National Seminar- Convergence of AI, DH, and English Studies

Convergence of AI, DH, and English Studies

Organised by DoE, MKBU

Participated in a National Seminar hosted by Smt. Sujata Binoy Gardi, Department of English, M.K. Bhavnagar University, Bhavnagar. The seminar, titled 'Convergence of AI, DH, and English Studies,' was conducted in a hybrid mode. The event commenced with a cordial welcome from the Head of the Department and Professor Dr. Dilip Barad. Distinguished speakers included Prof. (Dr.) Nigam Dave, Director of the School of Liberal Studies and Dean of International Relations at PDEU, Gandhinagar, Gujarat, delivered a thought-provoking session on the Value Neutrality of Deepfake and its Positive Implications. Dr. Richa Srishti, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Languages at CHRIST (Deemed to be University), Lavasa, Pune, Maharashtra, explored the Role of AI in the Creative Process and Redefined Authorship. Dr. Richa Mishra, Chairperson of the Board of Studies and Head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, offered insights into Engaging with Digital Humanities: Tools, Techniques and Scope. Finally, Dr. Shobha K.N., Associate Professor of English at NTTTR, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, discussed the application of AI for Teaching and Learning.

This blog is Jheel Barad's Major takeaways from the seminar attended in online mode.

Prof. (Dr.) Nigam Dave on Value Neutrality of Deepfake and its Positive Implications

The first session started with a question: Why do we call the swapping of images or videos "deepfake" and not "Synthetic Media"? We discussed the background of Deepfake and pondered whether deepfakes could shake up global governance. If yes, what can we do to stop it? If not, what have we missed in raising awareness about Deepfake?

We talked about fake identities, a concept rooted in Indian myths. Stories like Chavan Rudhi and Sukanya, and the legend behind Chavanprash, showed how old this idea is. Examples like Ravan becoming a golden deer and Arjuna disguising as Brihanala highlighted that deepfake isn't new; it's how we interpret things that's the problem.

These examples show how things are duplicated, copied, or altered to look like the original, which is the basic idea behind Deepfake - manipulating or changing something to mislead others about someone or something.

• Meme with text change in the original dialogue
• Body double
• Look-a-like celebrities
• Mimicry artists
• Singers singing with the voices of known singers
• Fake products in chor bazaar

The concept of Deepfake or Synthetic Media can be utilized for positive purposes.

• Deepfake voice tech E.G.: David Beckham Malaria Campaign
• De-aging of Harrison Ford from Indiana Jones
• Dali Lives- Museum bringing Artist back to life with AI in Florida museum
• Michal Jackson Hologram

Just like guns don't kill people, it's the malicious intentions of people that alter technology.

Dr. Richa Mishra on Engaging with Digital Humanities: Tools, Techniques and Scope. 

In her presentation, she delved into the myriad tools, techniques, and scopes within the realm of Digital Humanities (DH) as a researcher. The session commenced with an observation on the prevalence of theoretical research over practical production in the Indian DH landscape. It provided a comprehensive background on the emergence of Digital Humanities, highlighting key figures in the field. CLICK HERE

Furthermore, the talk explored the contrasting patterns between traditional research methodologies and those employed in DH. Analogous to traditional research, DH research encompasses digitized data, born-digital content, and data revitalized in digital formats. This comparison sheds light on the evolving nature of research methodologies in the digital age.

Additionally, the session delved into various research techniques pivotal to Digital Humanities, including:

1. Text Mining & Analysis: Uncovering patterns, trends, and insights from large volumes of textual data through computational methods.

2. Data Visualization: Presenting complex data in visual formats to facilitate understanding and interpretation.

3. Geospatial Analysis: Analyzing spatial data to reveal geographical patterns, relationships, and trends.

4. Network Analysis: Studying the connections and relationships between entities within a network to discern patterns and structures.

5. Corpus Linguistics: Analyzing large collections of text (corpora) to study language patterns, usage, and evolution.

6. Text Encoding and Markup: Employing markup languages to encode and structure textual data for analysis and presentation.

