AI: Fact vs Fiction with Ian McEwan and Murray Shanahan at The Barbican

downloadI’ve been cutting back on my public work lately in order to focus more on my academic research and writing, but when the Barbican asked if I’d like to host an event on AI: Fact vs Fiction with Ian McEwan and Murray Shanahan I couldn’t say no. I’d just finished McEwan’s new novel, Machines Like Me, and have known and respected Murray for many years now.

The event was part of a range of public activities taking place around the Barbican’s AI: More Than Human exhibition, and part of McEwan’s public events promoting the publication of the new novel. The evening wasn’t focused on the novel and I’ll save my views on it, and on McEwan’s comments on SF in interview about it, for another post. Rather, that evening we were focused on exploring the history of our AI imaginings and their relation to the actual science. The podcast of the discussion is available here.

Final Literary Pursuit for Me: Golding’s Lord of the Flies

download-1The eighth episode of my documentary series Literary Pursuits aired this weekend on BBC Radio 3 and can be heard again here. It tells the story of how Golding’s Lord of the Flies made it off the reject pile at Faber and Faber into becoming one of the most iconic novels of the twentieth century. It was incredibly special to interview Golding’s daughter Judy Carver, and to see Golding’s journals, which very few people have ever had access to. In fact, all my interviewees were just wonderful for this programme, the story came easily, and it was, as always, a total pleasure to work with my producer Sara Conkey. The story itself, unexpectedly for us, ended up in fact being rather sad. Which made it even more poignant that this was the final episode of Literary Pursuits Sara and I are to make together. Researching, writing and recording these programmes over the past four years has been a joyous experience. I have learnt so much, both about the novels we worked on and their stories, and about how to make compelling radio documentaries whilst staying true to my scholarly values. I have travelled across Britain, and across the channel, and have conducted interviews I will never forget – sitting with Diana Athill as she shared her memories of Jean Rhys and the journey to publication of Wide Sargasso Sea is perhaps the greatest of the many privileges and pleasures that making this series has afforded. Unfortunately, Literary Pursuits has also required a huge amount of time and creative energy, both of which I now wish to devote more exclusively to my academic work, and to my family. It was a hard decision to stand down as writer and presenter, but I hope that people will still listen to the eight episodes we made and take as much pleasure and knowledge from them in the listening as we gained in the making.

 

 

Literary Pursuits Episode 7: Les Miserables

p06vkqq8In my seventh Literary Pursuit I head off to Paris to learn all about the writing of one of the greatest works of French fiction, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. I discovered that the story behind the Victor Hugo’s classic novel is one of adultery, revolution, political intrigue and exile. And that it’s not so removed from contemporary Paris as one might think, given we got caught up in a street protest trying to find the hotel from the railway station!

2019 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University Launched!

NSSA_Horizontal_2019The 2019 BBC National Short Story Award with Cambridge University launches today, with the judges announced and submissions opening to find the best short story for 2019. It remains a total pleasure to work with the BBC on this partnership, and with First Story on the BBC Young Writers’ Award with First Story and Cambridge University, and the BBC Student Critics’ Award with First Story and Cambridge University. You can find all the details about the awards, including how to enter, here.

AI Narratives Report Published with the Royal Society

Screen Shot 2019-02-17 at 19.14.08Over the past year, the AI Narratives project at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, in collaboration with the Royal Society, has held a series of four workshops exploring:

  • which narratives around intelligent machines are most prevalent, and their historical roots;
  • what can be learned from how the narrative around other complex, new technologies developed, and the impact of these;
  • how narratives are shaping the development of AI, and the role of arts and media in this process; and
  • the implications of current AI narratives for researchers and communicators.

Today we’re delighted to publish a report which brings together the conclusions of these workshops, and which should hopefully be useful for anyone interested in how AI is portrayed and perceived.

