AI narratives : a history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines

From the Greek god Hephaestus's golden handmaidens to the Terminator, what we now call artificial intelligence (AI) has long been a part of Western culture. As real AI begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, these stories shape our expectations, providing a backdrop of culturally entrenched hopes and fears. But they also provide a resource of possible futures, much richer than the trope of the red-eyed killer-robot would suggest. AI Narratives is thefirst book to explore this history of imagining intelligent machines. The authors provide accessible, original insights from a wide range of disciplines, including history, philosophy, and film studies.Together the essays reveal not only how these 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.