“Such ‘computational folkloristics’ raise a big question: what can algorithms tell us about the stories we love to read?”
“Can literature really be sliced up into computable bits of ‘information’, or is there something about the experience of reading that is irreducible?”
“Could AI enhance literary interpretation, or will it alter the field of literary criticism beyond recognition?”
“And could algorithms ever derive meaning from books in the way humans do, or even produce literature themselves?”
“Like many other AI practitioners, I’m a philosophical functionalist: I believe that a cognitive state, such as one derived from reading, should not be defined by what it is made of in terms of hardware or biology, but instead by how it functions, in relation to inputs, outputs and other cognitive states.”
“(Opponents of functionalism include behaviourists – who insist that mental states are nothing other than dispositions to behave in certain ways – and mind-brain identity theorists – who argue that mental states are identical with particular neural states, and are tied to specific biological ‘hardware’.)”
“Machines, in the functionalist view, can therefore be said to ‘experience’ certain basic cognitive states. ‘Siri understood my request,’ in relation to the iPhone, means that Siri processed my request to achieve a desired functional outcome.”
“Similarly, ‘The system understands temporal relations’, in relation to an algorithm for analysing text, simply means that it digested and produced a functional timeline that is similar to a human one.”
“Algorithms are still very far off being able to produce the full range of functional outputs that a human can upon digesting a text. But if it weren’t possible to compare the effects of different subjective experiences of reading, it would make no sense to talk of literature resonating among different people, either between the writer and the reader or among multiple readers. Yet that’s exactly what literature does.”
“In 1928, the Russian structuralist Vladimir Propp published an inventory of 31 narrative archetypes or ‘functions’ that underpin common Russian folktales. In the narrative function of ‘Villainy’, for example, a villain abducts someone, while in ‘Receipt of a Magical Agent’, a character can place himself at the disposal of the hero.”
“Could an algorithm today generate and improve upon Propp’s narrative functions? In his AI dissertation at MIT, the computer scientist Mark Finlayson built a system that drew on an annotated English translation of Propp’s Russian corpus. He discovered several new narrative plot structures – finding, for example, that kidnapping, seizing and tormenting are the hallmarks of Proppian villainy.”
“In the future, scholars who lean on digital helpmates are likely to dominate the rest, enriching our literary culture and changing the kinds of questions that can be explored.”
“Those who resist the temptation to unleash the capabilities of machines will have to content themselves with the pleasures afforded by smaller-scale, and fewer, discoveries.”
“While critics and book reviewers may continue to be an essential part of public cultural life, literary theorists who do not embrace AI will be at risk of becoming an exotic species – like the librarians who once used index cards to search for information.”