AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines

Price: $45.00
(as of Mar 26, 2026 02:43:08 UTC – Details)


This book is the first to examine the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. As real Artificial Intelligence (AI) begins to touch on all aspects of our lives, this long narrative history shapes how the technology is developed, deployed and regulated. It is therefore a crucial social and ethical issue. Part I of this book provides a historical overview from ancient Greece to the start of modernity. These chapters explore the revealing pre-history of key concerns of contemporary AI discourse, from the nature of mind and creativity to issues of power and rights, from the tension between fascination and ambivalence to investigations into artificial voices and technophobia. Part II focuses on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in which a greater density of narratives emerge alongside rapid developments in AI technology. These chapters reveal not only how AI narratives have consistently been entangled with the emergence of real robotics and AI, but also how they offer a rich source of insight into how we might live with these revolutionary machines. Through their close textual engagements, these chapters explore the relationship between imaginative narratives and contemporary debates about AI’s social, ethical and philosophical consequences, including questions of dehumanization, automation, anthropomorphisation, cybernetics, cyberpunk, immortality, slavery, and governance. The contributions, from leading humanities and social science scholars, show that narratives about AI offer a crucial epistemic site for exploring contemporary debates about these powerful new technologies.
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 24, 2024
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Print length ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0198914709
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0198914709
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.35 x 0.79 x 8.47 inches
Best Sellers Rank: #1,907,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #445 in Human-Computer Interaction (Books) #2,247 in Artificial Intelligence & Semantics #3,636 in History & Philosophy of Science (Books)
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