Ink & Electricity: “When Grammar Wasn’t Enough: Machine Storytelling in the 1960s and 1970s”

Professor Dennis Yi Tenen will deliver the 2026 Ink & Electricity lecture, “When Grammar Wasn’t Enough: Machine Storytelling in the 1960s and 1970s.” Tenen brings a literary perspective to the discussion of machine intelligence, tracing the path from early grammar-based story generators to their eventual convergence with frame-based approaches. This convergence marked the historical origins of automated machine storytelling that anyone would want to read or listen to; it changed machine-generated nonsense, “idiot poetry,” into machine-generated narrative.

The lecture will be held Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2026, from 6 to 7 p.m. in the Great Hall Auditorium. Refreshments will be available starting at 5:30 p.m. Faculty are encouraged to invite their students. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Tenen is professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia University, where he also directs the Narrative Intelligence Lab. His books include “Plain Text: The Poetics of Computation” (Stanford University Press, 2017), “Literary Theory for Robots” (W.W. Norton, 2024), and “Author Function: A Literary History of Artificial Intelligence,” which is under contract with University of Chicago Press. Tenen is a longtime affiliate of Columbia’s Data Science Institute and was formerly an engineer in Microsoft’s Windows group and a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. His code runs on personal computers worldwide.

An interview with Tenen on “Urgent Futures” offers a preview of his ideas about AI’s hidden literary history.

The Ink & Electricity lecture series is supported by the Wayne D. McMurray endowed chair in the humanities. Its goal is to advance liberal learning in the digital age. Past speakers include Priya Joshi, Lisa Gitelman, Jonathan Rose, Pat Crain, and Ellen Gruber Garvey. Questions may be directed to Professor Kristin Bluemel, event organizer and the Wayne D. McMurray endowed chair.