‘A Push-Button Type of Thinking’: Automation, Cybernetics, and AI in Midcentury British Literature (2020)
Midcentury experiments in AI soon resulted in machines that could devise logical proofs, and solve calculus and visual analogy problems; for the first time in human history, AI moved from the realm of myth to become a real possibility. These technological developments catalysed the publication of numerous AI narratives that explored its impact on contemporary issues such as the labour market, centralization, heuristics, and global communication networks. This chapter contends that midcentury AI narratives must be situated in relation to concomitant technological developments in automation and cybernetics that stimulated widespread concern among government institutions, businesses, and the public. It analyses the varied representation of AI in midcentury novels such as Michael Frayn’s The Tin Men (1965), Len Deighton’s Billion-Dollar Brain (1966), and Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). These novels problematize AI narrative tropes by resisting anthropomorphic tendencies and implausible utopian and dystopian scenarios; instead, they address the societal ramifications—both positive and negative—for humans faced with technological breakthroughs in AI.
...MoreBook Stephen Cave; Kanta Dihal; Sarah Dillon (2020) AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines.
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