These techniques underscore the interdisciplinary nature of Digital Humanities, leveraging computational tools to explore and understand humanistic inquiries in novel and insightful ways.

Furthermore, the session highlighted a plethora of tools essential for implementing these techniques:

1. Hermeneutim: An advanced tool facilitating text analysis and interpretation, aiding researchers in uncovering deeper meanings and insights within textual data.

2. Tupor.ca: A comprehensive platform offering a range of tools for textual analysis, enabling researchers to explore linguistic patterns, sentiment analysis, and more.

3. Hypothes.is: A collaborative annotation tool allowing users to annotate and discuss digital documents, fostering collaborative research and knowledge sharing.

4. Recognition: A tool specializing in optical character recognition (OCR), converting scanned documents and images into editable and searchable text, thus facilitating text mining and analysis.

and many more. The session also introduced other tools tailored to specific research needs, including data visualization platforms, geospatial analysis software, network analysis tools, and text encoding software.

The session culminated with an exploration of the diverse scopes available for research within Digital Humanities (DH), as in photo

Recorded Sessions

Dr. Richa Srishti on The Role of AI in the Creative Process and Redefined Authorship

The session commenced with fundamental inquiries: Can AI truly embody the essence of an author? Will AI revolutionize the very concept of authorship? Let us delve into the roots of these terms, beginning with the etymology of 'Artificial' and 'Intelligence'.

The term 'Artificial' traces its origins to the Latin word 'Artificium', derived from 'ars' meaning 'arts or skills', and 'facere' signifying 'to make or create'. When merged, they epitomize the notion of crafting or creating with skill. On the other hand, 'Intelligence' stems from 'Intelligentia', originating from 'inter' meaning 'between or among', and 'legere' connoting 'to choose or read'. Collectively, they encompass the capacity to understand and discern. the term "author," derived from 'auctor', which embodies the concept of a creator, someone who fashions something out of nothingness.

In her address, Ma'am delved into the profound implications of AI's learning capabilities, noting that AI is progressively absorbing and adapting to human commands and behaviors, even learning from our mistakes when they are pointed out. Drawing parallels with historical figures like Einstein and Ada Lovelace, she emphasized the potential for AI to be regarded as genuine authors, akin to their human counterparts. Moreover, she underscored the collaborative potential between humans and AI in creative endeavors, citing various online AI tools tailored for collaborative writing experiences.

Show casing various examples of poems and images, challenging the audience to discern between those created by humans and those generated by AI. She recommended a range of online AI tools such as Verse by Verse, ChatGPT, and AI Dungeon for generating poetry, prose, and images collaboratively.

 

One term that resonated strongly in her discourse was "Scriptor," as coined by Ronald Barths. According to Barths, a Scriptor possesses the ability to rearrange existing text in novel ways, a notion that aligns with AI's capacity to generate content based on learned patterns and inputs.

The session emphasized collaboration between human creativity and technology's capabilities, following insights from Salman Rushdie and Kevin Kelly. Rushdie noted AI's challenge to unoriginal writers, suggesting it doesn't threaten all human creativity. Kelly reframed the narrative from competition to collaboration, advocating a "race with robots" mindset. This approach encourages leveraging AI's strengths to enhance human innovation, fostering a synergistic relationship rather than a competitive one.

Dr. Shobha K.N. on AI for Teaching and Learning.

The speaker began by tracing the evolution of technology in education, highlighting milestones from the printing press to the World Wide Web. She emphasized that AI, despite its recent surge in popularity, has been under development for a significant period. The journey of technological advancement in education, starting from early computing to machine learning and Deep Learning, was illustrated. Drawing an analogy from sports, she illustrated how evolving technology offers educators new opportunities akin to athletes setting new records. Three exemplary educators—Benjamin Bloom with Bloom's Taxonomy, Sal Khan with Khan Academy, and Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI—were cited for providing frameworks for AI-integrated teaching, spanning mathematics to literature. 

