Helen A'Loy and other tales of female automata: a gendered reading of the narratives of hopes and fears of intelligent machines and artificial intelligence

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dc.date.accessioned 2022-08-17T13:26:57Z
dc.date.available 2022-08-17T13:26:57Z
dc.date.issued 2019-11-01 en
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/14956
dc.description.abstract The imaginative context in which artificial intelligence (AI) is embedded remains a crucial touchstone from which to understand and critique both the histories and prospective futures of an AI-driven world. A recent article from Cave and Dihal sets out a narrative schema of four hopes and four corresponding fears associated with intelligent machines and AI. This article seeks to respond to the work of Cave and Dihal by presenting a gendered reading of this schema of hopes and fears. The author offers a brief genealogy of narratives which feature female automata, before turning to examine how gendered technology today particularly AI assistants like Siri and Alexa reproduces the historical narratives associated with intelligent machines in new ways. Through a gendered reading of the hopes and fears associated with AI, two key responses arise. First, that the affective reactions to intelligent machines cannot be readily separated where such machines are gendered female. And second, that the gendering of AI technologies today can be understood as an attempt to reconcile the opposing hopes and fears AI produces, and that this reconciliation is based on the association of such technologies with traditional notions of femininity. Critically, a gendered reading enables us to problematize the narratives associated with AI and expose the power asymmetries that lie within, and the technologies which arise out of, such narratives. en
dc.format.medium Print en
dc.subject ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE en
dc.subject GENDER en
dc.title Helen A'Loy and other tales of female automata: a gendered reading of the narratives of hopes and fears of intelligent machines and artificial intelligence en
dc.type Journal Article en
dc.description.version Y en
dc.ProjectNumber N/A en
dc.Volume October en
dc.BudgetYear 2019/20 en
dc.ResearchGroup Research Use and Impact Assessment en
dc.SourceTitle AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication en
dc.ArchiveNumber 11027 en
dc.URL http://ktree.hsrc.ac.za/doc_read_all.php?docid=21813 en
dc.PageNumber Online en
dc.outputnumber 10129 en
dc.bibliographictitle Adams, R. (2019) Helen A'Loy and other tales of female automata: a gendered reading of the narratives of hopes and fears of intelligent machines and artificial intelligence. AI & Society: Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Communication. October:Online. http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/14956 en
dc.publicationyear 2019 en
dc.contributor.author1 Adams, R. en


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