AI and Ada

This book was written by a human, a curious, breezily autobiographical human, who has been involved for many decades in the long struggle of computer language processing and machine translation. He presents the surprise-his as much as anyone's-of recent Chat-GPT-level AI's sudden bursting onto not just the verbal but the literary scene. He shows it can now translate Pushkin almost as literally as Nabokov could or as artistically as other human translators. It can understand a Nabokov poem as well as most critics, and write an imitation of it under the authorial human's own highly individual autobiographical prompts. Curiouser and curiouser, and kudos to MS, VN, and AI. This blurb was written by a human, BB, I don't know why they needed me. - Brian Boyd, University Distinguished Professor Emeritus, University of Auckland, New Zealand; Author of Nabokov's Ada: The Place of Consciousness

What a fun read! A whimsical autobiographical journey through the history of machine translation from the first row seat of someone who has been there all along, with lots of musings about the challenges of translating literature-from using punch cards to ChatGPT. - Philipp Koehn, Professor at the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA. Author of Neural Machine Translation

Mark Seligman offers a thoughtful and nuanced exploration of the intersections between AI, translation, and literary creativity. AI and Ada is a welcome and timely contribution to the conversation about how machines interact with human language. It challenges assumptions, expands possibilities, and reminds us that artistry remains a deeply human aspiration even in an AI-driven world. - Renato Beninatto, Chairman of the Board, Nimdzi Insights; Editor of the periodical Multilingual Computing

An engaging read, this chapter brilliantly weaves literary analysis, particularly of Nabokov, with a deep dive into artificial intelligence. The author's use of classic translation debates and creative examples effectively illustrates that today's AI has a surprising capacity for "understanding" and artistic generation, sparking fascinating reflections on the intersection of technology and art. -Mike Dillinger, PhD, former president of the Association for Machine Translation for the Americas, and manager, Taxonomy Team and Machine Translation. Co-authored with Mark Seligman many papers on the Converser for Healthcare speech translation prototype.