The speaker advocated for teacher training in AI through courses available on platforms like Coursera. Emphasizing the need for educators to familiarize themselves with AI, she recommended various AI tools for lesson planning, including Pictory, InvideoAI, Tome, SlideAI, Gamma, Eduaideai, Twee, Magicschool.Ai, Alayna.Ai, Preplexity, Curipod, and autoclassmate. Positioning AI as an opportunity that democratizes technology, she highlighted its potential for personalized teaching and learning, heralding a transformative shift in education.

Recorded Sessions

Thank you for visiting! I trust you found this information valuable and insightful.

Gian Course E- Literature- Learning Outcome

Electronic Literature and Artificial Intelligence (AI): Theory and Practice of Digital Storytelling

Recently I attended an Online course on the Gian platform on ‘Electronic Literature and Artificial Intelligence (AI): Theory and Practice of Digital Storytelling’ hosted by Prof. M. Rizwan Khan, The Department of English Aligarh University, Aligrah, U.P. in a virtual mode. This blog deals with my learning out of attending this interesting course.

What is Gian?

Gian is Global Initiative of Academic Networks. It is Govt. of India’s approved new program in Higher Education aimed at tapping the talent pool of scientists and entrepreneurs, internationally to encourage their engagement with the institutes of Higher Education in India so as to augment the country's existing academic resources, accelerate the pace of quality reform, and elevate India's scientific and technological capacity to global excellence. [Visit GIAN website]

The basic knowledge I had about Digital Humanities and Electronic Literature.

The title, Digital Humanities contains two terms- digital and hiumanitites.it combines traditional and modern modes of critical understanding. Humanities in its traditional Avatar consists of various text-based disciplines which study classics, literature, philosophy, performing arts, media and communication and cultural studies. Digital Humanities is a new variant which uses informational Technology as a method of research in traditional human disciplines like literature and the performing arts.

Digitalising Humanities, Literature is always helpful for easy and fast reading and references along with digitizing text increases its availability. We know how tiring it is to go to the library and search for books. Ctrl F works as a magic wand to easily take the reference of what we want in a particular book if it's digitalised.

Today technology is also able to create literature, generate literature which has emerged as ‘generative Literature’.

Electronic Literature

There is no specific definition of E- Literature. Basically, Pdfs, Written and posted can not be considered E- literature. Electronic literature is coded literature.

N. Katherine Hayles defines electronic literature as "'digital born' (..) and (usually) meant to be read on a computer", clarifying that this does not include e-books and digitized print literature. A definition offered by the Electronic literature Organization (ELO) states electronic literature "refers to works with an important literary aspect that takes advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer".

This can include hypertext fiction, animated poetry (often called kinetic poetry) and other forms of digital poetry, literary chatbots, computer-generated narratives or poetry, art installations with significant literary aspects, interactive fiction and literary uses of social media.

E- literature has no specific author, it is collaborative (Reading + Writing). A reader itself can select what he/ she wants to read and after which chapter what to read. There is no continuation. Every reader forms his/ her own story. It’s a non- sequential reading, pioneer less narratology, multilinear, plotless, anti- novel, lack of particular meaning and interpretations keep on changing.

Digital humanities in a way saves our time of re- reading and helps us to come to our conclusion.

As an e- literature I have read Sultana’s Dream by Aphra Shafiq.

Further this blog will deal with blogger’s learning outcome from the online Gian course.

Day- 1

Lecture 1: Prof. Paola Carbone [Foreign faculty, Department of Humanities IULM University, Milan]- about ‘Definition of E-Literature

E-Lit was founded by the Electronic Literature Organization in 1999.

Elit- written with a digital device and need a digital device to be read/experienced.

Joseph Tabbi on Electronic Literature "an emerging cultural form" (2007). And here are various FOUR volumes of E- Lit: Electronic Literature Collections

Digital Literature	Electronic  Literature
Digitized text	Requires digital computation
Includes printed literature	Verbal- audio- visual works which cannot be turned into printed books.
E,g,: online books, ebooks, digital hypertext	E.g: hypertext fiction, locative narratives, codework, generative art, cyber literature etc

Examples of E-Literature is ‘Love Letter’ (1952) by Chtistopher Strachey. One can generate a love letter, E- Love letter.

