Crafting connection: How human narrative matters more than ever in the age of Artificial Intelligence

Plus an interview with UK academic on the importance of stories

In the UK, university institutions are starting conversations of the importance of the humanities, when the world is geared towards technological advances; “The wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to the dignity of man", continuing with “one can argue – and I shall in fact argue – that the humanities occupy a crucial and indeed pivotal place in the educational household of humankind.” (Dallmayr, F, 2013). Of course this doesn’t just extend to academia, but economics, politics, sociology, health and wellbeing. The development of critical thinking and the understanding of humans - whether that be behaviour, connection, insight or curiosity – is vital for the development of technology. Who builds an AI chatbot to deal with human concern if there isn’t a human behind it to understand empathy?

The media’s discourse around AI, for example the article The AI reckoning is coming, it’s just a matter of timing, holds it to a higher regard than human produced content due to profitability and we are forced into this positionality that undervalues creatives and essentially, the creative arts and institutions that promote them. This has already had a knock-on effect on UK universities.

An Interview on the importance of storytelling from an academic perspective

“The BA (Hons) English at Birmingham Newman University offers an engaging and contemporary exploration of literature, language and culture.” (Birmingham Newman University) - this course emphasises the importance of narrative and I was lucky enough to sit down with Dr Cousins from Birmingham Newman University to discuss the importance of storytelling and why the humanities are so important.

What is one literary concept that you think everyone should at least grasp the concept of?

That stories are constructed – all stories, whether its fiction, like literature, or factual like the news have been constructed in some way to fit ideology. Even the humanities are constructed by the way we learn about them, like history is dictated by ideology, literature is formed by ideas, and news stories are fixed by ideology. Everyone should know that everything is manipulated by preconceived ideas that we have.

The other thing is that stories aren’t available for everyone to tell. There’s always a silence of certain voices that don’t fit whatever narrative that is trying to be told.   

What was the last book or film or TV show or any sort of media and literary product that you consumed that made you feel connected to something in some way? And can you describe that feeling?

Salt Lick by Lulu Allison.

It was a book set partly in a kind of near future and there's another storyline that was set in as like a more distant future, but still within the lifetimes of the characters. So it's more or less the same characters, but just sort of younger and older.

It is a climate crisis novel to some extent.

So the basis is that in the nearer future, they're having to pull back all the resources because, you know, with the climate emergency getting worse and flooding on the edges of the UK and things. So everybody's been pulled back into cities. There are some communities then in the more distant future that still try to survive in the more outlying areas, but they don't have any kind of state support. There was a dual narrative with a slightly younger woman was a bit more positive if you like communal living alongside the other narrative.

And why do you think it connected with you so much?

I think that was a book that I felt most emotionally attached to, almost emotionally perturbed after it. I think it particularly goes along and you sort of realise the circumstances that are not of his making and other complicated things, which also, I thought was really interesting. So as well as sort of like the animal studies thing. Part of the book is like narrated by other cows that have been let loose as they sort of like, and they can't, so that was sort of like interesting as well. So it had a more than human kind of angle to it, but it also looked at, this future society, there are some of the societies have turned into what they call white towns, which are, as you imagine. They are like, you know, white supremacist communities. And so there's partly a narrative as well about this sort of young man who's escaped from one of these because he is gay - there's a lot of positive stories in one sense, but also a lot of that negativity. And then that story of that man, I think for me, was that young person and his life really came to nothing, just stuck in this room. And quite ironically, the one thing it is allowed is books because nobody has paper anymore. So all these books are just mouldering.

It has that reality and that normality. And I think if you go back to the way that idea we're talking about stories being constructed, those kind of heroic narratives about climate crisis are not doing us any favours, because they are making people feel quite complacent. So even if you feel like you're not necessarily a climate denier, but you're constantly being told that however bad it gets, humanity is going to always overcome because that's what heroic narratives are really about, or the contemporary ones. I think the Greeks were perhaps less into those. Their heroic narratives were perhaps a different kind of heroic. I think, for me, this one had a more hard-hitting end in a sense, because what it showed you was the way that society was going to react as resources became scarcer and more parts of the country were sort of like less viable in terms of supporting a population. And of course, the way that as we know, the whole of society then starts to become quite sort of very controlled and constrained, becomes much more sort of overseen by governments.

If you could sum up the importance of the humanities in one word or phrase, what would you choose?

It's possibly in the word itself, is it just about... Humans. Human activity.

The importance of paying attention to the stuff of human cultural activity.

The stuff of human activity as opposed to the physical world and how that works, which would be like your STEM kind of stuff, or I think this is the stuff of human activity which is all the things that humans do. So it's not even psychology, because some social science is about human activity as well.

Obviously, people will say “oh, obviously as a humanities person” but I'd like to think even if I wasn't a humanities person, I would care about it.

Overall, what Dr Cousins is saying highlights how STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) cannot exist fully without the humanities, because human activity will always be defined by social influences rather than technological advances. Cousins’ reading shows the importance of literature to highlight the impact of focusing on STEM without the humanities and the impact it has on human wellbeing and activity. The wellbeing of people can be emphasised through literature like this, not just from a climate perspective but as an example, this is an integral one that Dr Cousins has mentioned however, the idea that stories often silence voices that need to be heard is an important statement when looking into mindfulness and wellbeing, as silence is a way of enabling oppression, which in turn, becomes unhealthy for those being oppressed.