Frankenstein or Pygmalion? Literary Tradition and the Reception of Artificial Intelligence

Transhumanism has been rising in both popularity and influence on western societies and philosophical thought. Dreams of mind transfer, immortality, or cloning as well as the fear of sentient and intelligent artificial intelligence (AI) can be traced in some of Netflix’s most popular series such as Altered Carbon (2018), from the novel by Richard K. Morgan, or Orphan Black (2013), to mention just a few. Similarly, transhumanism may be spotted in Becky Chambers’ fiction. The novel analysed in this paper, A Closed and Common Orbit (2016), a sequel in the author’s Wayfarers series, explores the possibility of cloning human bodies, the production of sentient AI, and the subsequent ethical implications of both science fiction tropes. Far from showing transhumanism as a miracle solution to limitations in human bodies and capacity to avoid climate change, the text presents the suspicions and fears transhumanism may raise in the USA. This article provides evidence of how the Anthropocene and transhumanism operate in Becky Chambers’ novel, the ethical effects concerning intrinsic and extrinsic values and their possible subversion through a posthumanist alliance under the Anthropocene.

Given growing investment capital in research and development, accompanied by extensive literature on the subject by researchers in nearly every domain from civil engineering to legal studies, automated decision-support systems (ADM) are likely to see a place in the foreseeable future. Artificial intelligence (AI), as an automated system, can be defined as a broad range of computerized tasks designed to replicate human neural networks, store and organize large quantities of information, detect patterns, and make predictions with increasing accuracy and reliability. By itself, artificial intelligence is not quite science-fiction tropes (i.e. an uncontrollable existential threat to humanity) yet not without real-world implications. The fears that come from machines operating autonomously are justified in many ways given their ability to worsen existing inequalities, collapse financial markets (the 2010 “flash crash”), erode trust in societal institutions, and pose threats to physical safety. Still, even when applied in complex social environments, the political and legal mechanisms for dealing with the risks and harms that are likely to arise from artificial intelligence are not obsolete. As this paper seeks to demonstrate, other Information Age technologies have introduced comparable issues. However, the dominant market-based approach to regulation is insufficient in dealing with issues related to artificial intelligence because of the unique risks they pose to civil liberties and human rights. Assuming the government has a role in protecting values and ensuring societal well-being, in this paper, I work toward an alternative regulatory approach that focuses on regulating the commercial side of automated decision-making and machine learning techniques.

This essay investigates the critical function of science fiction (SF) tropes in SF and non-SF works by and about Africans. It begins with the assertion that works that invoke SF tropes, even if they are not properly speaking SF, can productively be read within the frame of SF. It then analyzes the ways in which writers and visual artists use speculative technological advances to explore the systematic marginalization of the African continent in the world-system. Drawing on Darko Suvin, Raymond Williams, and Fredric Jameson, it illustrates how these works use the cognitive estrangement characteristic of SF to posit a break in established systems of thought; this is, ultimately, a utopian gesture. Works discussed include Deji Bryce Olukotun’sNigerians in Space, Sony Labou Tansi’sLife and a Half, Ngugi wa Thiong’o’sWizard of the Crow, Cristina de Middel’sThe Afronauts, and Frances Bodomo’sAfronauts.

Globalization, Utopia, and Postcolonial Science Fiction: New Maps of Hope

Dan Trachtenberg’s 2022 film Prey subverts the science fiction Predator film franchise by placing the infamous alien hunter in early 18th-century North America and reducing it to a secondary figure that interacts with indigenous wildlife, French fur trappers, and the Comanche people. Instead, Trachtenberg, alongside Indigenous cultural consultants, centers Prey on Naru — a young Comanche woman portrayed by Indigenous actress Amber Midthunder — on a transformative journey of Indigenous identity, self-sovereignty, and resistance against alien and human colonial forces. The film received widespread acclaim from audiences and critics, including Indigenous critics who praised its portrayal of Comanche ways of life. While some argue that Prey’s release on a streaming platform limits its potential to challenge mainstream Indigenous stereotypes, this study focuses on how the film disrupts cinematic conventions by centering Indigenous storymaking, authentic cultural practices, and resistance to colonial domination, offering a more nuanced and respectful portrayal of Indigeneity. Drawing on scholarship in film studies, Indigenous studies, and especially Indigenous science fiction, this study contends that Prey juxtaposes Indigeneity and Indigenous cultural elements with science fiction tropes, offering a creative reimagining of both past and present while providing a poignant commentary on the intersections of identity, storymaking, and resistance. This fusion is what makes the film so compelling: it tells a culturally grounded Indigenous story of a young woman overcoming challenges to become a warrior hunter, all within the action-packed universe of the Predator . By incorporating Indigenous storymaking within the SF framework, Prey becomes a powerful medium for subverting dominant cultural narratives and ideologies, representing a progressive step towards more inclusive and accurate storytelling in popular media.

