# Xiaochang Li, "Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture" (U Chicago Press, 2026)

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-network-529292/xiaochang-li-divination-engines-natural-language-processing-artificial-intelligence-and-the-making-of-algorithmic-culture-u-chicago-press-2026
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-network-529292/xiaochang-li-divination-engines-natural-language-processing-artificial-intelligence-and-the-making-of-algorithmic-culture-u-chicago-press-2026.md
Podcast: [New Books Network](https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-network-529292)
Published: 2026-09-02T08:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK4554419426.mp3
Audio file: https://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/pdst.fm/e/traffic.megaphone.fm/NBNK4554419426.mp3
Processing state: not_requested
JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-network-529292/episodes/xiaochang-li-divination-engines-natural-language-processing-artificial-intelligence-and-the-making-of-algorithmic-culture-u-chicago-press-2026
Duration seconds: 2403

## Resource

Since the advent of computers, society has fantasized about conversing with machines. In Divination Engines: Natural Language Processing, Artificial Intelligence, and the Making of Algorithmic Culture (University of Chicago Press, 2026), Dr. Xiaochang Li shows readers how that dream both fueled the demand for data and set the stage for today’s generative AI. With original research and clear explanations, Dr. Li elucidates the origins of what’s known as natural language processing (NLP) and the heated twentieth-century debates between computer scientists, linguists, and communication engineers that shaped today’s technology. Starting with early devices that recorded, analyzed, and attempted to interpret human speech, she demonstrates how computer speech recognition, particularly efforts led by Bell Labs and IBM, advanced technology by deemphasizing linguistic meaning in favor of statistical prediction. In other words, researchers gradually abandoned systems that sought to understand human language, opting instead for work-arounds that simply predicted patterns in speech and text data. That solution became incredibly and surprisingly adaptable. As Dr. Li reveals, transforming linguistic questions into engineering ones ushered in the routine operation of search engines, spam filters, and the varied content sorting and recommendation mechanisms that regulate the access, circulation, and legitimacy of information across every platform. But this has all come at the cost of forever requiring copious and ever-growing amounts of new data. At its core, Divination Engines illuminates how the artifacts of human communication—speech, text, and images—have become both the fodder for and products of computers. This connection between communication and computation, Li shows, has give…

## Actions

- request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/new-books-network-529292/episodes/xiaochang-li-divination-engines-natural-language-processing-artificial-intelligence-and-the-making-of-algorithmic-culture-u-chicago-press-2026/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.
- read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/new-books-network-529292/xiaochang-li-divination-engines-natural-language-processing-artificial-intelligence-and-the-making-of-algorithmic-culture-u-chicago-press-2026.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.

A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed.

## Transcript

Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.