Since the advent of computers, society has fantasized about conversing with machines. In Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture
(University of Chicago Press, 2026), Dr. Xiaochang Li shows readers how
that dream both fueled the demand for data and set the stage for
today’s generative AI.
With original research and clear
explanations, Dr. Li elucidates the origins of what’s
known as natural language processing (NLP) and the heated
twentieth-century debates between computer scientists, linguists, and
communication engineers that shaped today’s technology. Starting with
early devices that recorded, analyzed, and attempted to interpret human
speech, she demonstrates
how computer speech recognition, particularly efforts led by Bell Labs
and IBM, advanced technology by deemphasizing linguistic meaning in
favor of statistical prediction. In other words, researchers gradually
abandoned systems that sought to understand human language, opting
instead for work-arounds
that simply predicted patterns in speech and text data. That solution
became incredibly and surprisingly adaptable. As Dr. Li reveals,
transforming linguistic questions into engineering ones ushered in the
routine operation of search engines, spam filters, and the varied
content sorting and recommendation mechanisms that regulate the access,
circulation, and legitimacy of information across every platform. But
this has all come at the cost of forever requiring copious and
ever-growing amounts of new data.
At its core, Divination Engines
illuminates how the artifacts of human communication—speech, text, and
images—have become both the fodder for and products of computers. This
connection between communication and computation, Li shows, has given
rise to data-driven analytics, machine learning, and today’s algorithmic
culture.
This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book
focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty
negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative
analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find
Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.
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