暗网吃瓜

Introduction

Originally conceived as a paired course with Humanities, this English course was developed and Beta-tested during the 2019-2020 academic year with the support of the AI Community of Practice. It grew out of an earlier iteration of a Reflections paired course in which Mari Heywood (Humanities) and I looked at theory and literature about travel, exploration, ethnography, and colonization of many kinds.

In the new, AI-inspired version of the English course, I wanted to continue to explore how we create The Other with language, storytelling, and imagination, with a view to recognizing this process in our relationship with AI. The idea was to look at examples of historical and fictional encounters 鈥� both between humans and with non-human intelligences (like non-human animals and Nature), then move into readings about speculative encounters with other life-forms and intelligences: microbial life, extraterrestrial life, and of course human-made intelligences like AI. By making connections between past encounters (historical and fictional), current theory, and speculative encounters, the class began to reimagine our relationship with technology and move towards new ways of thinking about non-human intelligences 鈥� be they new creations, extraterrestrial species, or fellow denizens of the world we live in right now.

Course Outline

Reading List

This list was partly aspirational as far as the course was concerned, but we did read and work with most of the texts you see here. Foundational to the course was Donna Harraway鈥檚听Cyborg Manifesto, in which ideas around hybridization, separation from origins, and solidarity with the non-human provided a liberating field in which to explore empathy, non-anthropocentric thinking, and questions around social contruction of gender, race, and technology.

Texts dealing with fictional encounters with strangers, (Book IX of Homer鈥檚听翱诲测蝉蝉别测听and excerpts from听Robinson Crusoe) and texts dealing with Nature and non-human animals allow students to explore how the history of hierarchization (as in听) and anthropocentric definitions of intelligence and culture show the violence humans do to everything we understand as separate and different from ourselves.

Students highlighted the excerpts from Carl Jung on the Shadow, Jacques Derrida on non-human animals, short stories 鈥淟etters from the Samantha鈥� and 鈥淭he Sandman,鈥� and Mary Shelley鈥檚听贵谤补苍办别苍蝉迟别颈苍听as favourite texts for exploring Othering/Alterity.

Encountering the Other and AI Futures 鈥� reading list

PowerPoint Slides

These can be used as stand-alone lessons accompanying specific short stories or excerpts from longer texts (excerpts provided in the PP). All of the lessons here could be used in non-literature centred courses, using fiction as a way to get into discussions of the potentialities of our interactions with technology 鈥� and AI in particular.

Stand-alone lesson with embedded small-group activity

Themes: Ethics of creation; the uncanny; brainstorming ethical use of tech in various fields of study

Using this PowerPoint, a class can critically examine the Frankenstein Analogy to talk about AI Ethics and work in groups to develop ideas about shaping our interactions with technology going forward. This was designed with a BXE class in mind. (Accompanying handout provided as optional brainstorm for the group activity)

frankenstein-analogy-module-good

frankenstein-module-brainstorm

The following PowerPoints have final slides with questions for further thought and discussion. PDF links are provided听for the stories.

Adaptable lesson on 鈥淭he Sandman鈥� by E.T.A. Hoffmann

Themes: Freud鈥檚 ideas of the uncanny and the double; Romanticism vs. rationality; Gender roles and AI

This lesson uses the classic proto-AI fiction, 鈥�,鈥澨�(link to Project Gutenberg)听an early examination of the relationship of humans to automata.

Assignments

Here are a few assignments that can serve as inspiration or be adapted to any course where human interactions with 鈥渙ther鈥� intelligences come into focus.

Brief homework assignment

Themes: effects of anthropocentrism, what art can teach us about technology

This was assigned about 1/3 of the way through our course, and the students really ran with it. Their thoughts on these questions informed much of the discussion and further work in the course, and many students cited this small assignment as marking a shift in their thinking about the course and about human relationships with The Other (including other humans, Nature, non-human animals, and technological intelligences) in general.