The Stochastic Traveler: Misreading and Mimesis in Gulliver's Travels and Artificial Intelligence Discourse

Journal of Travel Literature Studies

JTLS, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2026, pp. 37-53.

Print ISSN: 3135-6788; Online ISSN: 3135-6796

Journal homepage: https://www.tlsjournal.com

DOI：https://doi.org/10.64058/jtls260102stmmg

The Stochastic Traveler: Misreading and Mimesis in Gulliver’s Travels and Artificial Intelligence Discourse

Md Mozaffor Hossain

Department of English, Ohio University

Abstract: This paper argues that Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels prefigures a core problem in modern AI discourse through the archetype of the “stochastic parrot.” By “stochastic parrot,” I mean an entity that mimics patterns without understanding them. Situating Swift’s work within the tradition of travel writing, this paper reads travel both as movement across space and as an interpretive and epistemological practice. I argue that Gulliver is a “stochastic traveler.” His journeys unfold as a sequence of flawed mimetic performances: he replicates the Lilliputians, Brobdingnagians, Laputans, and Houyhnhnms, yet consistently fails to grasp their underlying values. His accounts generate profound misreadings, while the societies he encounters also misread him—as a useful tool to be exploited, as a fascinating but insignificant curiosity, and as an irrational threat. Gulliver, in turn, internalizes each society’s perception of him. As a

travel narrative, the text exposes how cultural encounters can produce imitation without comprehension. Swift presents a skeptical theory of knowledge: what we call “understanding” is often just superficial mimicry. The same cycle of mimicry and misreading in Gulliver’s Travels also defines the relationship between humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI, like a literal stochastic parrot, does not understand human intentions. Conversely, humans speculating about AI supremacy misread the technology, attributing consciousness to a statistical process. By identifying Gulliver as a stochastic traveler, we can better diagnose the epistemological confusions both in Swift’s satire and in our contemporary technological moment. This perspective shifts the focus from fearing AI to critically examining our own interpretive failures.

Keywords: Jonathan Swift; AI discourse; Gulliver’s Travels; stochastic parrot; stochastic traveler; mimesis; misreading