Category: Searcher
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Week 6 Searcher Blog
DEMON SEED From the Author – Dean Koontz It was peculiar to read the original author’s perspective on Demon Seed. Contrary to expectations, the author wasn’t focusing on AI issues. Instead, the use of metaphor or symbolism served primarily to explore the concept of AI fascism, or more broadly, fascism. The author’s notes reveal that…
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Her: Gendering of AI
Is your AI lover also your servant? In “Her,” like the robotic character Kyoto in “Ex Machina,” Samantha is endowed with a female voice, thereby assigning her AI system a female gender identity. Mackereth posits, “In Her, the technology of gender is crucial for the credibility of the romance between Samantha and Theodore. Samantha’s femininity…
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Not human. Not code. But a secret third thing…
Humans cannot help but develop emotional attachments for the things they own and it certainly does not help that we anthropomorphize everything—that includes AI chatbots. Advancements in the artificial intelligence field are occurring faster than you can say knife and allowing chatbots to simulate emotional connections, and even enter marriages with us. Although these AI…
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The Ultimate Entrapment of Female Identity, Bluebeard motifs in Ex Machina (2015)
The most basic aspects of both Bluebeard and Ex Machina are found in most aspects of everyday society today. With the twenty-fist century’s rapid communication revolution, the purely physical expectations for the female and male body are ever expanding. However, by taking a non-mortal element of artificial intelligence, the expectations of the subsequent female bodily…
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Week 5 Searcher Blog
Eliza – one of the first chatterbots (chatbot) and one of the first case of Turing Test. The Eliza Effect: The tendency to project human traits – such as experience, semantic comprehension, or empathy – into computer programs that have a textual interface. The effect is a category mistake that arises when the program’s symbolic…
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Fembots Need a Body
Android refers to a human-like robot and is the default category, like robot. Technically, android is a masculine description that we use as an umbrella term. Don’t you worry, however, there are categories for female-gendered robots: gynoid and fembot. Robots are literally genderless. As movies, tech bros, and anyone else attempting to create or depict…
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The Success of AI
In “Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works,” Chloe Xiang explores Artificial Intelligence (AI) models and their failed ability to explain biased outputs. These processes are deemed opaque as the model itself is a black box. As Xiang explains, it yields an output in which scientists generally accept because it tends to be what “they…
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Week 3 Searcher Blog
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/26/17283314/2001-a-space-odyssey-music-stanley-kubrick-50th-anniversary Music is a big component in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), considering the sparse 40 minutes of dialogue spread across the nearly two-and-a-half-hour cinematic journey. The profound stillness of space, coupled with the serene and deliberate pace of visuals, starkly contrasts the impactful role of sound and music, ultimately placing a significant emphasis on…
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Where are the Women?
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) provides plenty of slower moments that force a viewer to reflect. One major question I had on my mind was, Where are the women? The few women in the story barely have any screen time or lines, and are minimal in the grand scheme of the film. In…