Nina Beguš: Artificial Humanities

Nina Beguš: Artificial Humanities

Author: Helen and Dave Edwards March 28, 2026 Duration: 55:07

In this conversation, we explore the cultural foundations of artificial intelligence with Nina Beguš, Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley and author of "Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI." Nina makes a compelling case for an entirely new field—one that brings humanistic insights into the very creation of technology rather than treating humanities as critical afterthought or ethical guardrail.

Nina's work emerged from recognizing patterns everywhere she looked: the same fictional scripts appearing in technology products, films, and Silicon Valley's imagination. When Siri launched as a feminized virtual assistant designed to build rapport, Nina immediately asked "why is it a woman?" and began tracing how deeply fiction shapes our technological reality—not as metaphor but as blueprint.

Key themes we explore:

  • The Pygmalion Template: How an ancient myth—male creator produces idealized woman, projects desire onto creation—persistently shapes virtual assistants and AI interfaces
  • From Marble to Cockney to LLMs: Tracing evolution from Ovid through Shaw's "Pygmalion" to the "ELIZA effect" named after Eliza Doolittle
  • Language No Longer Uniquely Human: The profound implications of machines using language eloquently without consciousness
  • Monolingual AI at Global Scale: How tokenization creates structural monolingualism beyond just favoring English
  • Writers Responding to AI: Nina's project gathering sixteen writers to reflect on what happens when language is no longer exclusively human
  • Planetary Ontology: Collaborative work seeing human/nature/technology as sitting "in the same continuum of this planet"

Nina Beguš is Researcher and Lecturer at the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society at the University of California, Berkeley. She graduated with a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University. During her time at the Berggruen Institute and ToftH, she helped implement novel humanities-based consulting techniques for big tech companies.

https://www.ninabegus.com


Hosted by Helen and Dave Edwards, Stay Human, from the Artificiality Institute is a conversation that lives in the messy, human space between our tools and our selves. Each episode digs into the subtle ways artificial intelligence is reshaping our daily decisions, our creative impulses, and even our sense of identity. This isn't a technical manual or a series of futuristic predictions; it's a grounded exploration of how we maintain our agency in a world increasingly mediated by algorithms. The podcast operates from a core belief: that our engagement with AI should be about more than just safety or efficiency-it needs to be meaningful and worthwhile. You'll hear discussions rooted in story-based research, where complex ideas about cognition and ethics are unpacked through relatable narratives and real-world examples. The goal is to provide a framework for thoughtful choice, helping each of us consciously design the relationship we want with the machines in our lives. Tuning in offers a chance to step back from the hype and consider how we can actively remain the authors of our own minds, preserving what makes us uniquely human even as the technology evolves. It's an essential listen for anyone curious about the personal and philosophical dimensions of our digital age.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 100

Stay Human, from the Artificiality Institute
Podcast Episodes
Don Norman: Design for a Better World [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:03:51
What role does design have in solving the world’s biggest problems? What can designers add? Some would say that designers played a role in getting us into our current mess. Can they also get us out of it? How can we desi…
Jamer Hunt: Not to Scale [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:32
What are the cause and effect of my actions? How do I know the effect of the small acts in my life? How can I identify opportunities to have impact that is much larger than myself? How can we make problems that seem over…
David Krakauer: Complexity [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:34:34
We’re always looking for new ideas from science that we can use in our work. Over the past few years, we have been researching new ways to handle increasing complexity in the world and how to solve complex problems. Why…
Generative AI: ChatGPT, DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and the rest [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 29:43
Everyone’s talking about it so we will too. Generative AI is taking the world by storm. But is it a good storm or a scary storm? How should individuals think about what’s possible? What about companies? Our take: generat…
Kees Dorst: Frame Innovation [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:02:50
What can we learn from the practice of design? What might we learn if we had an insight into top designers’ minds? How might we apply the best practices of designers beyond the field of design itself? Most of our listene…
No-duhs and some surprises [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 26:37
The latest Big Ideas report from MIT Sloan and BCG makes for an interesting read but contains flaws, obvious conclusions, and raises more questions than it answers.We discuss this report and make some suggestions about h…
Elon's error calculation at Twitter [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 27:29
Twitter as we knew is gone. Elon has fired half the full time employees and 80 percent of the contractors. It’s a brutal way to trim excess fat, reset the culture, and establish a loyal band. But is it a good decision? H…
Marina Nitze and Nick Sinai: Hack Your Bureaucracy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:50
We all likely want to improve the organizations we work in. We might want to improve the employee experience, improve the customer experience, or be more efficient and effective. But we all likely have had the experience…
Tom Davenport and Steve Miller: Working with AI [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 52:38
How will AI change our jobs? Will it replace humans and eliminate jobs? Will it help humans get things done? Will it create new opportunities for new jobs? People often speculate on these topics, doing their best to pred…