Book Review: Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, and Sarah Dillon (Eds.). AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines (2020). (original) (raw)

AI Narratives is a collection of essays exploring the relationship between human storytelling and the advancement of technology, with (as the title makes clear) an emphasis on artificial intelligence (AI). The implication is that, across time, there has been a conversation or dialogue unfolding within human activity, between storytellers and the builders, dreamers, and doers, those who imagine and those who make the world we live in a reality. This has not been a simple or focused conversation; there are many storytellers, many voices, many ideas being expressed (and the human imagination remains unlimited). And as time has moved forward, ideas have moved back and forth between imagination and reality, inspiring creators, whose works inspire even more incredible stories. Stephen Cave, Kanta Dihal, and Sarah Dillon (Eds.). AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines. Oxford University Press, March 14 2020, 448 pp., 22.33 x 2.54 x 14.43 cm, ISBN:‎ 978-0198846666