Did you know slop was a problem long before AI? This episode of Off Center takes us all the way back to the 18th century as today’s host, Jill Walker Rettberg, discuss the precursors to AI slop with Hazel Wilkinson, Associate Professor of English at the University of Birmingham. Hazel’s specialty is 18th century literature, a time when paper and printing became much cheaper and it became possible to make a living by selling your writing. That also led to a lot of “bad literature”, to the development of copyright laws and to many discussions about the differences between originality and even “genius” and imitative “bad” writing that are surprisingly similar to today’s debates about AI slop and the threat LLMs pose to “good” literature.

Hazel’s previous research has been on book history and printer’s ornaments, and we begin the discussion by looking at an ornament often used in books that weren’t highly appreciated for their literary quality, showing an ape copying out a text by candlelight. Our discussion ranges from Pope’s The Dunciad, which parodies hack writers, to automatons that wrote out poems in carefully automated handwriting, to “it-narratives” told from the perspective of writing instruments like quills and paper that are outraged at the banal writing the humans use them for.

• Hazel Wilkinson’s university profile page: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/staff/profiles/english/wilkinson-hazel

• Compositor is a database of eighteenth century printers’ ornaments. https://compositor.bham.ac.uk/

Following Universal Music Groups' settlement and partnership of Udio, Scott and Jhave sit down to discuss the potential future of music in a world with AI.

Look what just dropped down the chimney: Why, it's the first Off Center Christmas Special Holiday Extravaganza Show! Featuring music, human and otherwise, lessons in Norwegian folklore, Christmas beers reviewed, holiday traditions from various cultures, and merriment of all sorts. Featuring Jill Walker Rettberg, Anne Sigrid Refsum, Nick Montfort, Gabriele de Seta, Drew Keller, Hanne-Rikka Roine, Yagmur Vik, Tegan Pyke, Nadja Heiber, Rafael Pérez y Pérez, Søren Pold and the New Originals, Andreas Opsvik, and Ola Roth Johnsen.