 

 

Global AI Narratives Launches, with first workshops in Singapore and Tokyo

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Building on our work on the AI Narratives project at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, this month we launched the Global AI Narratives, a three-year project running from 2018 to 2021. During that time, we’ll be holding ten one- to two-day workshops across DSC_0303_glFIcd0the world, each taking place in a different region outside the UK and North America. Each workshop brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers and practitioners from fields related to AI narratives, such as science fiction scholars, artists, AI researchers, philosophers, writers, and anthropologists, in order to explore the prevalent AI Narratives in different regions of the globe. We hope that these collaborations will foster underrepresented voices that are currently absent from global AI debates.

The first workshop took place at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, and the second at Waseda University in Tokyo, in September 2018.

BBC Radio 4’s Open Book at the Edinburgh Literary Festival

IMG_1087On 23rd August, I had the pleasure of heading back up to Scotland to take part in a live edition of BBC Radio 4’s Open Book on Literary Criticism, broadcast from the Edinburgh Literary Festival. This special edition explored book criticism and reviewing in the twenty-first century, and whether using critical tools can make us better readers (which I obviously think it does!).

CogX 2018

Cog_X_logo_Grey-01This week I took part in CogX 2018, a vibrant, buzzing, mind-expanding, sector-spanning festival around all things AI. The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence AI Narratives Team used it as an opportunity to share our work with a wide audience. I hosted a panel called ‘”Stop the Terminator Chat” – How to Talk about AI And Avoid the Pitchfork Moment’ and we held a public workshop analysing representations of AI in the media, discussing the problems with them, and speculating on how such representation might be improved. I also had the pleasure of chairing another panel, ‘Can AI be Creative?’, which included some poetic, artistic and humorous challenges to the audience, to distinguish between human and artificial creativity. Both panels are available to watch online.

Literary Pursuits: E.M. Forster’s Maurice

Photo Credit: PicNik Studios, Cambridge

Photo Credit: PicNik Studios, Cambridge

Literary Pursuits returned to the BBC Radio 3 airwaves in July with Episode 5 on E. M. Forster’s secret book Maurice. With the Forster archives on my doorstep at King’s College Cambridge, I didn’t have to travel far for this one, but the book itself had a remarkable journey from Cambridge to America, passed hand to hand by men risking imprisonment to transport it from Forster to Christopher Isherwood. I start with this journey in order to discover the wonderful and moving story behind this seminal text in the history of gay literature.

And so I’m back, from outer space…

On location, Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona. A rare moment of getting to hold the kit for a photo op as the roof of the observatory is opened.

On location, Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona. A rare moment of getting to hold the kit for a photo op as the roof of the observatory is opened.

After 6 months in solitary academic confinement, and with The Book triumphantly written, the beginning of 2017 has seen me return to life beyond my study with renewed enthusiasm and vigour. I’ve spent the past few months steeped in the Martian imaginings of our greatest writers and scientists for a BBC Radio 4 documentary on mankind’s romance with the red planet, for which I had the great if exhausting pleasure of a weekend trip to Mars’ Earth analogue, Arizona. We visited Percival Lowell’s Flagstaff observatory to learn more about how it all began, and then descended to Phoenix to talk about where we are now, with contemporary Mars scientists at Arizona State University. There may also have been a morning spent barsooming around the Arizona desert – as close to Mars as I’m ever going to get – imagining encounters with magnificent and fearsome six-limbed Tharks. And if that sounds a little frivolous, I can assure you that it was actually very illuminating: standing on red rock, looking across the barren desert to the dust clouds on the distant horizon, it suddenly made sense why that landscape inspired the original literary visionary of Mars – Edgar Rice Burroughs – whose experiences on those plains and encounters with their native inhabitants shaped his Martian imaginings. The programme will be broadcast as part of Radio 4’s Martian Festival at the beginning of March – more details to follow.

I also had the pleasure this week of a stimulating hour’s conversation with SF writers Roz Kaveney and Aliette de Bodard for an episode of Radio 4’s Beyond Belief on religion and science fiction, which will be broadcast on Monday 13th March. And, to knock a little realism into me, next month I’ll start recording my new series of Literary Pursuits by investigating the story behind the story of E. M. Forster’s posthumously published Maurice. Fortunately, neither interplanetary nor transatlantic travel is necessary to get started on that investigation, since a treasure trove of Forster’s papers sits on my doorstep in King’s College Cambridge’s modern archives.