Table Of ContentSOCIAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES OF ROBOTS AND AI
Cyborg Futures
Cross-disciplinary
Perspectives on
Artificial Intelligence
and Robotics
Edited by
Teresa Heffernan
Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI
Series Editors
Kathleen Richardson
Faculty of Computing, Engineering, and Media
De Montfort University
Leicester, UK
Cathrine Hasse
Danish School of Education
Aarhus University
Copenhagen, Denmark
Teresa Heffernan
Department of English
St. Mary’s University
Halifax, NS, Canada
This is a groundbreaking series that investigates the ways in which the
“robot revolution” is shifting our understanding of what it means to be
human. With robots filling a variety of roles in society—from soldiers to
loving companions—we can see that the second machine age is already
here. This raises questions about the future of labor, war, our environ-
ment, and even human-to-human relationships.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15887
Teresa Heffernan
Editor
Cyborg Futures
Cross-disciplinary Perspectives on Artificial
Intelligence and Robotics
Editor
Teresa Heffernan
Department of English
St. Mary’s University
Halifax, NS, Canada
ISSN 2523-8523 ISSN 2523-8531 (electronic)
Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI
ISBN 978-3-030-21835-5 ISBN 978-3-030-21836-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21836-2
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In the later stages of dementia, my mother asked me what a social robot
was, and when I explained that they were humanoid machines designed
for, among other things, a care role, she, who had wonderful human
carers, responded, “Oh, that is the loneliest thing I have ever heard.”
In memory of my mother, Geraldine Joan Heffernan, 1923–2018.
A
cknowledgements
This collection began as a workshop at St. Mary’s University (SMU) in
Halifax. It would not have been possible without the support of the
University and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, for
which I am very grateful. Nor would it have been possible without the
generosity of the invited speakers who were open and willing to come
together to converse with other disciplines and contribute to the ongoing
discussions about the futures of robotics and artificial intelligence. The
students in my Cyborg Futures class at SMU were wonderful at helping
with the organization of the workshop and also keen participants in the
discussions. I would also like to thank the academic community and
members of the public who attended, physically and virtually. Karen Asp,
a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York
University and Social Robot Future’s web designer, deserves a special
thanks. She was invaluable in helping with the planning of the workshop
and the editing and indexing of this collection. My thanks also go to the
blind reviewers of the manuscript and to the production team and edito-
rial staff at Palgrave Macmillan, in particular, Rachel Nature Daniel and
her assistant Madison Allums.
vii
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
Teresa Heffernan
2 Evolution Ain’t Engineering: Animals, Robots, and the
Messy Struggle for Existence 17
John H. Long Jr.
3 Demystifying the Intelligent Machine 35
Lucy Suchman
4 A utonomy of Artificial Intelligence, Ecology, and
Existential Risk: A Critique 63
Karen Asp
5 V isions of Swarming Robots: Artificial Intelligence and
Stupidity in the Military- Industrial Projection of the
Future of Warfare 89
Patrick Crogan
6 T he Business of Ethics, Robotics, and Artificial Intelligence 113
Kathleen Richardson
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x CONTENTS
7 Fiction Meets Science: Ex Machina, Artificial Intelligence,
and the Robotics Industry 127
Teresa Heffernan
8 Rossum’s Mimesis 141
Jennifer Keating and Illah Nourbakhsh
9 Race and Robotics 159
Louis Chude-Sokei
Index 173
n c
otes on ontributors
Karen Asp is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at
York University. She holds an MA in Social and Political Thought (Acadia
University) and an MA in Geography (Simon Fraser University). Her doc-
toral dissertation draws on Adornian critical theory and Marxian political
economy to analyze how capitalist expansion and technological progress
are naturalized in contemporary “Anthropocene” narratives, particu-
larly with respect to planetary-scale ecological catastrophe. She was the
research assistant for the Social Robot Futures project, which culminated in
the Cyborg Futures Workshop and this collection.
Louis Chude-Sokei is Professor of English, the George and Joyce Wein
Chair of African American Studies and Director of the African American
Studies Program at Boston University. His work includes the award-
winning The Last Darky: Bert Williams, Black on Black Minstrelsy and the
African Diaspora (2005) and The Sound of Culture: Diaspora and Black
Technopoetics (2015). He is also Editor-in-Chief of The Black Scholar,
one of the oldest and currently leading journal of Black Studies in the
United States.
Patrick Crogan is Associate Professor of Digital Culture at the University
of the West of England, Bristol. He wrote Gameplay Mode: War, Simulation
and Technoculture (2011) and has had numerous essays published on digi-
tal media and cultural theory. He also edited a special issue of Cultural
Politics (2010) on Bernard Stiegler and wrote the Oxford Literary and
Critical Theory Bibliography entry on Stiegler (2017).
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