Events

Current and Upcoming

Book Talk With David Hajdu

February 17, 2025
4:30 PM - 6:15 PM
America/New_York
Pulitzer Hall, 2950 Broadway, New York, NY 10027 The Brown Institute

What does it mean to be human in a world where machines, too, can be artists? The Uncanny Muse explores the history of automation in the arts and delves into one of the most momentous and controversial aspects of AI: artificial creativity. The adoption of technology and machinery has long transformed the world, but as the potential for artificial intelligence expands, David Hajdu examines the new, increasingly urgent questions about technology’s role in culture.

From the life-size mechanical doll that made headlines in Victorian London to the doll’s modern AI–pop star counterpart, Hajdu traces the fascinating, varied ways in which inventors and artists have sought to emulate mental processes and mechanize creative production. For decades, machines and artists have engaged in expressing the human condition—along with the condition of living with machines—through player pianos, broadcasting technology, electric organs, digital movie effects, synthesizers, and motion capture. By communicating and informing human knowledge, the machines have exerted considerable influence on the history of art—and often more influence than humans have been willing to recognize. As Hajdu proclaims: “before machine learning, there was machine teaching.”

With thoughtful, wide-ranging, and surprising turns from Berry Gordy and George Harrison to Andy Warhol and Stevie Wonder, David Hajdu takes a novel and contrarian approach: he sees how machines through the ages have enabled creativity, not stifled it—and The Uncanny Muse sees no reason why this shouldn’t be the case with AI today.

Register here.

About the Author

David Hajdu is Professor of Journalism at Columbia Journalism School. Currently the staff music critic for The Nation, he served as music critic for The New Republic for 12 years. In a career spanning more than 30 years, he has written for The New YorkerThe Atlantic MonthlyThe New York Times MagazineThe New York Review of BooksHarper's and other publications. Hajdu is the author of eight books of cultural history, criticism and fiction. He is a three-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and four-time winner of the ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for Music Writing. His book Lush Life was named one of "Hundred Best Nonfiction Books of All Time" by The New York Times.

Contact Information

The Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for the Humanities