New Imaginaries of the Artificial Intelligence

• Main Authors: Stefano Bory, Paolo Bory
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Mimesis Edizioni, Milano 2016-03-01
• Series: Im@go. A Journal of the Social Imaginary
• Subjects: Artificial Intelligence; Socio-technical Imaginary; Narratives; Science Fiction; Castoriadis; HCI
• Online Access: http://cab.unime.it/journals/index.php/IMAGO/article/view/1200

The paper aims to investigate the relationship between the artificial intelligence as narrated by science fiction movies in the late five decades and the socio-technical imaginary related to intelligent systems.The first sci-fi movies in analysis shed away from the idea of a symbiotic interaction between humans and AI as forecast during the 1960s by informatics and AI scientists. Afterwards, from the 1970s to the 1990s, AI systems played mainly the role of mirrors for the crisis of human identity: in these narratives the AI is presented as a risk, a possible enemy for human kind. Finally, during the last twenty years, a new frontier of AI seems to emerge in the imaginary. More recent stories forecast a future in which intelligent systems try to take their own place in the human social environment.All these perspectives emerge in conjunction with innovations and technical experimentations, bringing back up the relationship between “legein” and “teukein” as theorized by Cornelius Castoriadis.