Brian Christian

Master of Fine Arts, poetry
Poet and author

Education

• Bachelor's degree in computer science and philosophy from Brown University
• Master's degree in poetry from the University of Washington

Career path

• Poetry instructor in the UW English Department
• Published author

Latest project

By now, it's clear that interactions through text messages, Facebook posts, and e-mails are here to stay, as our favorite gadgets shrink and advance to meet needs we never knew we had. But have you ever paused to wonder, what distinguishes us humans from computers, anyway? That's the major question explored by Brian's first book, The Most Human Human.

Inspired by a class project as an MFA student, Brian chronicled his participation in an artificial intelligence experiment known as the Turing test. This decades-old competition asks judges to engage in typed chats and decide whether their conversation partners are humans or machines. "The Most Human Human" refers to the title that judges use to designate the real person whose responses seem most likely to have come from a human being.

The book, released in March 2011, has garnered national attention, including television interviews with the acclaimed Jon Stewart and Charlie Rose.

On writing as a unifier

From a young age, Brian enjoyed writing, which he viewed as a way of "metabolizing" his life experiences. In college, he frequently signed up for creative writing courses as a fun diversion from his more "serious" double major of computer science in philosophy.

"Gradually, I began to feel that writing actually meant more to me than the pure pursuit of those subjects" and was a way of connecting his disparate interests, he said. After opting to replace his undergraduate thesis with a creative writing manuscript, he decided to pursue an MFA program.

Visiting friends in Seattle left the Delaware native enchanted with the city and West Coast living. So he was thrilled when he discovered that the UW's MFA program was "a perfect fit for me aesthetically—in particular Heather McHugh's knotty wordplay, Richard Kenney's fusion of poetry and science, and David Shields' interest in cross-genre nonfiction."

On financing graduate school

A two-year teaching assistantship made graduate school financially feasible. Brian also helped to launch his writing career through the Richard Blessing Award, a scholarship to the Port Townsend Writers Conference; the Harold Taylor Prize; and the McLeod-Grobe Prize.

"To UW's department, donors, and faculty I owe a debt of gratitude for many of the scholarships and recommendations which took me to several conferences and residencies in those years, where I not only learned a tremendous amount, but made some of my first contacts inside the publishing world, as well as many great and lasting friendships," Brian said.

From master's thesis to book deal

The Most Human Human grew out of a prose poem of the same name that Brian wrote for Professor Linda Bierds' creative writing workshop in the MFA program. As part of the assignment, he began researching the Turing test, which he found appealing for its intersection of his three main academic interests: computers, philosophy, and language.

Fascinated by the questions the test raises, he incorporated the poem into his master's thesis. Then he expanded the poem into an essay, then several essays and a mountain of notes, and finally the beginnings of a unified, book-length manuscript.

"Paradoxically, studying the way artificial intelligence programs imitate human conversation gave me a whole new understanding for what it is about genuine human interaction that's so amazingly complex and subtle," he said.

On being the most human

Meanwhile, the computers in the 2008 contest had come up just a single vote shy of passing the Turing test and making history—that is, simulating a human so well that human judges couldn't tell the difference. This turn of events was so significant because "a program whose responses were indistinguishable from a person's would not only be faking the power of thought, many in the field believe; it would have it," Brian said.

Thoroughly intrigued, Brian asked the organizing committee in the spring of 2009 if he could come to England and compete as one of four humans in the next event. They said yes.

"All of a sudden I had to ask myself, in a very pressing and literal way, drawing on everything I had learned as a philosopher, a programmer, and a writer—What does it mean to 'act human'?" Brian said

Around that time, he reconnected with a literary agent he'd met a year earlier, and they started brainstorming about pitching a nonfiction book proposal based on his experiences.

Brian spent the summer of 2009 writing a 40-page "trailer" for The Most Human Human. When Doubleday purchased it at an auction, "it felt like winning the writing lottery," he said. Suddenly he had an editor, a deadline, and an advance on which to live.

So was Brian voted the most human human? You'll have to read his book to find out.

UW's Advantage

"There's no doubt that I became a better writer during my time in the UW MFA program; both in my poetry and in my prose," Brian said.

He credited his advisors and peers, many of whom have become lifelong friends, for exposing him to "a wonderfully wide range of work during my time at UW, which expanded my sense of what was possible in the form."

"Looking back," Brian added, "I think many of my fondest memories were simply the opportunities to be exposed to the rare and amazing minds that UW brings together."

Photo: Michael Langan