This issue of NECSUS has been compiled, if not written, during the COVID-19 pandemic which has produced a shock across various existential domains: personal, social, political, economic, public health — the list goes on. Some of us may already have settled into new habits and routines that make this situation livable; yet a sense of […]
This paper aims to analyse how cultural products reflect the topics and problematics derived from technological and scientific advances and how these relate to the construction of the subject and power. Following the terminology coined by Foucault, this paper will refer to the technologies of the self and the technologies of power reflected in the new approaches to the relationships between humans and machines. In this precise sense, AI narratives and contemporary speculative fictions construct new realities in which factual truths turn into virtual realities and hyperrealities, usually addressing power and political conflicts as well as socioeconomic implications.
Computer games take up and extend traditional discourses on technology and artificial intelligence (AI). Moreover, representations of AI in computer games include not only narrative aspects but game mechanics as well. This contribution focuses on what distinguishes this kind of AI representation from other medial forms, and on how different types of AI representation can be identified within the computer games field. Overall, representations of AI make visible specific aspects and ideologies implied by the gameplay. From this perspective, it is outlined how these representations work either as support for fantasies of self-empowerment or as an emphasis on medial determination; moreover, cultural functions and meanings provided in this context are higlighted.
This article introduces the special section #Intelligence, which includes seven essays addressing the impact of artificial intelligence on cinema and media from a cultural perspective. More particularly, three levels of pertinence are focused on. For the first level, selected papers analyse several representations of non-human intelligence confronted with human intelligence, as provided by film, television series, and video games. On the second level, a set of mutual functioning dynamics between AI and the media are identified and scrutinised. On the third level, the contributing authors consider how AI algorithms lead cinema and media theory to deeply rethink its assumptions about creating and viewing moving images.
What can the Jewish myth of the Golem teach us about artificial intelligence? This article explores the Golem as one of the earliest AI prototypes and a myth that became a foundational story of sci-fi cinema. The Golem sets the parameters of opposition between men and intelligent or sentient machines, and at the same time points to possible third options beyond the dialectic of control.
This article uses the Google Clips camera as a case study to illustrate the impact of autonomous machine learning on self-perception, and to investigate how ‘delegation’ of our self to those cameras occurs. The research is based on reviews of the Google Clips camera, analysed using Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis (CAQDAS) and interpreted using Don Ihde’s postphenomonological framework complemented by Bruno Latour’s relation analysis. Positioning the Clips camera as a technological mediator, the analysis concentrates on human-technology-world interaction relations. The research findings include changes in self-perception through complex concepts, such as autonomy, agency, and rationality.
guest edited by Patricia Pisters (University of Amsterdam) and Ruggero Eugeni (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Milano) The advent of new algorithms of machine learning and AI is producing a profound revolution in societies: indeed, the ‘algorithmic turn’ involves cultural, cognitive, emotional, and practical layers of everyday life; from this point of view, AI directly […]
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Martine Beugnet
University of Paris 7 Diderot
Greg de Cuir Jr
University of Arts Belgrade
Malte Hagener
Philipps-University Marburg
Skadi Loist
Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf
Toni Pape
University of Amsterdam
Francesco Pitassio
University of Udine
Belén Vidal
King’s College London