Nina Begus on artificial humanities, AI archetypes, limiting and productive metaphors, and human extension (AC Ep38)

Nina Begus on artificial humanities, AI archetypes, limiting and productive metaphors, and human extension (AC Ep38)

April 1, 2026 · 35 min · Season 3 · Episode 38

About this episode

Nina Begus discusses the intersection of humanities and AI, emphasizing the importance of literature and philosophy in shaping technology.

“Fiction has this unprecedented power in tech spaces. The more I started talking to engineers about their technical problems, the more I realized there’s so much more that humanities could offer.” –Nina Begus About Nina Begus Nina Begus is a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, leading a research group on artificial humanities, and the founder of InterpretAI. She is author of Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI, which received an Artificiality Institute Award, and First Encounters with AI. Website: ninabegus.com LinkedIn Profile: Nina Begus Book: Artificial Humanities   What you will learn How ancient myths and archetypes influence our understanding and design of AI Why the humanities—literature, philosophy, and the arts—are crucial for developing more thoughtful and innovative AI systems The dangers of limiting AI concepts to human-centered metaphors and the need for new, more expansive imaginaries How metaphors shape our interactions with AI products and the user experiences companies choose to enable The challenges and possibilities of imagining forms of machine intelligence and language beyond human…

People in this episode

Host: Ross Dawson

Guest: Nina Begus

Topics covered

Keywords

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of California, Berkeley, InterpretAI

Books & works: Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI, First Encounters with AI

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