If AI Can Write, Why Should We?
Feb
26
2025

Feb
26
2025
Description
Now that big technology companies have succeeded in getting computers to produce text that passes for something a human would write, what’s the point of human authors?
When companies began developing AI models to produce language, Vauhini Vara was a tech reporter with early access to what would become ChatGPT. She used it to co-write an essay about her grief over her sister’s death. That essay, “Ghosts,” published in The Believer, was both more moving and more disturbing than expected. It went viral, was named one of the year’s “Best American Essays” and was eventually adapted for an episode of “This American Life.” The experience, revealing both the power and the danger of corporate-owned technologies, forced Vara to interrogate how these technologies shape her understanding of self and the world around her — the subject of her forthcoming book “Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age,” which is scheduled to be released on April 8, 2025 (Pre-order the book here).
In this discussion, moderated by Craig Watkins, Vara will tell the story of her relationship with AI as a writing tool. She will explore the opportunities and risks that arise when AI helps us communicate, and why, in an age in which computers can write, humans should keep writing at all.

Vauhini Vara is a writer — a journalist, editor, fiction writer, essayist and playwright — in Colorado. Her work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, Wired and elsewhere. Her debut novel, “The Immortal King Rao,” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

S. Craig Watkins is Ernest A. Sharpe Centennial Professor in Communication and executive director of the IC² Institute at UT Austin. His research focuses on the technical, social and ethical implications of artificial intelligence, exploring the challenges and opportunities in deploying AI in high-stakes contexts.
Location
Norman Hackerman Building (NHB)
100 E. 24th Street
Room 1.720
Parking: Brazos Garage
This virtual event will stream live on YouTube. To receive the link, please register and choose that you will attend virtually.