The Romance of Technology: The Human Desire for Intimacy With and Through Machines

This event is a featured part of the Constructed Agents Symposium.

Though large language models are new, the urge for instantaneous, disembodied connection is not. The fictionalized diary - intimate, feminine, unfolding in real time - originated in the eighteenth century and invented a style that continues to inform chatbot communication in the present day. In this talk, I explore the history of the fictionalized diary form and a more recent example: "Go Ask Alice," a novel which claims to be the “actual diary of a 15-year-old drug user” but was really written by Mormon mom Beatrice Sparks. What I find is a public fantasy masquerading as private feelings: a longstanding art of womanhood. It’s a history that rarely figures into discussions of AI but is essential for understanding how humans interact with chatbots – and why we’re so often left wanting more.

Megan Ward is a professor in the School of Writing, Literature, and Film at Oregon State University, where she also serves as Director of the Center for the Humanities and the Center for Material Cultures Research in Archaeology, Art, and Indigenous Studies. A specialist in British literature and the history of the novel, her research examines how Victorian realism continues to shape culture — including the development of artificial intelligence. She is the author of "Seeming Human: Victorian Realist Characters and Artificial Intelligence" (Ohio State UP, 2018) and is currently completing "Chatbots in Love," a book of essays exploring how human desires for intimacy have driven — and limited — the creation of AI. Her scholarship has appeared in "New Literary History, AI Narratives, and The Routledge Guide to Politics and Literature," and she has written for general audiences in "The Atlantic", "Wired", "The Washington Post", and the "Los Angeles Review of Books." She holds a B.A. from Lawrence University, an M.Phil. from Oxford University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Rutgers University.

This lecture recording can be found on the Available Recordings page approximately two business days after the event and will remain accessible for three weeks.