Chapter ID: CBB409383357

The Measure of a Woman: Fembots, Fact and Fiction Get (2020)

unapi

While the production of real-life sex robots is currently only at prototype stage, sexualized female artificial intelligences have long been a trope in popular media. By critically analysing a selection of science fiction films and television programmes, we explore the narrative of fictional representations of eroticized female robots and the ways in which their reception feeds real-life expectation. While these media representations are, at times, surprisingly nuanced, they persist in giving their female AIs stable gender identities, even when the AIs are disembodied. Fictional and factual fembots each reflect the same regressive male fantasies: sexual outlets and the promise of emotional validation and companionship. Underpinning this are masculine anxieties regarding powerful women, as well as the fear of technology exceeding our capacities and escaping our control.

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Book Stephen Cave; Kanta Dihal; Sarah Dillon (2020) AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines. unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB409383357/

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Authors & Contributors
Balinisteanu, Tudor
Bowman, Diana M.
Brodesco, Alberto
Dumouchel, Paul
Koetsier, Teunis
Kwan, Allen
Journals
IEEE Technology and Society Magazine
Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society
Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology
Feminist Studies
History and Technology
Icon: Journal of the International Committee for the History of Technology
Publishers
Oxford University Press
Harvard University Press
Rutgers University Press
Springer
Concepts
Robots
Artificial intelligence
Computers and computing
Science fiction
Technology and society
Technology and ethics
People
Husserl, Edmund
Mori, Masahiro
Nishimura, Makoto
Walton, Jo
Čapek, Karel
Ishiguro, Hiroshi
Time Periods
21st century
20th century
20th century, late
Modern
Places
Japan
Netherlands
United States
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