Thoughts:
- Julian recommended the book Neuromancer to me as an early sci fi imagining of what AI could be. I have yet to get the text, but I did find this interesting article about it.
- In the article, Gutiérrez-Jones, who was writing in 2014, talks about predictions of AI by 2029 and talk about how this AI will “feed on its own abilities to improve” and so “surpass, current human functioning with stunning speed” (pg. 69)
- I’m curious about how these predictions are made, especially because these are the same scripts which are being explained to us now that generative AI based on large language models has kind of come to pass
- The article writes about predictions of what will happen next and including us being taken over by AI, us being looked after by AI and us becoming more and more cyborg like with AI
- The article draws a critical eye to this idea of our relationship between us and other by suggesting that “Most broadly conceived, kinship acknowledges this constitutive interrelation: how we are made through our relations with others in ways that always escape our control and understanding to some degree” (pg. 72) – that perhaps our relationship with ‘others’ like animals, plants and AI must always be a dance of interelatedness where there is no independent being.
- It makes me think about science and ideas about conquest, colonialism and heroism and how more ordinary stories and concerns (like who is going to wash the clothes or clean the bathroom) get ignored, even though they are part of everyone’s daily life. It makes me wonder if conversations about tech futures have a gender and if that gender is a certain kind of male…
- I wonder if my mum designed AI what she would want it to do…
- Next step = to get the book!
Reference
Carl Gutiérrez-Jones (2014). Stealing Kinship: Neuromancer and Artificial Intelligence. Science Fiction Studies, 41(1), p.69. doi:https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.41.1.0069.
