Startseite Philosophie Sentience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Enhancement in US-American Fiction and Film: Thinking With and Without Consciousness
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Sentience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Enhancement in US-American Fiction and Film: Thinking With and Without Consciousness

  • Ulfried Reichardt
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Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement
Ein Kapitel aus dem Buch Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement

Abstract

In my paper I investigate the ways in which novels and films dealing with science and technology explore possible future worlds and digitallybased technological systems that are close to what already exists today. I look at some US-American novels and films and ask if they succeed in imagining constellations that are not entirely based on the human perspective, and would thus be merely extensions of what our human faculties allow us to perceive. While many stories explore the question of how close to human perception and thought artificial intelligence and robots can get and thereby often project human affects onto them, there are also texts that test what it means to be intelligent, but not human-like. The dividing point is whether machines and nonhuman organisms already have, may develop, or need to have a consciousness. Does the organism or machine have to know that it knows? My interpretation focuses on the recent film Her as well as Richard Powers’s novel Galatea 2.2., which probe versions of AI with regard to features like emotions, decision-making, and embodiedness. Peter Watts’s hard science fiction novel Blindsight explores a first contact situation between radically enhanced humans and nonconscious, yet sentient aliens. Finally, the concept of the corporation is mentioned to point to the economic dimension of artificial intelligence.

Abstract

In my paper I investigate the ways in which novels and films dealing with science and technology explore possible future worlds and digitallybased technological systems that are close to what already exists today. I look at some US-American novels and films and ask if they succeed in imagining constellations that are not entirely based on the human perspective, and would thus be merely extensions of what our human faculties allow us to perceive. While many stories explore the question of how close to human perception and thought artificial intelligence and robots can get and thereby often project human affects onto them, there are also texts that test what it means to be intelligent, but not human-like. The dividing point is whether machines and nonhuman organisms already have, may develop, or need to have a consciousness. Does the organism or machine have to know that it knows? My interpretation focuses on the recent film Her as well as Richard Powers’s novel Galatea 2.2., which probe versions of AI with regard to features like emotions, decision-making, and embodiedness. Peter Watts’s hard science fiction novel Blindsight explores a first contact situation between radically enhanced humans and nonconscious, yet sentient aliens. Finally, the concept of the corporation is mentioned to point to the economic dimension of artificial intelligence.

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. Acknowledgements VII
  4. Introduction: Affirmative and Critical Approaches to Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement 1
  5. Part 1: Challenging “Strong AI” from the Perspective of Human Agency
  6. The Artificiality of the Human Mind: A Reflection on Natural and Artificial Intelligence 17
  7. Merits and Limits of AI: Philosophical Reflections on the Difference between Instrumental Rationality and Praxis-Related Hermeneutical Reason 33
  8. Experience, Identity and Moral Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 51
  9. Outsourcing the Brain, Optimizing the Body: Retrotopian Projections of the Human Subject 79
  10. Life Care/Lebenssorge and the Fourth Industrial Revolution 101
  11. Part 2: Examining Merits and Limits of Applied AI
  12. AI’s Winograd Moment; or: How Should We Teach Machines Common Sense? Guidance from Cognitive Science 127
  13. Passing the Turing Test? AI Generated Poetry and Posthuman Creativity 151
  14. Why Neuroenhancement is a Philosophical Issue 167
  15. The Future of Artificial Intelligence in International Healthcare: An Index 181
  16. Part 3: Encounters with Artificial Beings in Film, Literature, and Theater
  17. Dark Ecology and Digital Images of Entropy: A Brief Survey of the History of Cinematic Morphing and the Computer Graphics of Artificial Intelligence 209
  18. Sentience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Enhancement in US-American Fiction and Film: Thinking With and Without Consciousness 225
  19. “I, Robot”: Artificial Intelligence and Fears of the Posthuman 237
  20. AI on Stage: A Cross-Cultural Check-Up and the Case of Canada and John Mighton 261
  21. Artificial Intelligence from Science Fiction to Soul Machines: (Re‐)Configuring Empathy between Bodies, Knowledge, and Power 287
  22. List of contributors 309
  23. Index of Authors 315
  24. Index of Subjects 319
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770216-013

Kapitel in diesem Buch

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. Acknowledgements VII
  4. Introduction: Affirmative and Critical Approaches to Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement 1
  5. Part 1: Challenging “Strong AI” from the Perspective of Human Agency
  6. The Artificiality of the Human Mind: A Reflection on Natural and Artificial Intelligence 17
  7. Merits and Limits of AI: Philosophical Reflections on the Difference between Instrumental Rationality and Praxis-Related Hermeneutical Reason 33
  8. Experience, Identity and Moral Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 51
  9. Outsourcing the Brain, Optimizing the Body: Retrotopian Projections of the Human Subject 79
  10. Life Care/Lebenssorge and the Fourth Industrial Revolution 101
  11. Part 2: Examining Merits and Limits of Applied AI
  12. AI’s Winograd Moment; or: How Should We Teach Machines Common Sense? Guidance from Cognitive Science 127
  13. Passing the Turing Test? AI Generated Poetry and Posthuman Creativity 151
  14. Why Neuroenhancement is a Philosophical Issue 167
  15. The Future of Artificial Intelligence in International Healthcare: An Index 181
  16. Part 3: Encounters with Artificial Beings in Film, Literature, and Theater
  17. Dark Ecology and Digital Images of Entropy: A Brief Survey of the History of Cinematic Morphing and the Computer Graphics of Artificial Intelligence 209
  18. Sentience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Enhancement in US-American Fiction and Film: Thinking With and Without Consciousness 225
  19. “I, Robot”: Artificial Intelligence and Fears of the Posthuman 237
  20. AI on Stage: A Cross-Cultural Check-Up and the Case of Canada and John Mighton 261
  21. Artificial Intelligence from Science Fiction to Soul Machines: (Re‐)Configuring Empathy between Bodies, Knowledge, and Power 287
  22. List of contributors 309
  23. Index of Authors 315
  24. Index of Subjects 319
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Heruntergeladen am 8.12.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110770216-013/html
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