Language Machines

Cultural AI and the End of Remainder Humanism

Leif Weatherby

$49.99

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We then advise you accordingly. If the time taken to get any book is too long for you, you can let us know and we will cancel or adjust your order, and refund as required.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

University of Minnesota Press
24 June 2025

Ethical & social aspects of computing; Artificial intelligence

Series: Posthumanities

How generative AI systems capture a core function of language

Looking at the emergence of generative AI, Language Machines presents a new theory of meaning in language and computation, arguing that humanistic scholarship misconstrues how large language models (LLMs) function. Seeing LLMs as a convergence of computation and language, Leif Weatherby contends that AI does not simulate cognition, as widely believed, but rather creates culture. This evolution in language, he finds, is one that we are ill-prepared to evaluate, as what he terms ""remainder humanism"" counterproductively divides the human from the machine without drawing on established theories of representation that include both.

To determine the consequences of using AI for language generation, Weatherby reads linguistic theory in conjunction with the algorithmic architecture of LLMs. He finds that generative AI captures the ways in which language is at first complex, cultural, and poetic, and only later referential, functional, and cognitive. This process is the semiotic hinge on which an emergent AI culture depends. Weatherby calls for a ""general poetics"" of computational cultural forms under the formal conditions of the algorithmic reproducibility of language.

Locating the output of LLMs on a spectrum from poetry to ideology, Language Machines concludes that literary theory must be the backbone of a new rhetorical training for our linguistic-computational culture.

By: Leif Weatherby
Imprint: University of Minnesota Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 13mm
Weight: 312g
ISBN: 9781517919320
ISBN 10: 1517919320
Series: Posthumanities
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 24 June 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Further / Higher Education , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Leif Weatherby is associate professor of German and founding director of the Digital Theory Lab at New York University. He is author of Transplanting the Metaphysical Organ: German Romanticism between Leibniz and Marx.

Reviews for Language Machines: Cultural AI and the End of Remainder Humanism

""Language Machines takes the success of generative AI as an opportunity to rethink fundamental questions about the relationship of language to referentiality and of culture to cognition. Leif Weatherby confronts these questions boldly and argues persuasively that avoiding them leads to what he calls ‘remainder humanism’-a defensive insistence on a human essence defined as the shrinking negative space left by technology.""-Ted Underwood, author of Distant Horizons: Digital Evidence and Literary Change ""Leif Weatherby reveals a rift in the humanities, torn open by the cultural technology of generative AI: we have no theory for what AI is doing to language. Meticulously mining structuralism, computation, poetics, and labor history, he constructs much-needed theory to account for the matrix of culture and language in which AI is embedded-and which it increasingly now creates.""-Annette Vee, author of Coding Literacy: How Computer Programming Is Changing Writing