IMAGINING ARTIFICIAL SUBJECTS

Course Description

In this exploratory workshop, we will take on the breadth of artificial intelligences in science fiction as inspiration to question and reimagine how AI is represented in contemporary media. Students will brainstorm and present their own creative representations of artificial subjectivities as we ask: what insights and complications arise from the artificial in artificial intelligence? How might science fiction as a medium expand our understandings of AI? Ultimately: can we manipulate genre to reimagine cognition and intelligence? Through a mix of reading, discussion, and creative generation, this course aims to unearth the core value assumptions at the heart of AI SF, and in so doing, re-imagine the original Uncanny. This is a student-led colloquium led by Kat Yuen (kyuen@ucsb.edu) under the supervision of Rudy Busto.