Imagining AI

Stephen Cave is Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on philosophy and ethics of technology, particularly AI, robotics and life-extension. He is the author of Immortality (Crown, 2012), a New Scientist book of the year, and Should We Want To Live Forever (Routledge, 2023); and co-editor of AI Narratives (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Feminist AI (Oxford University Press, 2023). He writes widely about philosophy, technology and society, including for the Guardian and Atlantic. He also advises governments around the world, and has served as a British diplomat.Dr Kanta Dihal is a Senior Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on science narratives, particularly those that emerge from conflict. She was Principal Investigator on the project 'Global AI Narratives' from 2018-2022, and currently works on 'Desirable Digitalisation', which investigates intercultural perspectives on AI and fundamental rights and values. She is co-editor of the books AI Narratives (2020) and Imagining AI (2022) and has advised the World Economic Forum, the UK House of Lords, and the United Nations. She holds a DPhil from Oxford on the communication of quantum physics.

Ranging between philosophy and the humanities to sociology, anthropology and IT, this valuable book not only complements the interdisciplinarity traditionally favoured within cybernetics but also seeks to decolonize the field and emphasize the global futures of AI.

• 1: Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal: Introduction 2: Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, Tomasz Hollanek, Hirofumi Katsuno, Yang Liu, Apolline Taillandier, Daniel White: The Meanings of AI: a Cross-cultural Comparison Part I. Europe 3: Madeleine Chalmers: AI Narratives and the French Touch 4: Eleonora Lima: The Android as a New Political Subject: The Italian Cyberpunk Comic Ranxerox 5: Hans Esselborn: German Science Fiction Literature exploring AI. Expectations, Hopes, and Fears 6: Bogna Konior: Automatic Gnosis: On Lem's Summa Technologiae 7: Anton Pervushin: Boys from a Suitcase: The Evil Robot and the Funny Robot as the main AI Concepts in Science Fiction of the USSR 8: 1. Anzhelika Solovyeva & Nik Hynek: The Russian Imaginary of Robots, Cyborgs and Intelligent Machines: A Hundred-Year History Part II. The Americas and Pacific 9: Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal: Fiery the Angels Fell: How Hollywood Imagines AI 10: Edward King: Afrofuturismo and the Aesthetics of Resistance to Algorithmic Racism in Brazil 11: Raul Cruz: Artificial Intelligence in the Art of Latin America 12: Macarena Areco: Imaginaries of Technology and Subjectivity: Representations of AI in Recent Latin American Science Fiction 13: Jason Edward Lewis: Imagining Indigenous AI 14: Noelani Arista: Maoli Intelligence: Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Futurity Part III. Africa, Middle East, and South Asia 15: Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee: From Tafa to Robu: AI in the Fiction of Satyajit Ray 16: Abeba Birhane: Algorithmic Colonization of Africa 17: Rachel Adams: Artificial Intelligence Elsewhere: The Case of the Ogbanje 18: Kanta Dihal, Tomasz Hollanek, Nagla Rizk, Nadine Weheba, Stephen Cave: AI Oasis? Imagining Intelligent Machines in the Middle East and North Africa Part IV. East Asia 19: Hirofumi Katsuno & Daniel White: Engineering Robots with Heart in Japan: The Politics of Cultural Difference in Artificial Emotional Intelligence 20: So-Young Kim: Development and Developmentalism of Artificial Intelligence: Decoding South Korean Policy Discourse on Artificial Intelligence 21: Bing Song: How Chinese Philosophy Impacts AI Narratives and Imagined AI Futures 22: Baichun Zhang and Miao Tian: Attitudes of Thinkers in Pre-Qin Dynasty China to Mechanical Invention and Its Influence on the Development of Technology 23: Yan Wu: Artificial Intelligence in Chinese Science Fiction: From the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods to the Era of Deng Xiaoping 24: Feng Zhang: Algorithm of the Soul: Narratives of AI in Recent Chinese Science Fiction 25: Cheryl Julia Lee and Graham Matthews: Intelligent Infrastructure, Humans as Resources, and Coevolutionary Futures: AI Narratives in Singapore