Interpretation; or, AI’s missing algorithm

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has attracted outsized claims regarding its potential to transform the world as we know it. The loftiest of these claims – the imminent arrival of a technological singularity that will dwarf humanity – exerts an oddly fundamentalist appeal in advanced technological societies facing upheaval and uncertainty, even as it primarily serves the interests of Big Tech in its bid to position itself to lead us all into a future in which its own role looms largest. The resulting inevitability politics reaches the education sector in the call to ‘embrace AI’, burdening educators and parents with problems caused by the pseudoauthority of large language models. My paper begins with the rhetorical power of claims regarding the inevitable triumph of AI and the traction they have gained in the global public sphere with the growth of digital positivism, which conceals human inputs and hermeneutic achievements in data analytics. In the final section, I narrow my gaze to literary studies and the revival of interest in close reading in the face of its legitimation crisis.