Literary Theory for Robots by Dennis Yi Tenen review – the deep roots of AI

A secret history of machine intelligence, from 14th century horoscopes to 1930s ‘plot genies’ for coming up with storylines

Hark. The end is nigh. “In the industrial age, automation came for the shoemaker and the factory-line worker,” writes Dennis Yi Tenen near the start of Literary Theory for Robots. “Today, it has come for the writer, the professor, the physician, the programmer and the attorney.” Like the end-of-the-planet movies that pelted the multiplexes at the turn of the millennium, newspapers …

age artificial intelligence (ai) automation books computing and the net books culture factory genies history industrial intelligence line machine machine intelligence near philosophy books plot review robots secret technology the end the factory theory