A.I.: Artificial Intelligence in Fiction

From self-driving cars to bots that alter democratic elections, artificial intelligence is growing increasingly powerful and prevalent in our everyday lives. Literature has long been speculating about the techno-utopia¿and catastrophe¿that A.I. could usher in. Indeed, literature itself presents us with a kind of A.I. in the many characters that speak and think in its pages. But how do we classify an intelligence as ¿artificial¿ or not? Is there a clear boundary that demarcates bodies from machines? What, if anything, separates the ¿genre¿ of technology from that of literature? What classifies literature as ¿science fiction,¿ ¿scientific,¿ ¿futuristic,¿ ¿psychological,¿ or ¿dystopian¿? And can technology or literature ever overcome the ultimate division between all intelligences¿the problem of other minds? This course consists in curated multi-genre combinations of literature, philosophy, film, and television that explore what makes someone¿or something¿a person in our world today. Special events will include celebrating the current bicentennial of Mary Shelley¿s Frankenstein (1818) in Stanford Special Collections; a possible visit to Stanford¿s A.I. Laboratory; and chatting with the ELIZA chatbot.