My topic of research is the current advancement of AI and what it means for the future of our society. It asks the question “How well will our future civilization and production of AI coincide with the fiction we write about it?”. I will use several sources to strengthen my argument, and I will produce several subpages of my website devoted to examining different works of fiction and comparing them to scientific articles about the reality of our future. If we can take anything from the stories we read, is that this issue is a lot more human than we may think. Works like Blade Runner, Emily Eternal, and A.I take a look into the humanity of their sentient computerized protagonists, and introduce a host of issues while considering their place in society. Should the life of AI be valued the same as our own? Should we program them to have thoughts and emotions in the first place? Should we fix the issues of equality inside our own race before we introduce another? All of the characters in the highlighted works of fiction present unique perspectives that answer these lines of questioning, all of which I will consider while comparing them to the chosen articles.
My process will include searching for five to ten scientific articles to use as sources. I will examine and take notes on each of them, and compare them to each other. Each article will cover the place AI will have in our future, but I will make sure they all have a different perspective. Some articles will cover the different jobs AI will have, such as care providers or factory workers, and whether or not they will replace humans in the workplace. Some articles will look at the moral questioning I mentioned above, and consider the rights AI could have and if they should be the same as our own. I could also research articles covering the possibility of AI revolting against us, how they could impact climate change, privacy, security, and how we make sure they are created with good intention. After I find my sources, I will set up tabs on my website to compare them to specific pieces of fiction and investigate their potential reality. I’m not completely sure on which works I should focus on, but I’m considering Blade Runner, Emily Eternal, AI, Ex Machina, 2001: A Space Odyssey, I Am Mother, Terminator, and possibly Big Hero 6 and Avengers: Age of Ultron (but without the superheroes). I will write a few paragraphs about how realistically each movie or novel portrays the future, and relate them to my sources and line of inquiry. I will also create a homepage that states my thesis and presents a map to my website along with the purpose of its subpages.
My sources include Top 9 ethical issues in artificial intelligence, Robots appear more persuasive when pretending to be human, Artificial intelligence algorithm can learn the laws of quantum …, How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing Science, and How AI technology can tame the scientific literature, among additional texts I discover later.
I believe that developers should learn from science fiction and consider potential futures writers have imagined in order to properly introduce AI into society. Many stories present a futuristic society integrated with artificial intelligence to be a dystopia, and present reasons behind humanity’s downfall grounded in reality. Humans in these civilizations don’t recognize the crafted humanity inside the sentient programming they create, and it often leads to AI revolting against their superiors and serving as a metaphor for our own class inequality. If we don’t fix the bias against our own race within our current society, prejudice against AI will take us into a state of chaos too difficult to function. If we don’t learn from the mistakes of our fictional representations, then we are more likely to suffer the same fate. This is why I will examine their use in stories, and try to determine which path we should take.
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