How well can Gemini 3 make a Henry James simulator?

This quarter I have been teaching two large-ish history classes at UCSC and beginning a new book project, Ghosts of the Machine Age, about the psychology pioneer William James, his siblings Alice and Henry, and the late Victorian “prehistory of AI.”

Alongside this, I’ve been working on an NEH-funded project about the humanities and generative AI that largely grew out of reading and writing I’ve done for this newsletter (like this and this ). How can we use machine intelligence in a way that doesn’t feel like it is damaging our minds and souls? How can educators adapt to and acknowledge the new reality but, at the same time, reject the idea that the only path forward is mass adoption of pre-packaged subscription services and for-profit “AI tutors”? How do we do something creative, interes…