{"id":92392,"date":"2021-10-11T05:13:33","date_gmt":"2021-10-11T09:13:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=92392"},"modified":"2021-10-11T05:45:58","modified_gmt":"2021-10-11T09:45:58","slug":"ai-imaginaries-artificial-intelligence-in-literature-cfp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2021\/10\/ai-imaginaries-artificial-intelligence-in-literature-cfp.html","title":{"rendered":"AI Imaginaries: Artificial Intelligence in Literature #CFP"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

This call for papers<\/a> came to my attention:<\/p>\n

ACLA 2022 Annual Meeting
\nJune 15-18, 2022
\nNational Taiwan Normal University
\nOrganizer: Dr L. Acadia (acadia@ntu.edu.tw)
\nSubmit a proposal: https:\/\/www.acla.org\/node\/add\/paper
\nDeadline: October 31, 2021 (11:59PM PST)<\/p>\n

Literature\u2019s imaginings of Artificial Intelligence reflect ethical and social values, shape public hopes and fears, inspire technological development, and may even prefigure our futures. Humans are constructing AI: not only programmers through their coding, but also authors and readers through centuries of discourse, from ancient automatons to twentieth century robots to contemporary visions of artificial general intelligence. As AI becomes ever more human\u2014and possibly superhuman\u2014this panel asks, what are we constructing, and what\u00a0can literature teach us about these AI imaginaries?<\/p>\n

What ideals for the future do AI narratives express? Or to use Sheila Jasanoff and Sang-Hyung Kim\u2019s term, how do we read the \u201csociotechnical imaginaries\u201d of AI in speculative fiction? What shame from the past do these texts evoke? Kanta Dihal reads AI revolts in literature as slave narratives of \u201censlaved minds,\u201d engaging the debate over whether humans should maintain dominance over machines, or engender respect for other intelligences and even grant rights to AI as Eileen Hunt Botting hopes, writing \u201cpassed down through cultures, humanity is an artificial form of collective emotional intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Should we fear singularity or welcome AI as other creatures? What innovations (technological or otherwise) should we strive to bring from literature into our lives? What is literature\u2019s potential for guiding development of AI? How might a country like Taiwan integrate literature into the curriculum training the next generation of developers to strengthen the semiconductor industry? Or if the AI of speculative fiction are, as Lee Worth Bailey argues, merely \u201chuman dreamlike analogies projected onto clockwork puppets in an unconscious fairy tale,\u201d then what do these projections say about their human authors? What are geographic, temporal, or linguistic differences in depictions of AI? What would it mean to queer AI? What are the utopian imaginings of SF machine futures?<\/p>\n

This panel invites submissions reflecting diverse critical approaches, geographical areas, and historical eras, from ancient proto-AI (e.g. The<\/em>\u00a0Mah\u0101vastu,\u00a0<\/em>Apollonius Rhodius\u2019s\u00a0Argonautika,\u00a0<\/em>Lie Yukou\u2019s\u00a0Liezi<\/em>), through early speculative fiction (e.g. Edmund Spenser\u2019s \u201cThe Faerie Queene,\u201d Auguste Villiers de l\u2019Isle-Adam\u2019s\u00a0L\u2019\u00c8ve future,\u00a0<\/em>Mary Shelley\u2019s\u00a0Frankenstein<\/em>), and classic SF (e.g. Karel \u010capek\u2019s\u00a0R.U.R.,\u00a0<\/em>Isaac Asimov\u2019s \u201cMultivac\u201d stories, Anne McCaffrey\u2019s\u00a0The Ship Who Sang<\/em>), to contemporary literature (e.g. Nnedi Okorafor\u2019s \u201cMother of Invention,\u201d Becky Chambers\u2019s\u00a0A Closed and Common Orbit<\/em>, Kazuo Ishiguro\u2019s\u00a0Klara and the Sun<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Of related interest:<\/p>\n

Automated devotions<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n