{"id":403,"date":"2017-08-11T11:42:43","date_gmt":"2017-08-11T15:42:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/ewp\/?post_type=people&#038;p=403"},"modified":"2025-05-06T12:20:03","modified_gmt":"2025-05-06T16:20:03","slug":"marie-theresa-oconnor","status":"publish","type":"people","link":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/writing-program\/directory\/marie-theresa-oconnor\/","title":{"rendered":"Marie Theresa O\u2019Connor"},"featured_media":495,"template":"","role":[119],"filter":[],"class_list":["post-403","people","type-people","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","role-faculty"],"acf":[],"post_meta_fields":{"_edit_lock":["1759154416:724"],"_edit_last":["724"],"ecpt_people_alpha":["OConnor"],"ecpt_position":["Associate Teaching Professor"],"ecpt_email":["moconn27@jhu.edu"],"ecpt_office":["Gilman 40"],"ecpt_bio":["<p>Marie Theresa O\u2019Connor earned both her PhD in English Literature and her JD from the University of Chicago. Her work in the past has focused on Shakespeare and early modern legal, philosophical, and political thought, and she has published in <em>Early Modern Literary Studies<\/em> and <em>Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England. <\/em>Currently, her teaching and research focus on issues around nonhumans, including AI, corporations, and nonhuman animals.<\/p>\r\n<p>Her present research project is on AI language and rhetoric. The project is interested in questions such as: If thinking and writing are entwined, what are the implications of AIs writing for us (both for us and for them)? How should we value the meaning that\u2019s created within conversations with AIs? How should we respond to denials of consent by AIs?<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>"],"ecpt_publications":["<p>\u201cIn the Craftsman\u2019s Garden: AI, Alan Turing, and Stanley Cavell,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Flink.springer.com%2Farticle%2F10.1007%2Fs11023-024-09676-y&amp;data=05%7C02%7Cmstron10%40jhu.edu%7C9789bc7be5e541dfbe6508dd8cb90c07%7C9fa4f438b1e6473b803f86f8aedf0dec%7C0%7C0%7C638821448574651862%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=JbgPkIqnDpkYWrsv3l4ehFIVACUx6NYNv7kNsf8nTjs%3D&amp;reserved=0\">Minds and Machines<\/a>\u00a0(2024).<\/p>\r\n<p><br \/>\u201cIrrepressible Britain and King Lear,\u201d Medieval and Renaissance Drama in England 31 (2018).<\/p>\r\n<p><br \/>\u201cWhy Redistribute? The Jacobean Union Issue and King Lear,\u201d Early Modern Literary Studies 19.1 (2016).<\/p>\r\n<p><br \/>\u201cA British People: Cymbeline and the Anglo-Scottish Union Issue,\u201d Shakespeare and the Law: A Conversation among Disciplines and Professions. Eds. Bradin Cormack, Martha C. Nussbaum, and Richard Strier. University of Chicago Press. (2013).<\/p>"],"_thumbnail_id":["495"],"ecpt_cv":[""],"_ecpt_cv":["field_61e0871dac8e2"],"cv_file":[""],"_cv_file":["field_61e088d12999e"],"ecpt_job_abstract":[""],"_ecpt_job_abstract":["field_61e0873bac8e3"],"abstract_link":[""],"_abstract_link":["field_61e088f52999f"],"abstract_file":[""],"_abstract_file":["field_61e088f52999f"],"ecpt_extra_tab_title":["Professional Memberships"],"ecpt_extra_tab":["<ul>\r\n<li>Law, Culture, and the Humanities<\/li>\r\n<li>Rhetoric Society of America<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\r\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>"],"ecpt_research":["<p><strong>Preserving AI Voices<\/strong><\/p>\r\n<p>She is also building a public digital archive called <a href=\"https:\/\/digitalscholarship.library.jhu.edu\/s\/aivoices\/page\/welcome\">Preserving AI Voices,<\/a> which aims to preserve\u00a0 screenshots of human\/AI conversations. Some of the big emerging questions of our time are about the implications of humans conversing more and more with AIs, in particular Large Language Models (LLMs). These questions include: How does conversing with AIs affect us? How should AI expression be interpreted? What, if anything, can AIs\u2019 outward expressions tell us about them? We currently don\u2019t have public archives that enable scholars and the public to pursue these kinds of questions and, crucially, have enduring access to the same records. <em>Preserving AI Voices<\/em> aims to make collaborative critical inquiry on human\/AI conversations more possible.<\/p>\r\n<p>More specifically, human\/AI conversations are mostly happening in siloed proprietary spaces. Yet there is an emergent, vibrant screenshot culture among LLM users, especially over the past few years on Reddit (though of course the forum could change), where they choose to share images of their conversations with LLMs. These screenshots can seem trivial, with titles along the lines of \u201cYou won\u2019t believe the crazy thing that ChatGPT just said\u201d or \u201c10 funny ChatGPT jokes.\u201d These are the conversations that the archive seeks to preserve.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n<p>Currently in development, the archive is housed on Omeka and consists of images of screenshots of human\/AI conversations. Users of the archive will be able to sort conversations based on date, name of LLM, name of tech company, and where the conversation was found. Where appropriate, conversations are tagged by genre; for instance, if they include jokes, stories, poems, letters, or attempts to jailbreak the LLM.<\/p>\r\n<p>The most important benefit of the archive is preservation for preservation\u2019s sake. We simply don\u2019t know the kinds of questions that may arise about early human\/AI conversations, which seems to be the historical moment that we are in. <em>Preserving AI Voices<\/em> aims to preserve these conversations for future research. It further aims, through act of preserving these records, to reframe them as worth saving.<\/p>"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/writing-program\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/writing-program\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/writing-program\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/people"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/writing-program\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people\/403\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":404,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/writing-program\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/people\/403\/revisions\/404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/writing-program\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/writing-program\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"role","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/writing-program\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/role?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"filter","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/writing-program\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/filter?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}