This chapter examines the debate over President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), which marked one of the last crises of the Cold War and had a divisive effect on the scientific and science fiction communities. The debate over SDI, which was triggered initially over the possibility of preventing future wars, was informed throughout by science fiction tropes and, among other issues, the problematic relation of science fiction writers to government or military agencies. SDI appealed to two fantasies: security and power.

근대 이후의 SF 작품은 인간 특유의 탐구심과 호기심을 자극하여 새로운 발명이나 발견을 촉진시키기도 했다. SF작품은 대중들의 공감을 얻기 위해 가까운 미래에 등장할 과학기술의 발전에 대해서 묘사하거나, 과학기술상의 쟁점을 차용하기도 한다. 따라서 SF영화의 시대적 변천을 통해, 과학기술의 대중적 인식에 접근하는 것은 중요한 의의가 있다. 이 논문에서는 인공지능 캐릭터가 본격적으로 등장한 1960년대 이후의 영화를 소재로, 인공지능 캐릭터의 특징을 시기에 따라 정리하고, 현재 벌어지고 있는 낙관론과 비관론에 관련시켜 검토하였다. 1960-80년대 전반기까지의 인공지능은 네트워크에 의존하지 않고 디바이스가 독립적으로 작동하는 형태였다. 그리고 초지능(superintelligence)을 가진 존재가 아니라 한정된 기능에 전문화되어 있었다. 인공지능의 반란은 스스로의 판단에 의해서가 아니라, 인간의 탐욕이나 오류의 결과였다. 1980년대 후반부터는 AGI(범용인공지능) 수준의 능력을 지닌 캐릭터가 등장하였다. 또한 AI를 과신한 나머지, 인간이 AI를 통제할 필요성을 망각하면서 야기되는 오류에 대해서도 문제를 제기하였다. 1990년대에는 인터넷이 보편화되면서 인공지능은 네트워크에 기반한 존재로 묘사되었다. 초인공지능이 등장하여 인간에게 전쟁을 도발하거나, 인공지능이 생명체의 인지능력이나 감정을 동기화시켜 인간성을 말살하는 존재로 묘사되기도 하였다. 영화 속 인공지능은 부정적 측면을 조금 더 부각시킨 것이 사실이다. 인공지능의 오류나 반란을 소재로 한 SF영화가 많기 때문이다. 선한 인공지능 캐릭터를 등장시키더라도, 언제든 인류의 존속을 위협할 수 있는 위험성을 내포한 존재로 묘사되는 경우가 많다. 이는 인공지능이 진실로 인류의 실존을 위협하기 때문이 아니라, 신기술에 대한 막연한 공포감을 이용해 흥행성을 높이는 장치로 인공지능 캐릭터를 창조했기 때문이다. 인류 역사에서 신기술에 대한 공포와 논쟁은 오래 전부터 이어져 왔으며, SF영화의 인공지능 캐릭터는 제작 당시의 과학기술 인식에 의해 상상되었을 뿐이다. 따라서 인공지능을 주제로 한 논쟁에서 영화적 묘사에 집착하기보다는 인류에게 유익한 방향으로 발전을 이끄는 자극제 역할로 국한시키는 것이 필요하다.The Science Fiction(SF) work since post-modern has stimulated a unique curiosity and spirit of inquiry to promote new inventions and discoveries. The SF works describe the development of science and technology that will emerge in the near future or borrow issues on science and technology in order to gain public sympathy. Thus, it is critical to approach the popular perception of science and technology through the transformation of the SF movies. This paper examines the characteristics. This paper summarizes the characteristics of Artificial Intelligence(AI) characters in movies since the 1960s when the AI characters emerged in earnest and examined them in relation to current optimism and pessimism. Until the 1960s and early 1980s, AI was not dependent on the network but operated independently. It was not existed with superintelligence but specialized in limited functions. The revolt of AI was not the result of its self-judgement, but of human greed or error. From the late 1980s, characters with the same level of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) appeared. Due to the overconfidence of AI, they raised questions about errors caused as human forgets the need to control AI. In the 1990s, the AI was portrayed as existence which was based on network as the internet became popularized. The superintelligence has appeared to provoke war on humans, or AI has been described as one that destroys humanity by synchronizing the cognitive ability and emotions of life. It is true that AI in movies has emphasized its negative aspects. This is because there are many SF movies that are based on AI errors or revolts. Even if a good AI character is introduced, it is often described as a danger that could threaten the continuation of mankind at any time. The reason is that AI is not truly a threat to the existence of mankind, but it was created as a device that enhance popularity by using vague fear of new technology. The fear and debate over new technologies has long been occurred in human history and the AI characters in SF movies have only been imagined by the awareness of science and technology at the time of production. Therefore, it is necessary to limit the AI-themed debate to the role of stimulant that leads to development in a direction beneficial to human rather than focusing on cinematic depictions.

