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AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines

Online ISBN:
9780191881817
Print ISBN:
9780198846666
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Book

AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines

Stephen Cave (ed.),
Stephen Cave
(ed.)
Executive Director, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge
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Kanta Dihal (ed.),
Kanta Dihal
(ed.)
Research Associate, Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge
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Sarah Dillon (ed.)
Sarah Dillon
(ed.)
Lecturer in Literature and Film, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge
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Published online:
23 April 2020
Published in print:
21 February 2020
Online ISBN:
9780191881817
Print ISBN:
9780198846666
Publisher:
Oxford University Press

Abstract

This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real artificial intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed, and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing prehistory of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerged alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI’s social, ethical, and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphization, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.

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