Our Tech, AI and Society Dialogues 

Anthropos Technicus 
(ἄνθρωπος τεχνικός) 

 

Event Details

Date: Thursday, March 19, 2026
Hours: 6:30 to 8:30 PM (Montréal Time)
Location: McGill Downtown Campus, MacDonald Engineering Building, room 279. See map here. 
Format: In-Person in Montréal (with Dr. Nina Beguš joining us via Zoom)

This event is open to the public. Please scroll down to secure your seat.

Series Description 

This series will delve into the ethical and societal implications of artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies that call into question conventional distinctions between human beings and machines. By exploring thought-provoking books and films, we aim to foster engaging discussions and critical thought about the impact of technology on our lives. Each session will focus on a specific work, using it as a springboard to discuss contemporary issues and concerns. 

Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI

A conversation with Dr. Nina Beguš about her latest book

This session will be held primarily in English, with the room discussion in person and Dr. Beguš participating live via Zoom. Questions are welcome in English or French (we will translate questions to her as needed during the session).

Overview: 

Let us discuss language, fiction, and the cultural aspects of AI.

In Artificial Humanities, Nina Beguš invites us to explore the cultural and linguistic architectures that underpin AI's development: roots that stretch far beyond hardware and software into narrative traditions.

While reflections like those in L’humanité artificielle probe the ontological transformation unfolding between humans and machines, "What new hybrid being emerges, and who is reborn?" This dialogue turns toward a complementary dimension: the narrative inheritance and symbolic structures that made such transformations conceivable in the first place.

Artificial intelligence did not begin with silicon alone. It began with ideas and narratives.

Long before large language models, Western culture imagined artificial beings who speak, imitate, seduce, assist, and unsettle the human. From the Pygmalion myth to the Turing Test, intelligence has been framed through language performance, and humanity through the ability to pass as one of us.

Artificial Humanities explores this inheritance.

Rather than asking what machines are becoming, it asks, "What narratives shaped the very idea that machines must become human-like in order to count as intelligent?”

If AI systems now co-produce meaning with us, then the disciplines that study meaning, like literature, philosophy, linguistics, and cultural history, are necessary for us to better understand and design AI models.

This session invites us to examine AI not only as a new kind of “Other” but also as a continuation of older symbolic structures and to consider what it might mean to consciously participate in shaping them.

Discussion Points

• AI as cultural inheritance
  How have myths, literary tropes, and fictional archetypes shaped the goals and metrics of artificial intelligence?
• Language as epistemic authority
  Why has linguistic fluency become the dominant proxy for intelligence? What assumptions does this carry?
• Designing beyond imitation
  What would it mean to move from “AI that imitates humans” toward systems that explore distinctly machinic capacities?
• Authorship and co-creation
  How do large language models challenge long-standing concepts of originality, interpretation, and creative agency?

• Humanities upstream
  What role might interpretive disciplines play not after deployment, but during the conceptual and architectural phases of AI development?

These questions will guide our conversation and encourage critical reflection on how AI reshapes the conditions of being human.

Recommended Materials

• Primary text (optional but encouraged):
  Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI by Nina Beguš.
  Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2025.

The book is available in multiple formats and locations:

• Open access (free) online: Read or download it via the University of Michigan Press link: https://press.umich.edu/Books/A/Artificial-Humanities3.
• Amazon Kindle (free).
• Purchase options: Available for purchase at your favorite online outlet.

The book has received recognition, including being named a 2025 Artificiality Book Award winner, and there are discussions, reviews, and a book chat video available online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yLMIPpHwqc 

While we encourage participants to engage with these materials, no prior reading is required—come as you are. The dialecticians will offer a short framing presentation before opening the floor to discussion. A private recording (for internal note-taking only) may be made; it will not be shared publicly.

Special Note: We encourage our authors and readers to engage with the text
Dr. Beguš will send a handwritten note to participants who have purchased a copy and would like it signed. Please have proof of purchase available. Nabil will coordinate this activity.

Why Attend?

• To rethink AI beyond hype and fear.
  Move past purely technical or dystopian narratives and explore AI through the lens of language and narrative.

• To gain a richer language for our moment.
  Deepen the philosophical and cultural dimensions of our Anthropos Technicus series and develop concepts and metaphors that can help you articulate what feels “new” about today’s technologies in your own practice, classroom, or organization.

• To connect human experience and technological change.
  Reflect on how AI intersects with our lived realities: education, work, creativity, care, and vulnerability, and expand the dialogue between engineering, philosophy, and the humanities.

• To open a space for dialogue.
  Join a structured yet informal conversation about the symbolic foundations of AI, where questions, doubts, and disagreements are welcome.
  

Join us on March 19 to explore these ideas together!

This session is open to all!

 

Our Dialecticians:

Dr. Nina Beguš

Nina Beguš is a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society. She leads the Artificial Humanities research group, and two funded projects on AI, narration, and culture. Her book, Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI (2025), explores how literature, history, and art can deepen our understanding of artificial intelligence and its development. She is the editor of the forthcoming volume First Encounters with AI: Writers on Writing (2026), featuring essays by professional writers. Her recent papers focus on synthetic imaginary and narratology (Experimental Narratives, 2024) as well as the literary exploration of latent spaces (Latent Spacecraft, 2026). She serves on The Public Interest Corpus and MLA Task Forces on AI and collaborates with the tech industry on educational and policy approaches to AI.

Dr. Sue Laver  

Inaugural director of the McGill Writing Centre and a lecturer for many years in McGill’s Department of English, Sue is a Frankenstein aficionado. Her interest in Frankenstein began when she first watched her now longstanding favourite “Frankensteinian” film Blade Runner upon its theatrical release in 1982. Through various courses on the gothic genre and its science fiction spinoffs, Sue has guided hundreds of students through Frankenstein’s philosophical complexities and its afterlife in popular culture, with emphasis on the metaphysical and ethical status of the Monster and its technological descendants. 

Mr. Nabil Beitinjaneh

Business Strategist and AI/ML/Analytics Expert. Faculty Lecturer at the McGill School of Continuing Studies, focused on adult learners who want to upskill, guiding learners on their journey to become AI-savvy change-makers. Nabil is engaged in leadership, strategy, and organizational development through events, training, and his service with not-for-profit organizations. He is an ambassador for TechAide which supports Centraide of Greater Montreal, and the president of Le centre culturel syrien. He is also on the leadership team of McCAIS, the SCS' Faculty Advancement Board, and the MMA Advisory Council.

Shape the Conversation
Anthropos Technicus, Our Tech, AI and Society Dialogues invites experts and enthusiasts to serve as dialecticians. Lead a session, guiding a discussion on a book or topic that explores technology's human impact. To propose a topic or learn more, reach out to Sue or Nabil at the event.

A shared resources site for Anthropos Technicus readings and other resources has been set up on the Discord app at https://discord.gg/huCCw5CR3C. Please join us!!
 

This event is a collaboration between the McGill School of Continuing Studies, the McGill Computational and Data Systems Institute, and the McGill Collaborative for AI & Society.