Nina BeguS

Hello!

My name is Nina Beguš and I'm a researcher and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. I'm affiliated with the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society (CSTMS) and Berkeley Institute of Data Science (BIDS).

I lead the Artificial Humanities Group where we focus on the intersection of humanities and AI across three research areas: cultural imaginary and social bias, narratology and writing creativity, and philosophy of science and technology.

I am a part of the Center for Contemporary Cultures of Text at Aarhus University, for which we have been awarded the Danish National Foundation Grant. I serve on the MLA Task Force group on world languages and generative AI.

Since 2020, I have collaborated with Brodie's group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Our work is centered around a planetary perspective on information transfer, grounded in thermodynamics via the Earth system science approach.

Books

• My first book, titled Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI (preorder on Amazon or Barnes & Noble), will be published in 2025 by the University of Michigan Press, with Chinese and Slovenian translations to follow.
  The book presents my research program on how the study of fiction and the humanities can contribute to the development of technologies. It focuses on the history and future of AI-based language technologies - ranging from chatbots, virtual assistants, social robots, to neurotech and large language models - and draws parallels with both canonical and lesser-known science fiction texts and films.
  
  A summary and recording of my recent talk on AI and fiction can be found on the BIDS website and YouTube.

• My second book, in initial stages, lies at the intersection of bioethics and fiction.
  An example of this research is my essay titled 'The Identity Problem' in Prenatal Testing, which won the Voices in Bioethics award.

• I am editing a volume of essays by professional writers on how the entry of AI into this space has changed reading and writing, titled First Encounters with AI: Writers on Writing.
  The contributing authors are Hannes Bajohr, Qiufan Chen, Ted Chiang, Joseph Dumit, Gerardo Con Diaz, Jasmin B. Frelih, Annelyse Gelman, Katy Ilonka Gero, Sheila Heti, Ken Liu, Nicholas Nardini, Allison Parrish, Alex Saum-Pascual, Sasha Stiles, Iain S. Thomas, and James Yu.

Consulting

I am the founder of InterpretAI, a consulting and product development company with a focus on understanding and interpretability of AI.

I organized a symposium on Understanding AI through UC Berkeley's Social Science Matrix, aimed at bringing together research on interpretability from academia, industry, and think tanks.  

Previously, as a Senior Researcher at the Berggruen Institute and ToftH, I helped to implement a novel method of process-based consulting for startups (CSM) and big tech companies (Google, Meta, Microsoft).

Residential Life

I've been involved in collegiate residential life since 2013, first as a Graduate Commons community advisor and then as a resident tutor in Mather House. I currently live in Bowles Hall, the oldest residential college in the U.S. (est. 1928).

Connect

I update this site regularly and would be happy to connect via email or social media.
Feel free to contact me through Društvo VTIS, where I serve as a mentor for Slovenians educated abroad.