Literary Theory for Robots

”[Literary Theory for Robots] is surprising, funny and resolutely unintimidating…Tenen has figured out how to present a web of complex ideas at human scale.” – Jennifer Szalai - The New York Times Book Review“Literary Theory for Robots helps us recognize that over time, the seemingly extraordinary fades into the ordinary, becoming yet another tool through which we think and write in conversation with others.” – Gabriel Nicholas - The Washington Post“Literary Theory for Robots serves as an alternative to the breathless utopian or apocalyptic hallucinations of the tech bros funding the AI revolution, instead offering a highly relatable perspective on thinking machines grounded in history, literature, and lived human experience. Yi Tenen shows that truly understanding the future of our digital augmentation depends not on more STEM but on more liberal arts. This book will be remembered as the moment thinking people realized how to raise better robots: read them good stories.” – Douglas Rushkoff, author of Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires

Dennis Yi Tenen is an associate professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University. Originally a software engineer at Microsoft, Yi Tenen is now an affiliate of Columbia’s Data Science Institute. He lives in New York City.