Talking AI Narratives with the Today Programme

download

The AI Narratives project at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence is one of the most exciting research projects I’ve ever been involved in, combining traditional individual scholarly research (we are all writing monographs connected in some way or other with the project), collaborative outputs (two edited collections and a journal special issue are currently in preparation) as well as significant and genuinely impactful outfacing work, facilitated by our collaboration with the Royal Society. The project website will be updated in the Spring so that we can share information about all the things we are doing more easily, but in the meantime we’re carrying on with our academic research and public engagement in earnest. I marked the end of 2017 with a brief appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (available here @ 1.53.13) in which I was at pains to counter media sensationalism with a message about the importance of analysing and diversifying popular narratives about AI if the technology is to provide a future we all want, rather than the one some of us fear.

Let the Future Commence…

download

With Deconstruction, Feminism, Film submitted and with it a number of intellectual questions I’ve been wrestling with for over a decade put to rest, I am now delightedly embracing my research on science fiction, and on science and literature. This work began whilst I was at St Andrews and has been bubbling along over the past three years, but it took a back seat to prioritise finishing the film book. Now it gets to take centre stage! Earlier this month, I joined the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence as a Senior Research Fellow and co-Project Lead on the AI Narratives project. I’ll be working alongside co-Project Leads Dr Stephen Cave, Executive Director of CFI, and Claire Craig, Director of Science and Policy at the Royal Society, as well as Kanta Dihal, our postdoctoral researcher and Associate Fellow, Dr Beth Singler. It’s a great team, and an exciting three year project to explore how AI is currently portrayed in literary, cinematic and other cultural narratives, what impact that might be having, and what we can learn from how other complex, novel technologies have been communicated. The Royal Society have also generously funded a more focused reboot of the What Scientists Read research I carried out with a multidisciplinary team in Scotland, so watch this space for updates on the AI Narratives project and on What AI Researchers Read…