Social Robot Futures

About

Social Robot Futures is a venue for discussing how AI and robotics are changing what it means to be “human,” what “intelligence” stands for, how bodies and the Earth “matter,” and who counts as socially “productive.” Given big tech’s faith in algorithms and its plans for “AI everywhere,” the site hosts research into the industry’s founding assumptions in fiction, myth, and religion, and highlights debates in which “our future” with AI is at stake.

Learn More
About

Events

With producers intending to use the android Erica, designed by Hiroshi Ishiguro, in the lead role for their movie “b,” journalist Zach Scharf (Indiewire 25/06/20) asks, “What if Alex Garland’s 2014 science-fiction favorite Ex Machina starred a real artificially intelligent robot as Ava instead of Alicia Vikander?” The significance of this kind of crossover between applied AI and robots on one hand, and fictional narratives in film on the other, is but one of the discussion themes that will emerge in the upcoming Social Robot Futures film series. Stay tuned for more information on this public event, as well as for our proposed workshop, Disrupting AI.

Film Series
News & Ideas

News & Ideas

Whether or not it is true that “most people doing AI don’t have doubt that we’re machines,” the conflation of human and machine intelligence remains debatable. Such doubts underlie the information and ideas available on this site. Follow our BLOG for updates and commentary; and see RESOURCES for bibliographies and links. You can also follow us on Facebook for a curated news feed.