Techno-logique is the logical process determined by a technology.

Writing in a digital environment means designing narrative and reading processes. That is a network of possible readings and a human–machine interaction mediated by machine code

(Images are hyperlinked)

Digital writing: a non-linear type of writing.

Precursors- its roots in experimentalist writing and the work of European vanguards such as Laurence Sterne, Stephane Mallarmé, Tristan Tzara, T.S. Eliot, William Burroughs, Julio Cortazar, Italo Calvino, George Perec, and Marc Saporta, as well as OULIPO, Futurism, and Dadaism.

Formal ideas crucial to digital communication, such as abandonment of linearity, narrative fragmentation, montage, and multimedia convergence.

(Images are hyperlinked)

Philippe Bootz:

[In eLit it] is not only (or no longer) the product of a process that is represented but the process itself.

Process

• The process is written in the algorithm.
• The poetics of the work is enshrined in the
• algorithm
• The human-machine interaction defined by
• the process is called cyber-feedback-loop

Rosemarie Waldrop:

“We do not usually see words, we read them, which is to say we look through them at their significance, their contents. Concrete poetry is first of all a revolt against this transparency of the word (…). Concrete poetry makes the sound and shape of words its explicit field of investigation (…). Further, it stresses the visual side which is neglected even in the ‘sound and sense’ awareness of ordinary poetry

Concrete Poetry- “the new poem is simple and can be perceived visually as a whole as well as in its parts. It becomes an object to be both seen and used; an object containing thought but made concrete through play-activity,

Text rain- https://youtu.be/f_u3sSffS78

Lecture 2: Prof. Mohd. Rizwan Khan [Host Faculty, Department of English Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. U.P., India] - ‘Digital Humanities’.

What is Digital Humanities?

Use of Digital tools in the analysis of language, literature, visual and performing arts. Use of computer- related technologies in analysis, research, production and publication.

First work relating DH in the 1940s by Father Busa Index Thomisticus.

DH involves collaborative, transdisciplinary and computationally engaged research, teaching and publishing.

Features- Accessibility, Malleability and Interdisciplinary.

Two waves of Digital Humanities. First wave work was quantitative; second wave work is qualitative, interpretive, experimental, emotive, generative in character.

What Is Digital Humanities and What’s It Doing in English Departments? By Matthew G. Kirschenbaum

Examples:

Mrs. Dalloway: London as a Networked City.

Day-2

Lecture 3: Prof. Paola Carbone [Foreign faculty, Department of Humanities IULM University, Milan] on Definition of Digital Storytelling: Difference between 'telling a story' and 'creating storytelling

“Storytelling” is considered the realm of those who work in communication. For them rhetoric, for example, does not seem to have anything to do with literature. Not even narratology! It is not unusual to hear 'communicators' take on the authorship of things already said by, for example, Aristotle.

Digital Storytelling

Storytelling does not mean 'telling stories', it is more like “talking through stories”

“Telling a story” does not mean to create a story. Storytelling consists in 'creating' representations' (textual, visual, acoustic, perceptive) made in order to move, to touch, and to establish a relationship with the audience.

Storytelling is the shaping of a reality in order to connect people/readership to it, shaping an experience for the audience.

eLIT is made of process + experience

Digital + storytelling = digital media and narration

Narration/Literature: content + form + medium

Digital Media: different technologies + reading/writing surfaces/interfaces + interaction

Create emotions in the audience!

Stories are used to inspire, to persuade.

