Optimize; or, What Is Literature to AI? | American Literature | Duke University Press

Michele Elam is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities in the English department and faculty associate director of the Institute for Human-Centered AI at Stanford University. She has served as director of African and African American studies and director of the graduate Program in Modern Thought and Literature. Her books include Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860–1930 (2003), The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium (2011), and The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin (2015). Elam is currently completing a book project tentatively titled “Race-Making in the Age of AI.” Michele Elam; Poetry Will Not Optimize; or, What Is Literature to AI?. American Literature 1 June 2023; 95 (2): 281–303. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10575077 Download citation file: Literature, poetry, and other forms of noncommercial creative expression challenge the techno-instrumentalist approaches to language, the predictive language generatio

Michele Elam is the William Robertson Coe Professor of Humanities in the English department and faculty associate director of the Institute for Human-Centered AI at Stanford University. She has served as director of African and African American studies and director of the graduate Program in Modern Thought and Literature. Her books include Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860–1930 (2003), The Souls of Mixed Folk: Race, Politics, and Aesthetics in the New Millennium (2011), and The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin (2015). Elam is currently completing a book project tentativel