Table of Contents

Introduction
Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal and Sarah Dillon: Imagining AI
PART I - ANTIQUITY TO MODERNITY
1: Genevieve Liveley and Sam Thomas: Homer's Intelligent Machines: AI in Antiquity
2: E. R. Truitt: Demons and Devices: Artificial and Augmented Intelligence before AI
3: Minsoo Kang and Ben Halliburton: The Android of Albertus Magnus: A Legend of Artificial Being
4: Kevin LaGrandeur: Artificial Slaves in the Renaissance and the Dangers of Independent Innovation
5: Julie Park: Making the Machine Speak: Hearing Artificial Voices in the Eighteenth Century
6: Megan Ward: Victorian Fictions of Computational Creativity
7: Paul March-Russell: Machines Like Us? Modernism and the Question of the Robot
PART II - MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY
8: Kanta Dihal: Enslaved Minds: Artificial Intelligence, Slavery, and Revolt
9: Will Slocombe: Machine Visions: Artificial Intelligence, Society, and Control
10: Graham Matthews: "A push-button type of thinking": Automation, Cybernetics, and AI in Mid-century British Literature
11: Beth Singler: Artificial Intelligence and the Parent/Child Narrative
12: Anna McFarlane: AI and Cyberpunk Networks
13: Stephen Cave: AI: Artificial Immortality and Narratives of Mind-Uploading
14: Sarah Dillon and Michael Dillon: Artificial Intelligence and the Sovereign-Governance Game
15: Kate Devlin and Olivia Belton: The Measure of a Woman: Fembots, Fact and Fiction
16: Gabriel Recchia: The Fall and Rise of AI: Investigating AI Narratives with Computational Methods

About the Author

Stephen Cave

Dr Stephen Cave is Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Philosophy, and Fellow of Hughes Hall, all at the University of Cambridge. After earning a PhD in philosophy from Cambridge, he joined the British Foreign Office, where he spent ten years as a policy advisor and diplomat, before returning to academia. His research interests currently focus on the nature, portrayal and governance of AI. Kanta Dihal

Dr Kanta Dihal is a postdoctoral researcher at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge. She is the Principal Investigator on the Global AI Narratives project, and the Project Development Lead on Decolonizing AI. In her research, she explores how fictional and nonfictional stories shape the development and public understanding of artificial intelligence. Kanta's work intersects the fields of science communication, literature and science, and science fiction.
She is currently working on two monographs: Stories in Superposition, based on her DPhil thesis, and AI: A Mythology, with Stephen Cave. Sarah Dillon

Dr Sarah Dillon is University Lecturer in Literature and Film in the Faculty of English, University of Cambridge. Her books include The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory (2007), Deconstruction, Feminism, Film (2018), and Listen: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning (2020, co-authored with Claire Craig). She is the General Editor of the series Gylphi Contemporary Writers: Critical Essays, and editor of two volumes in the series: David Mitchell: Critical Essays (2011), and Maggie Gee:
Critical Essays (2015, co-ed). Dr Dillon was a 2013 BBC Radio 3/Arts and Humanities Research Council New Generation Thinker and regularly broadcasts on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4.

Reviews

A path-breaking book that surveys the important place of narrative in the long history of the interaction between humans and intelligent machines.
*Ronald R. Kline, Technology and Culture, January 2023*

All of the chapters are well researched, well argued, and informative, whether they recount a recent book by the author or present new research ... These virtues make AI Narratives a path-breaking book that surveys the important place of narrative in the long history of the interaction between humans and intelligent machines in Europe and the United States.
*Ronald R. Kline, Ronald R. Kline is Bovay Professor of History and Ethics of Engineering, Emeritus, at Cornell University, Technology and Culture*

Readers will find in this volume a rewarding trove of narrative analyses that inform contemporary thinking about the social and political consequences of AI and prompt further historical investigation.
*Sam Schirvar, Isis*

The editors have organized wide-ranging historical and critical materials into an admirably coherent set of chapters that focus on our age-old interests in myths, legends, and stories about artificial life, especially when it looks like us ... AI Narratives is consistently interesting and critically significant.
*Veronica Hollinger, Science Fiction Studies*

... a milestone book, ... sure to become required reading for any undergraduate course on the intersection of technology and the humanities, ....
*Madeleine Chalmers, Prometheus *

... consistently interesting and critically significant.
*Veronica Hollinger, Science Fiction Studies, Vol 48 (2021)*

Drawing on diverse perspectives, this compelling collection shows how AI narratives have prompted critical reflection on human-machine relations, moving beyond the reductive dichotomy that pits visions of happy humans with AI-slaves against visions of defeated humans ruled by machines. By invoking such concepts as equality, rights and social justice, the essays investigate what it means to be human in an increasingly automated world.
*Audrey Borowski, Times Literary Supplement*

The collection's focus on the history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines, as well as the importance of narrative itself, offers a study that has been lacking in Al criticism. By including both literal and figurative representations of machine intelligence, the collection identifies the role of sf in the interplay between fiction and non-fiction, but brings to the fore the importance of non-sf through the exploration of narratives that intersect with understandings of Al, and engage with concepts that underpin societal understandings of machines, humans and their continued, growing coexistence.
*Matthew J. Wolf-Meyer, Foundation*

a powerful account of AI imaginaries
*Stephen Hughes, Public Understanding of Science Journal*

AI Narratives triumphantly paves the way for future work in AI humanities. Individual chapters—all balancing historical context with sharp analysis—would make valuable additions to relevant module syllabi, and the volume would be of certain advantage to any reader seeking a fresh and substantiated approach to AI scholarship. This is only a first glance into this kaleidoscopic field of study, but it positions future researchers well for imaginative thinking about their own perceptions.
*Dr Leah Henrickson, Reviews in History*