NYU Digital Theory Lab
The Digital Theory Lab at NYU is a cross-departmental research group dedicated to the humanistic study of digital media, computational systems, and AI. Co-founded by Gitelman with colleagues from English, Media Studies, and related fields, the lab has served as an institutional home for scholarship that brings the tools of media archaeology, literary analysis, and critical data studies to bear on emerging computational technologies. Its research on deep learning, beginning in 2018, positioned its members — Gitelman among them — to recognize the specific interpretive challenges of large language models and image-generating systems as those technologies moved from research artifacts to widely deployed infrastructure. Gitelman's lectures on typographical hallucinations emerged from work conducted at the lab.
In the AI Story
The lab represents a specific institutional form: the humanities-based research group that takes computational systems seriously as objects of cultural analysis rather than as technical artifacts to be evaluated by engineering criteria. This form has become increasingly important as AI systems have moved into domains traditionally studied by humanists — language, images, cultural production.
The lab's work on deep learning since 2018 anticipates the mainstream attention to generative AI that followed the 2022 release of ChatGPT. Its members were positioned to extend existing frameworks — protocols, epistemic objects, the critique of raw data — to the new systems without having to develop theoretical apparatus from scratch.
Within Gitelman's body of work, the lab provides the institutional infrastructure for the AI-focused projects of the 2020s. Her lectures on typographical hallucinations, her ongoing book project on AI and documents, and her contributions to public discourse about AI all draw on work conducted within the lab's research environment.
The lab's existence is itself a protocol-setting decision — a statement that the critical-humanistic study of AI belongs in universities, conducted by scholars trained in media history and cultural analysis, producing research that can inform both academic discourse and broader public understanding.
Origin
The lab was established at NYU in the late 2010s by Gitelman and colleagues across several departments, building on earlier informal collaborations and responding to the growing importance of computational systems in cultural production.
Key Ideas
Humanistic AI study. The lab represents the institutional form of humanistic engagement with computational systems.
Early deep learning focus. Research since 2018 anticipated the mainstream attention to generative AI.
Framework extension. The lab's work extends existing tools of media archaeology and critical data studies into the AI transition.
Cross-departmental structure. The lab operates across English, Media Studies, and related fields.
Institutional protocol. The lab's existence embodies a claim about where AI belongs as an object of study.
Appears in the Orange Pill Cycle
Further reading
- NYU Department of Media, Culture, and Communication, research program materials.
- Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Discriminating Data (MIT Press, 2021).
- Matthew L. Jones and Chris Wiggins, How Data Happened (W.W. Norton, 2023).