Vauhini Vara is a journalist and fiction writer whose debut novel, The Immortal King Rao, imagines a future in which those in power deploy AI to remake all aspects of society — criminal justice, education, communication — to suit their interest. She is also the author of the essay “Ghosts,” which was published in The Believer, adapted for an episode of “This American Life,” and anthologized in Best American Essays 2022. That essay, about the death of Vara’s sister, was written with the help of an AI language generator, and Vara joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series to speak on the opportunities, and risks, that arise when we turn to AI to help us communicate.