Leif Weatherby, author of "Language Machines," in conversation with Mel Andrews about AI
Oct 8th 2026
Events @ Labyrinth Books
Thurs 10/8 @ 6:00PM
Labyrinth Books, 122 Nassau Street
Join us for a conversation between Leif Weatherby, founding director of the Digital Theory Lab at New York University and author of the book Language Machines: Cultural AI and the End of Remainder Humanism, and Mel Andrews of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University and the Natural and Artificial Minds Initiative of the Princeton AI Lab.
Leif Weatherby is the founding director of the Digital Theory Lab and Professor of German at NYU. He writes about quantitative culture and is working on a book called The Mismeasure of Mind: Against the Prediction of Everything. He is currently a fellow of the Ideas Workshop of the Open Society Foundations.
Language Machines argues that literary theory is required to make sense of AI today. Rather than cognition or intelligence, large language models are cultural technologies, requiring the same tools for interpretation as other texts. Weatherby turns to structuralist linguistics to explain the poetics -- and ideology -- of this new collaboration between computation and language in the absence of minds.
Mel Andrews researches both the promise (and pitfalls) of incorporating AI into scientific pipelines and the scientific nature of AI deployed in socially-sensitive arenas. Current projects evaluate prospective uses of machine learning in peer review, grant review, and metascientific applications, looking to offer guidance to institutions for science oversight in their development of AI use policies. Andrews earned a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from the University of Cincinnati in 2025. Andrews’ work runs across disciplinary divides, drawing on the scholarly traditions of history and philosophy of science, science and technology studies, and formal methods, alongside firsthand knowledge of practices in both laboratory and computer science. They are jointly affiliated with the Princeton AI Lab’s Natural and Artificial Minds initiative and supported by a Sloan Foundation Metascience and AI grant.
This event is co-sponsored by Princeton University’s Center for Digital Humanities and Labyrinth Books.