The Prosthetic Impulse Revisited in <em>A.I. Artificial Intelligence</em>

This volume analyzes how science fiction tropes are used by non-Anglophone European filmmakers to explore national and global issues. The essays participate in the increasingly productive scholarly discussion of how speculative aesthetics helps us understand our present and envision possible futures. They explore how science fiction films from these societies tackle a wide range of modern and contemporary topics, from the actual possibility of human-made planetary apocalypse to the tension of the Cold War, outer space exploration, new discourses on colonialism, gender and sexualities, formulation of new transhumanist and posthumanist identities, and more. The films analyzed in this volume come from more than a dozen European countries and were produced from the 1960s to the 2010s.

This article argues that legal discourses about robots are framed within a limiting ‘human paradigm.’ While this is not a specific failure of lawyers, it has significant consequences for law in a digital future. This visualising of robots has its origins in mainstream twentieth-century science fictional tropes of artificial beings. This article begins by identifying the predominant science fiction tropes regarding artificial beings as a source of anxiety for human futures, as located in discrete bodies and as separate from humans. The article then traces this ‘human paradigm’ in robot law scholarship. It is shown how a focus on embodiment and separation disrupts appreciation of the emerging partial disembodiment and hybridity of digital autonomy. There is a continual sense of needing to keep robots and humans distinct and separate, which is not how digital futures are manifesting.

