Talk by Aarthi Vadde
Title: ‘Can AI Be Creative?’
Date and Room info: May 5, 12:30-13:30, FFB-05
From ChatGPT-authored novels to AI-generated soundtracks, the “creative” landscape is shifting beneath our feet. But is the machine actually creating, or are we just falling for a high-tech illusion?
This talk cuts through the industry hype to ask: If a computer lacks intentionality, can it ever truly be an artist?
Aarthi Vadde is E. Blake Byrne Associate Professor of English at Duke University. Her books include We the Platform: How the Internet Changed Twenty-First-Century Literature (forthcoming Columbia University Press 2026) and Chimeras of Form: Modernist Internationalism beyond Europe (Columbia UP, 2016; Winner of ACLA Harry Levin Prize). She co-edits The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. F: Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries and co-founded the podcast Novel Dialogue. She is the current president of the Society for Novel Studies.
Participants will get GE250/251 points.