Discussion – Social Robot Futures

Awakening to the Realities of AI in Healthcare

July 20, 2020September 16, 2021

I was standing in an airport customs line when I realized that I wanted to be a physician. An announcement sounded overhead – an employee asking if anyone present was a doctor. My parents, both in medicine, shared a look. We were already at risk of missing our connecting flight and neither of them were currently in general practice or emergency medicine. When no one else stepped forward, my father pushed through the nearby crowd that had formed around a seated woman, crouched to her level, and told her that he was a doctor.

Discussion

A Comment on “Living Robots”

April 7, 2020September 16, 2021

By Yaqub Chaudhary

In mid-January 2020, it was reported that scientists created the first “living robot” which represents a new class of biological artefact in the form of a “programmable organism” according to headlines in the Independent and Wired. Elsewhere, the ability of these new entities to “walk” was highlighted by the Guardian, opening up possibilities for potential advances of the technology for “drug delivery” and “toxic waste clean-up” as highlighted by Science Daily, all of which invites new “opportunities and risks” according to Forbes.

Discussion

The Tyranny of Life Under Algorithms: A Short Meditation

November 24, 2019October 12, 2021

By Teresa Heffernan

Alan Turing–the force behind theoretical computer science, artificial intelligence, and the Universal Turing Machine–was instrumental in cracking intercepted coded messages, which enabled the Allies to defeat the Nazis. He was charged with “gross indecency” in 1952 and punished for homosexuality. He submitted to chemical castration in lieu of prison.

Discussion

Enchanting Robots: Intimacy, Magic, and Technology

June 27, 2019September 20, 2021

Book Review by Sue Smith

“Enchanting Robots: Intimacy, Magic, and Technology is part of the book series, Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI, edited by Kathleen Richardson, Cathrine Hasse and Teresa Heffernan, and is written by Polish academic, Maciej Musiał. In Enchanting Robots Musiał discusses ‘magic’ and ‘magical thinking’ in order to critically assess humanity’s current and projected future relationship with newly emerging robot technology.

Discussion

Reading the Human through Robots and AI

May 31, 2019September 20, 2021

Book review by Teresa Heffernan (forthcoming in Novel)

Debates about whether robots will take over jobs or open up as yet unimagined career possibilities dominate the headlines. Silicon Valley and the techno optimists promise us that robots will automate boring jobs and create new ones, leaving humans free to pursue their interests in the arts and sciences and ushering in a great era of equality, creativity, and freedom.

Discussion

War in the Age of Intelligent Machines

June 4, 2018September 16, 2021

By Bryn Shaffer

This March, Saint Mary’s University played host to an engaging and heated debate on the use of autonomous weapons of war, as part of the Automaton! From Ovid to AI public lecture series. The debate, video of which is available at CBC News, was between acclaimed BBC commentator and activist Dr. Noel Sharkey, and Dalhousie philosophy professor Dr. Duncan MacIntosh. It was moderated by Dalhousie professor of philosophy Dr. Letitia Meynell.

Discussion

Why Technoscience Needs Fiction

April 27, 2018October 12, 2021

By Teresa Heffernan

As science was emerging as a discrete and soon to be dominant way of knowing and as the industrial revolution was transforming the English country-side, Thomas Love Peacock in his “Four Ages of Poetry” (1820) argued that poetry was increasingly useless and retrograde in the age of scientific invention: “A poet in our times is a semi-barbarian in a civilized community. He lives in the days that are past. His ideas, thoughts, feelings, associations, are all with barbarous manners, obsolete customs, and exploded superstitions. The march of his intellect is like that of a crab, backward.”

Discussion

Force of Gravity in Space “Man” World

July 22, 2017September 5, 2021

By Karen Asp

“Genders in Space: Science Fiction, Cyborgs, and Alien Pleasures” was the intriguing name given to one of the panels at a trans-disciplinary, public conference hosted last month by the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry (ICI Berlin). The panel speakers, Silvia Casalino, James Burton, and Hania Siebenpfeiffer discussed gender relations in specific off-world sci-fi narratives: The Female Man (J. Russ 1975); Planet of the Apes (film adaptations); and the German novels None of You on Earth (R. Jirgl 2013), and The Future of Mars (G. Klein 2013).

Discussion

Science Museum Exhibit: Robotic Delights or Disappointments?

June 23, 2017October 12, 2021

By Teresa Heffernan

The tagline at the 2017 Robot Exhibit at the Science Museum in London reads “the 500-year quest to make machines human.” The show has attracted a great deal of media attention—The Guardian’s review announced: “Science Museum’s robotic delights hold a mirror to human society” while The Telegraph preview reads “A truly mind-bending array of humanoid imagery ” and the Londonist insists “You HAVE TO SEE Robots At The Science Museum.”[i]

Discussion

An Exception Has Occurred: The Beauty, Dangers, and Inevitability…

May 29, 2017September 16, 2021

By Ellen MacIntosh

During his presentation at the Cyborg Futures Workshop (March 31-April 1^st, 2017), author Vikram Chandra called attention to an issue previously overlooked during the conference: the presence of bugs and ambiguity in computer code. Other speakers expressed concern over the potential repercussions of using inexact language when speaking about artificial intelligence, particularly in terms of society’s tendency to anthropomorphize robots. Chandra spoke about the effects of ambiguity in more practical terms though, drawing attention to the fact that computer code is a form of communication that is especially susceptible to indeterminate language.