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79800-01 - Seminar: Artificial Intelligence and the History of Writing (3 CP)
| Semester | fall semester 2026 |
| Course frequency | Irregular |
| Lecturers | Ryan Healey (ryan.healey@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | This course situates artificial intelligence within the longer history of writing, understood not as a neutral medium but as a technology that has always shaped what can be thought, who can think it, and how knowledge is produced and circulated. From the early novel's invention of techniques for simulating consciousness to the transformer architectures that now generate plausible language without a familiar model of authorship, writing and computation share a deep entanglement. An idea that continues to gain momentum is the argument of “text as the universal interface,” a super-domain of language that can orchestrate all other domains in AI systems (image, sound, etc.). To situate this history where computation and writing collide in the present, we read eighteenth-century philosophy and fiction (Locke, Hume, Haywood, Goethe) alongside foundational texts in the theory of computation (Turing, Babbage, Wiener, Leibniz) and recent work on machine learning (situated in current debates in linguistics, structuralism, and philosophy) asking what it means that the most powerful AI systems are, at bottom, writing machines. No prior background in computation or literary theory is required. |
| Learning objectives | This course aims to develop a critical and historically grounded understanding of artificial intelligence as a problem in the long history of writing. Students will learn to think about writing not as a transparent medium but as a technology with its own material conditions, formal constraints, and epistemological consequences, one that has always been entangled with questions of computation, abstraction, and the modeling of minds. We will examine how the novel emerged as a powerful machine for simulating interiority and how that project relates to the computational systems that now generate language at scale without anything resembling understanding. Students will engage with Enlightenment philosophy, theories of the novel, the history of mechanical and digital computation, and contemporary debates about machine learning, building toward the capacity to analyze AI not as a rupture in the history of writing but as its latest and most important chapter. By the end of the course, students will be equipped to read literary and computational texts together, to interrogate the cultural and philosophical assumptions embedded in technical systems, and to articulate what is at stake when the production of language is delegated to machines. |
| Bibliography | All assigned readings will be made available during the course. |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|---|
| wöchentlich | Wednesday | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
Dates
| Date | Time | Room |
|---|---|---|
| Wednesday 16.09.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 23.09.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 30.09.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 07.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 14.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 21.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 28.10.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 04.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 11.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 18.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 25.11.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 02.12.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 09.12.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Wednesday 16.12.2026 | 14.15-16.00 | Kollegienhaus, Seminarraum 103 |
| Modules |
Doktorat Digital Humanities: Empfehlungen (PhD subject: Digital Humanities) Modul: Digital Humanities, Culture and Society (Master's degree subject: Digital Humanities) Modul: Kulturtechniken MA (Master's degree subject: Media Studies) Modul: Praktiken (Master's degree program: Cultural Techniques) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Digital Humanities Lab |