Abolition of Man, the World's First Entirely-AI-Illustrated Graphic Novel Returns in a Deluxe Collection with Event at Yale University Bookstore

When publisher Living the Line first announced The Abolition of Man, the world's first entirely-AI-illustrated comic book, in June of 2022, it did much to bring attention to the future that generative AI technologies might bring, a future filled in equal parts with wonder and unsettling philosophical ramifications. Now co-authors Carson Grubaugh and Yale Professor of Luciano Floridi bring that discussion to the Yale University Bookstore on Friday September 29th 2023, for a philosophical discussion on the past year of machine learning technological development and its implications. The discussion will be followed by a signing of The Abolition of Man, which will be available at the event.

Luciano Floridi (Laurea, Rome La Sapienza, M.Phil. and Ph.D. Warwick)is Yale's Founding Director of the Digital Ethics Center and Professor in the Practice in the Cognitive Science Program. Before joining Yale, he was the Professor of Philosophy and Ethics of Information at the University of Oxford. He has published more than 300 works on the philosophy of information, digital ethics, the ethics of AI, and the philosophy of technology. His most recent books are The Ethics of Artificial Intelligence – Principles, Challenges, and Opportunities (OUP, 2023) and The Green and The Blue – Naive Ideas to Improve Politics in the Digital Age (Wiley, 2023).

Regarding his involvement in The Abolition of Man, Floridi says, "The evocative illustration of ideas by the latest technology: this is the amazing encounter between the medium of comics, the content of philosophy, and AI as a new form of agency, all supervised by the mind of the artist. The result is remarkable, and it is a unique privilege to be part of such an exciting experiment so significantly coherent with our digital age."

The Folridi penned capstone to Abolition of Man follows a science-fiction future (co-scripted by Grubaugh and Living the Line publisher Sean Robinson), which tells the satirical story of a dystopian future where automation has left humankind devoid of dignity, and a following chapter which is both written and illustrated by A.I. Floridi counters the bleak outlook of the first section of the book with a hopeful note that explains how the concept of human dignity can help us design a future worth building.

Abolition of Man is on the leading edge of a wave of discussion regarding the potentials of AI technologies, both utopian and dire. Grubaugh and Robinson discussed these possibilities with the legendary artist Dave McKean, who had this to say about the Abolition of Man miniseries. “The Abolition of Man is a thorough test drive of AI image making, and the results are extraordinary, appalling, compelling, cold, hot, beautiful, repellent, and should be abolished." 

Artist, Grubaugh, says: “I've spent years as an artist abusing many different publicly available app-fads, in an effort to illustrate what could be called a "Banal, Content Apocalypse,' in which we've generated so much semantic content that something genuinely new is near impossible to come by. These new art-making AI open up both new means for generating previously unimaginable content, but also speed production to the point where all we will have left to us is to transmute the meaning-rich gold of the past into recycled lead of the present.”

Grubaugh concludes, “In a world where there is nothing new under the Sun, choose to change the Sun.”

The Abolition of Man is now available in comic shops and bookstores worldwide. The signing event will be held on September 29th at 6 PM at the Barnes and Noble Yale University Bookstore, at 77 Broadway, New Haven, CT 06511