Ayad Akhtar

Dec 4, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Ayad Akhtar

December 4, 2024, 10 AM ETForeword By Jeremy StrongIn November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT to the world. Soon after, a software developer asked it to provide instructions for removing a peanut-butter sandwich from a VCR, and to write these instructions in the style of the King James Bible.

Mar 27, 2024 | publicseminar.org | Val Vinokur |Ayad Akhtar |Eboo Patel |Chris Holdaway

The Turk (1789) | Joseph Racknitz / PDM 1.0 DEEDIn May 2020, long before most had heard of large language models, researchers at OpenAI published a paper showing their forthcoming GPT-3 model “writing” poems imitating Wallace Stevens. The following piece got the most attention: “Shadows on the Way”There is a way in the world.

Nov 2, 2023 | pen.org | Ayad Akhtar |Erica Galluscio

Two decades after the momentous Rose Revolution, Georgia has arrived at a pivotal crossroads. One way points toward rights-respecting Europe, a future that the vast majority of Georgian citizens desire; the other path points the way Russia, an authoritarian model favored by Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, and its founder and current éminence grise Bidzina Ivanishvili.

Sep 5, 2023 | publicseminar.org | Ayad Akhtar |Eboo Patel

This past May, Eboo Patel and Ayad Akhtar held the panel “Matter of Offense” at the PEN World Voices Festival. Image Credit: PEN World Voices Festival. From the literary world to college campuses, the relationships between art, identity, appropriation, and free speech are hotly contested. Increasingly the value of freedom of expression is ranked in opposition to the harm caused by certain forms of speech that are believed to undermine the dignity and humanity of marginalized communities.

Aug 7, 2023 | pen.org | Ayad Akhtar |Erica Galluscio

HomeIn Defense of Literary ImaginationDuring my presidency at PEN America, I have spoken often about how Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses transformed me as a writer and citizen, in large part due to the transgressive offense with which it confronted me and my conservative Muslim community in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the early 1990s.