The Machine Is the Message: Writing and Reading in the Age of AI

As part of its Applied Media Workshop on machine learning, D-Crit hosts a conversation about how artificial intelligence is reshaping both the tools of writing and the conditions of reading. Writers today face a shifting landscape: people no longer approach text as something fixed or authoritative, but as something responsive—tailored to individual queries, habits, and desires. How can this new, personalized media ecosystem be engineered in a way that still honors the truth of the archive? What opportunities and risks emerge as AI systems learn to speak in tones designed to earn our trust?

Featuring Cliff Kuang and Maryam Monalisa Gharavi, two thinkers who bring backgrounds in critical and journalistic writing to their work in the tech industry, the panel will examine how voice, design, and interaction shape our relationship to language in an age of intelligent systems. The panel is moderated by Brian Droitcour, co-instructor of the Applied Media Workshop at D-Crit in collaboration with Eric Schwartau.

Thursday, November 20, 6:30 p.m. SVA Graduate Center Theater — Reception to follow.

Presented by MA Design Research, Writing & Criticism (D-Crit) at the School of Visual Arts, a graduate program that explores the contexts and consequences of design. Supported by Google’s Artists + Machine Intelligence (AMI) program.

In collaboration with SVA MFA Interaction Design and SVA MFA Design for Social Innovation.

Speakers:

Cliff Kuang is a Senior Staff Designer at Google, where he works on AI innovation, and is in the company’s top 1% by patents held. He is also the author of User Friendly: How the Hidden Rules of Design Are Changing the Way We Live, Work, and Play, which the New York Times called "a tour de force, an engrossing fusion of scholarly research, professional experience and revelations from intrepid firsthand reporting.”

Maryam Monalisa Gharavi is a poet, artist, translator, and prompt engineer at Zapier, a company that builds and scales AI workflows. She is the author of BIO (Inventory Press, 2018) and founder of Oil Research Group (ORG), a one-woman collective exploring oil, data, and extractive economies.

Brian Droitcour is a critic and director of Outland, a nonprofit supporting initiatives in publishing and education about art, culture, and technology.