Professor Sarah Dillon has been awarded a Leverhulme Research Fellowship for a project entitled “Literature and AI: Rhetoric, Influence and Epistemology”. The research project historicises current AI hype by revealing the literary nature of the origins of Western AI science, both in terms of the speculative rhetoric of the founding papers, as well as the direct influence of literature on mid-twentieth-century AI researchers. The project uses the conjunction of literature and AI to pursue the question of the cognitive value of literature, what forms of knowledge it makes available, and how these have both been excluded from the formalisation of “reason” in AI science, and can offer a productive site for the interrogation of the epistemic and ontological injustices of AI. The work draws on and develops Dillon’s collaborative work over the past 5 years or so on AI Narratives, on the History of AI and on storylistening. She will hold the fellowship for the 2024-25 academic year.