The Author in the Voracious Night: educating researchers in the Age of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The article examines what distinguishes humans from other beings in a context shaped by the contemporary centrality of Generative Artificial Intelligence. It argues that, beyond technical or cognitive abilities, it is the capacity for narration that singularizes human experience, as suggested by Huston. Narrative, understood as an exercise of authorship grounded in lived experience, is articulated with Walter Benjamin’s reflections on experience, as well as with Plato’s allegory of the cave, in order to problematize the limits of generative AI outputs. The text contends that the education of researchers, particularly at the graduate level, should prioritize the development of narrative capacity as a critical and authorial dimension. It concludes that, although generative AI may support the problematization of reality, it is through the narration of lived experience that the ethical and critical (self-)formation of researchers is constituted.