Introduction Author Arthur C. Clarke famously argued that in science fiction literature “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (Clarke). On 30 November 2022, technology company OpenAI publicly released their Large Language Model (LLM)-based chatbot ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer), and instantly it was hailed as world-changing. Initial media stories about ChatGPT highlighted the speed with which it generated new material as evidence that this tool might be both genuinely creative and actually intelligent, in both exciting and disturbing ways. Indeed, ChatGPT is part of a larger pool of Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that can very quickly generate seemingly novel outputs in a variety of media formats based on text prompts written by users. Yet, claims that AI has become sentient, or has even reached a recognisable level of general intelligence, remain in the realm of science fiction, for now at least (Leaver). That has not stopped technology companies, scientists, and others from suggesting that super-smart AI is just around the corner. Exemplifying this, the same people creating generative AI are also vocal signatories of public letters that ostensibly call for a temporary halt in AI development, but these letters are simultaneously feeding the myth that these tools are so powerful that they are the early form of imminent super-intelligent machines. For many people, the combination of AI technologies and media hype means generative AIs are basically magical insomuch as their workings seem impenetrable, and their existence could ostensibly change the world. This article explores how the hype around ChatGPT and generative AI was deployed across the first six months of 2023, and how these technologies were positioned as either utopian or dystopian, always seemingly magical, but never banal. We look at some initial responses to generative AI, ranging from schools in Australia to picket lines in Hollywood. We offer a critique of the utopian/dystopian binary positioning of generative AI, aligning with critics who rightly argue that focussing on these extremes displaces the more grounded and immediate challenges generative AI bring that need urgent answers. Finally, we loop back to the role of schools and educators in repositioning generative AI as something to be tested, examined, scrutinised, and played with both to ground understandings of generative AI, while also preparing today’s students for a future where these tools will be part of their work and cultural landscapes. Hype, Schools, and Hollywood In December 2022, one month after OpenAI launched ChatGPT, Elon Musk tweeted: “ChatGPT is scary good. We are not far from dangerously strong AI”. Musk’s post was retweeted 9400 times, liked 73 thousand times, and presumably seen by most of his 150 million Twitter followers. This type of engagement typified the early hype and language that surrounded the launch of ChatGPT, with reports that “crypto” had been replaced by generative AI as the “hot tech topic” and hopes that it would be “‘transformative’ for business” (Browne). By March 2023, global economic analysts at Goldman Sachs had released a report on the potentially transformative effects of generative AI, saying that it marked the “brink of a rapid acceleration in task automation that will drive labor cost savings and raise productivity” (Hatzius et al.). Further, they concluded that “its ability to generate content that is indistinguishable from human-created output and to break down communication barriers between humans and machines reflects a major advancement with potentially large macroeconomic effects” (Hatzius et al.). Speculation about the potentially transformative power and reach of generative AI technology was reinforced by warnings that it could also lead to “significant disruption” of the labour market, and the potential automation of up to 300 million jobs, with associated job losses for humans (Hatzius et al.). In addition, there was widespread buzz that ChatGPT’s “rationalization process may evidence human-like cognition” (Browne), claims that were supported by the emergent language of ChatGPT. The technology was explained as being “trained” on a “corpus” of datasets, using a “neural network” capable of producing “natural language“” (Dsouza), positioning the technology as human-like, and more than ‘artificial’ intelligence. Incorrect responses or errors produced by the tech were termed “hallucinations”, akin to magical thinking, which OpenAI founder Sam Altman insisted wasn’t a word that he associated with sentience (Intelligencer staff). Indeed, Altman asserts that he rejects moves to “anthropomorphize” (Intelligencer staff) the technology; however, arguably the language, hype, and Altman’s well-publicised misgivings about ChatGPT have had the combined effect of shaping our understanding of this generative AI as alive, vast, fast-moving, and potentially lethal to humanity. Unsurprisingly, the hype around the transformative effects of ChatGPT and its ability to generate ‘human-like’ answers and sophisticated essay-style responses was matched by a concomitant panic throughout educational institutions. The beginning of the 2023 Australian school year was marked by schools and state education ministers meeting to discuss the emerging problem of ChatGPT in the education system (Hiatt). Every state in Australia, bar South Australia, banned the use of the technology in public schools, with a “national expert task force” formed to “guide” schools on how to navigate ChatGPT in the classroom (Hiatt). Globally, schools banned the technology amid fears that students could use it to generate convincing essay responses whose plagiarism would be undetectable with current software (Clarence-Smith). Some schools banned the technology citing concerns that it would have a “negative impact on student learning”, while others cited its “lack of reliable safeguards preventing these tools exposing students to potentially explicit and harmful content” (Cassidy). ChatGPT investor Musk famously tweeted, “It’s a new world. Goodbye homework!”, further fuelling the growing alarm about the freely available technology that could “churn out convincing essays which can't be detected by their existing anti-plagiarism software” (Clarence-Smith). Universities were reported to be moving towards more “in-person supervision and increased paper assessments” (SBS), rather than essay-style assessments, in a bid to out-manoeuvre ChatGPT’s plagiarism potential. Seven months on, concerns about the technology seem to have been dialled back, with educators more curious about the ways the technology can be integrated into the classroom to good effect (Liu et al.); however, the full implications and impacts of the generative AI are still emerging. In May 2023, the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA), the union representing screenwriters across the US creative industries, went on strike, and one of their core issues were “regulations on the use of artificial intelligence in writing” (Porter). Early in the negotiations, Chris Keyser, co-chair of the WGA’s negotiating committee, lamented that “no one knows exactly what AI’s going to be, but the fact that the companies won’t talk about it is the best indication we’ve had that we have a reason to fear it” (Grobar). At the same time, the Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) warned that members were being asked to agree to contracts that stipulated that an actor’s voice could be re-used in future scenarios without that actor’s additional consent, potentially reducing actors to a dataset to be animated by generative AI technologies (Scheiber and Koblin). In a statement issued by SAG, they made their position clear that the creation or (re)animation of any digital likeness of any part of an actor must be recognised as labour and properly paid, also warning that any attempt to legislate around these rights should be strongly resisted (Screen Actors Guild). Unlike the more sensationalised hype, the WGA and SAG responses to generative AI are grounded in labour relations. These unions quite rightly fear the immediate future where human labour could be augmented, reclassified, and exploited by, and in the name of, algorithmic systems. Screenwriters, for example, might be hired at much lower pay rates to edit scripts first generated by ChatGPT, even if those editors would really be doing most of the creative work to turn something clichéd and predictable into something more appealing. Rather than a dystopian world where machines do all the work, the WGA and SAG protests railed against a world where workers would be paid less because executives could pretend generative AI was doing most of the work (Bender). The Open Letter and Promotion of AI Panic In an open letter that received enormous press and media uptake, many of the leading figures in AI called for a pause in AI development since “advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth”; they warned early 2023 had already seen “an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control” (Future of Life Institute). Further, the open letter signatories called on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4”, arguing that “labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts” (Future of Life Institute). Notably, many of the signatories work for the very companies involved in the “out-of-control race”. Indeed, while this letter could be read as a moment of ethical clarity for the AI industry, a more cynical reading might just be that in warning that their AIs could effectively destroy the w

