Write a brief review of the AI fiction you chose to read or watch. Your review shouldn’t merely summarize the work — in fact, it should contain very little summary at all! Instead, your review should engage with the substance of the work. There are some guiding questions below, but feel free to incorporate other kinds of analysis as you see fit.

  • What assumptions does the creator make about the world, technology, and human beings?
  • What arguments is the creator making about the relationship between people and technology?
  • What is the vision of AI presented in the text? (Again, you’re analyzing rather than summarizing here! Don’t just say what the AI does, say what those actions mean for the abilities, nature, and ethical weight of the AI.)
  • How does this AI work draw on or inform other AI fictions we’ve encountered?

You’re encouraged to incorporate various kinds of media into your review. In the case of a movie or tv show, that might include GIFs or clips; but you can be as creative as you’d like here: memes, infographics, mind maps, audio, or anything else that helps you convey your ideas.

Your review should be a minimum of 300 words, posted to the class website as a blog post with the tag “AI fiction.”

Fiction options:

  • A Murder at the End of the World (tv show, currently on Hulu)
  • Robin Sloan, Sourdough (novel, available at Edwardsville Public Library in hardcover, audiobook, and ebook)
  • Mrs. Davis (tv show, currently on Peacock)
  • 2001: A Space Odyssey + Interstellar (movies, 2001 on Tubi and Interstellar on Netflix)
  • The Imitation Game + WarGames (movies, both on Max)
  • Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (novel, available at Edwardsville Public Library in hardcover, audiobook, and ebook)
  • Artificial Intelligence + I, Robot (movies, Artificial Intelligence on Pluto and I, Robot on Hulu)
  • Karel Čapek, Rossum’s Universal Robots + Metropolis (1927) (play and movie, both freely available)
  • Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (novel, available at Edwardsville Public Library in hardcover, audiobook, and ebook)