“AI and the Death of Literary Criticism”
A very interesting piece by Prof. Thomas Balazs in Quillette. An excerpt:
When ChatGPT can analyse Hamlet as well as any grad student, we might reasonably ask, “What is the point of writing papers on Hamlet?” Literary analysis, after all, is not like building houses, feeding people, or practising medicine. Even compared to its sister disciplines in the humanities (e.g., history or philosophy) the study of literature serves little practical need. And, besides, when machines can build houses as easily as people, we won’t need people to build houses either.
So, why do we teach English literature (or “language arts,” as some secondary schools now call it) at all? According to the nineteenth-century British literary critic Mathew Arnold, the purpose of studying and teaching literature is “to know the best that is known and thought in the world, and by in its turn mak
Article from Reason.com
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