In this paper, I engage with the “invisible wall” at the Mexico-United States border. The idea of an invisible border is not new, but recent proposals are defined by the involvement of Silicon Valley, as well as by the use of Science Fiction (SF) and the mythological to reframe and create new fictions. I trace the trope of the “force field” and the way it has been mobilized by Palmer Luckey in his promotion of the Anduril Sentry, a mobile observation post fitted with technologies of surveillance and deterrence. I argue that the SF trope can be traced to racialized understandings of the homeland in the nineteenth century and, later, in hegemonic tendencies in popular culture. Combined with evolving masculinities and far right politics, these SF tropes reinforce the already complex histories and historical violence of border technologies.

Postphenomenological Investigations: Essays on Human–Technology Relations provides an introduction to the school of thought called postphenomenology and showcases projects at the cutting edge of this perspective. Postphenomenology presents a unique blend of insights from the philosophical traditions of phenomenology and American pragmatism, and applies them to studies of user relations to technologies. These studies provide deep descriptions of the ways technologies transform our abilities, augment our experience, and shape the world around us. This book proceeds with a preface by Don Ihde, postphenomenology’s founder, and a detailed review of the main ideas of this perspective by the editors Robert Rosenberger and Peter-Paul Verbeek. The body of this volume is composed of twelve postphenomenological essays which reflect the expansive range, detail-orientation, and interdisciplinarity of this school of thought. These essays confront a broad assortment of topics, both abstract and concrete. Abstract topics addressed include metaphysics, ethics, methodology, and analysis of the notions of selfhood, skill training, speed, and political activism. Just a few of the concrete topics studied include human-like interactive robots, ethics education, image interpretation in radiology, science fiction tropes, transportation history, wearable computing, and organ donation protocols for brain-dead bodies. The volume concludes with constructive critiques of postphenomenology by Andrew Feenberg, Diane Michelfelder, and Albert Borgmann, all figures whose work is relevant to postphenomenological projects.

This chapter summarises debates in the trade press in the 1920s about whether art cinema could be successful or if it could only ever be an entertainment medium. The summary forms the basis of an exploration of the production and reception of Brunel’s first feature, The Man Without Desire. The film brought together a disparate group of creatives and Bohemian figures, not least its star Ivor Novello, in an attempt to create a commercially successful film that incorporated elements from other arts. The result was an ambitious Venice-set production which employed both classical and Expressionist visuals along with fantasy and science fiction tropes. Though lauded by the critics and enjoying a successful run in London, it failed to make a profit, apparently because regional film renters regarded it as too highbrow for the average filmgoer.

Chapter 5: Science Fiction Tropes: Post-Apocalyptic