Featured image: ChatGPT by Jonathan Kemper, CC0 via Unsplash.

By Steven Filippi and Hope Jennings-Grounds   

Skynet. HAL 9000. Ultron. The Matrix. Fictional depictions of artificial intelligences have played a major role in Western pop culture for decades. While nowhere near that nefarious or powerful, real AI has been making incredible strides and, in 2023, has been a big topic of conversation in the news with the rapid development of new technologies, the use of AI generated images, and AI chatbots such as ChatGPT becoming freely accessible to the general public.

On today’s episode, we welcomed Dr Kerry McInerny and Dr Eleanor Drage, editors of Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Data, Algorithms and Intelligent Machines, and then Dr Kanta Dihal, co-editor of Imagining AI: How the World Sees Intelligent Machines, to discuss how AI can be influenced by culture, feminism, and Western narratives defined by popular TV shows and films. Should AI be accessible to all? How does gender influence the way AI is made? And most importantly, what are the hopes and fears for the future of AI?

Check out Episode 82 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment podcast through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors.
 

Recommended reading

Look out for Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data, and Intelligent Machines, edited by Jude Browne, Stephen Cave, Eleanor Drage, and Kerry McInerney, which publishes in the UK in August 2023 and in the US in October 2023. 

If you want to hear more from Dr Eleanor Drage and Dr Kerry McInerney, you can listen to their podcast: The Good Robot Podcast on Gender, Feminism and Technology.

In May 2023, the Open Access title, Imagining AI: How the World Sees Intelligent Machines, edited by Stephen Cave and Kanta Dihal publishes in the UK; it publishes in the US in July 2023.

You may also be interested in AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines, edited by Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, and Sarah Dillon, which looks both at classic AI to the modern age, and contemporary narratives.

You can read the following two chapters from AI Narratives for free until 31 May:

    Chapter 8: “Enslaved Minds: Artificial Intelligence, Slavery, and Revolt” by Kanta Dihal
    Chapter 9: “Machine Visions: Artificial Intelligence, Society, and Control” by Will Slocombe

Other relevant book titles include: 

    Relationships 5.0: How AI, VR, and Robots Will Reshape Our Emotional Lives by Elyakim Kislev
    Human-Centered AI by Ben Shneiderman (Read Chapter 16: “Social Robots and Active Appliances” for free until 31 May)

You may also be interested in the following journal articles: 

    “AI ethical bias: a case for AI vigilantism (AIlantism) in shaping the regulation of AI” by Ifeoma Elizabeth Nwafor from the Autumn 2021 International Journal of Law and Information Technology
    “My AI Friend: How Users of a Social Chatbot Understand Their Human–AI Friendship” by Petter Bae Brandtzaeg, Marita Skjuve, and Asbjørn Følstad from the July 2022 Human Communication Research (Open Access)
    “Persuasion in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (AI): Theories and Complications of AI-Based Persuasion” by Marco Dehnert and Paul A Mongeau from the July 2022 Human Communication Research

Episode 82 of The Oxford Comment was hosted by Hope Jennings-Grounds.

Kerry McInerney is a Christina Gaw Post-doctoral Research Associate in Gender and Technology at the University of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, and postdoctoral researcher on anti-Asian racism and AI at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and will be a Visiting Fellow at UCL's Institute of Advanced Studies this year. 

Eleanor Drage is also a Christina Gaw Post-doctoral Research Associate at the Centre for Gender Studies as well as a Research Associate of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, and a Research Associate at Darwin College, Cambridge. She examines how anti-racist and anti-sexist critical theory can be implemented at industry-level to develop ethical and socially transformative technological products. She has also spoken and written widely about gender, feminism, and technology for outlets such as the UN, Natwest, and IAI TV.

Kanta Dihal is a Science Communication researcher at Imperial College, London; previously, she was a Senior Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on science narratives, particularly those that emerge from conflict. She was Principal Investigator on the project 'Global AI Narratives' from 2018-2022, and currently works on 'Desirable Digitalisation', which investigates intercultural perspectives on AI and fundamental rights and values. She is co-editor of the books AI Narratives (2020) and her upcoming book with Stephen Cave, Imagining AI. She has advised the World Economic Forum, the UK House of Lords, and the United Nations and we are incredibly excited to have her on this podcast.

This episode was produced by Steven Filippi, Himalee Rupesinghe, and Hope Jennings-Grounds.