nina Begus

Hello!

My name is Nina Beguš and I'm a researcher and lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley.

Books

• My book Artificial Humanities: A Fictional Perspective on Language in AI (University of Michigan Press, 2025) is available under open access here.
  Preorder from the press with a 30% discount code UMWEB30 or on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. UK orders via Liverpool UP, German here; here; here; and here.
  Chinese translation to follow with East China Normal University Press.
  
  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.
  HigherEd talk in the Language Matters! series.

• I edited and wrote an introduction to a volume of essays by professional writers on AI's entrance into writing and reading, titled First Encounters with AI, forthcoming in a public-facing book series Writers on Writing with the University of Michigan Press. Preorder from the press or Barnes & Noble for the book to ship on in October 2026.
  
  This book asks how has the entry of AI into writing and reading changed these practices. Ranging from personal meditations to critical provocations, from philosophical investigations to playful experiments, the essays reveal how writing tools shape writing itself—and what is at stake when those tools begin to imitate us.
  
  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.

• I am co-writing a book with Eoin Brodie on planetary information flows, grounded in thermodynamics and the Earth system science approach.

• My next book 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.

Research Groups

• I lead the Artificial Humanities Group where we focus on the intersection of humanities and AI across three research areas: cultural imaginary, writing creativity, and philosophy of science and technology.
  Do not hesitate to reach out if you would like to join the research group or are curious about our work. We'll start with our Slack channel and go from there.

• In 2025-27, I'm leading a ''NarrAItion: Bridging Humanities and AI'' project in collaboration with the University of Bergen's Center for Digital Narrative, funded by Peder Sather Center. 

• During this time, we were also awarded a UC Berkeley-France Fund grant for ''The Latent Spaces of Culture,'' together with Sorbonne Nouvelle University. I'm also a part of a France-UC Berkeley funded research group on totalitarianism and mathematics in the 20th century.

• During 2025-31, I'm a part of the Center for Contemporary Cultures of Text at Aarhus University, for which we have been awarded the Danish National Foundation Grant.

• At UC Berkeley, I'm affiliated with the Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society (CSTMS), Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (IEEES), and Berkeley Institute of Data Science (BIDS). I collaborate with Brodie's group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

• I am also an affiliate of the University of Washington's Slavic Department and of Antikythera, the Berggruen Institute think tank on planetary computation. 

Industry Collaborations
I am the founder of InterpretAI, a consulting and product development company with a focus on understanding and interpretability of AI.
Previously, as a Senior Researcher at the Berggruen Institute and ToftH, I helped to implement a novel method of process-based consulting for startups and big tech companies.

In 2024, 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.
In 2025, I co-organized the Schmidt Sciences convening on main research questions in AI, hosted at UC Berkeley.
In 2026, I am bringing the artificial humanities approach to OpenAI's education forum.