The one who writes for a digital environment is an experience designer

Types of stories:

Sequential: the different dramaturgical lines of the story follow each other without overlapping

Parallel: the different dramaturgical lines of the story run side by side without ever clashing in the different platforms

Simultaneous: multiple lines begin and end by sharing the same portion of the story across multiple media

Non-linear: storylines are fragmented and reconstructed in deliberately disjointed sequences

Example of Digital stories:

• Stories on Instagram
• Short videos used both for advertisements (Patagonia) or to activate social campaigns [Little lobbyst]
• Cultural communication [Library of the congress using story maps; The PALABRA Archive from the Hispanic Reading Room]
• VR/metaverses: characters, environments, themes, coherent creative and narrative universes, conflicts, identification and personification >> metaverses are creative universes to build

Case Study:

• Telling stories of victims or cases through the website of the organization for redemption, change and hope
• Little Lobbyists- Little Lobbyists seek to protect and expand the rights of children who have complex medical needs and disabilities through advocacy, education, and outreach.
• Scott Harrison, charity: water
• Every Australian Counts

Definition of Hypertext as a Topographic form of writing; Peculiarities of a Non-Linear writing; Flowcharts; Hypertext; Flowcharts and Hyperlinks.

While writing digital media, we have to keep in mind the process of reading.

A book is organized linearly and hierarchically (in chapters; you read one page after the other); a digital textuality is not! Instead of linearity we talk about non-linear storytelling, even if the reading process is sequential (that is one Lexia after the other). This form of writing is called “hypertext”. The term was coined in 1965 by Ted Nelson

"non-sequential writing -- text that branches and allows choices to the reader, best read at an interactive screen. As popularly conceived, this is a series of text chunks connected by links which offer the reader different pathways"

Non-sequential reading

(user chooses where to start and how to continue browsing)

No fixed reading time

(the reading ends when the user is satisfied)

Links can be internal

(within the same website)

or external (to other websites)

The main feature that distinguishes hypertext from other literary works is, what Jay Bolter calls, the space of writing.

Michael Joyce, Of two Minds, states:

“Electronic writing is both a visual and verbal description”, says Bolter, “not the writing of a place, but rather a writing with places, spatially realized topics […] signs and structures on the computer screen that have no easy equivalent in speech.” For Bolter, hypertext’s “electronic symbols […] seem to be an extension of a network of ideas in the mind itself.”

Visit my detailed blog on HYPERTEXT: it consists of peculiarities of non-linear writing; flowcharts with examples

Lecture 4: Prof. Mohd. Rizwan Khan [Host Faculty, Department of English Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh. U.P., India] on AI and Employability

Career opportunity in AI is directly proportional to Advancement. Employability skills can be defined as the Transferable skills needed by an individual to make them employable. Communication and interpersonal problem solving skills, organizational skills, team working etc.

What is AI?

Artificial intelligence is a field that combines computer science and robust datasets to enable problem solving, a human human cognitive capabilities such as reasoning, recognizing patterns, categorizing objects and similar, identify images and so on, it's an interdisciplinary enterprise.

How does the AI system work?

Machine learning algorithms are the heart of AI.

It is a structured training set carefully curated by humans.

AI is widespread. It is an integral part of everyday life and culture Smart home, devices, E-mail filtering, product recommendation, etc. marketing and e-commerce, Healthcare, Automotive hiring and education.

AI will lead to a decline in jobs for humans but it is an emerging discipline with the new demand in the workforce. Challenges in the AI implementation is the need for more AI skills and training. We need to invest more in AI courses. This discipline prefers a dynamic job profile that requires interdisciplinary knowledge and has a Digital participation.

AI Is to support human work instead of the replacement. human beings and machines need to work together in partnership, the triangle of Technology, human and Organization. human creativity, nonlinear thinking, common sense, the ability to make decisions, emotional intelligence and communicative and special abilities cannot be replaced.

AI in the future will be integrated into all disciplines including music, literature, etc. humanities discipline not only Engineering courses. Which will increase the scope of employability.

Gian Course E- Literature- Learning Outcome (Part-2). Part 2 consists the brief about lectures of Day 3,4 and 5. CLICK HERE TO READ

I hope this blog is useful. Thanks for visiting.