Interactions: Studies in Communication & Culture - The Human and the Machine: AI Hopes and Fears in Media & Society, Oct 2022

This article critically examines the implementation of artificial intelligence (AI) in the criminal justice system, which is praised for its potential to increase operational efficiency, provide rehabilitative services, reduce recidivism and improve communication with(in) the prison context. However, critics highlight significant human rights concerns in smart prisons, noting that AI-driven technologies amplify carceral surveillance, invade privacy and perpetuate biased profiling, exacerbating the psychological, mental and physical conditions of both prisoners and their communities. Drawing on emerging literature, global trends and practical examples, the article investigates how AI gradually changes the dynamics of both carceral communication and the future of penal justice at large.

This article investigates the ramifications of search engine algorithms for journalism practice and its professional commitment to serving the public interest. Taking a discipline-transcending approach that combines quantitative data analysis with an exploration of the social forces shaping knowledge production in journalism, we examine a case study involving New Zealand media’s coverage of economic recession. This inquiry addresses the question of how journalists navigate the terrain of algorithms and respond to the challenges posed by programme-based news production in relation to their professional norms. Our study highlights the significant role of search engines, particularly Google, in shaping the journalistic newsgathering process and, consequently, public understanding of social issues. The computer-assisted analysis of Google’s ‘recession’ news selection revealed distinct patterns in the distribution of news content and geographical bias towards the United States within the selection algorithm. Ethnographic research at one Auckland newsroom revealed that Google Search is a fundamental tool for journalists, albeit used primarily for basic information-gathering and fact-checking rather than in-depth investigative work.

This article aims to contribute to a wider discourse on the implications of technologies on notions of selfhood, identity, social constructs and power dynamics by delving into the literary representation of brain–computer interfaces (BCIs) in selected science fiction (SF) tests. Adopting an interdisciplinary approach that synthesizes phenomenology and identity politics theories, this article explores the intricacies of BCI in two SF texts: The Terminal Man by Michael Crichton and ‘The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling’ by Ted Chiang. The analysis hinges on the multifaceted implications of its integration of concepts of identity and selfhood. Bestowing an agential identity on machine, mind–machine interfaces, as this argument contends, proposes the machine as a figure of defiance in the texts being analysed – challenging traditional notions of identity, consciousness, agency and freedom, and facilitating a shift towards an alternative world-view where human agency is decentred in an Anthropocene era. Embracing Jameson’s view of SF texts as sites of imagination, ‘symbolic acts’ and ‘archaeologies of the future’, the analysis highlights how these texts employ mind–machine interfaces to challenge and subvert a world-view, which grants human beings special rights and a privileged status over other beings and entities.

This study explored the disability representations found in Google’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot from January to March 2024. The content analysis examined Google’s Bard and Gemini’s story structure – which evolved over the weeks – in creating stories with disabled main characters. Findings discovered themes such as supercrip, inspiration porn and pity. Disabled boys tended to be associated with the supercrip stereotype, centring on adventure-type stories. Disabled girls were more commonly portrayed as sources of inspiration, tasked with improving the world. Physical disabilities (e.g. using a wheelchair, crutches or a donkey) were prominent in 71 per cent (n = 55) of all stories.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has had a significant historical representation within popular culture over the decades, used in storytelling for films, television programmes, books and video games. Films like Blade Runner (1982), Blade Runner 2049 (2017), The Matrix (1999), The Terminator (1984), Ex Machina (2014) and Minority Report (2002), for example, can all be used to explore the impacts of AI on society. These stories exploring AI often centre around the environmental and social impact of advanced technology, including the perceived threat to humans, as well as the ethical considerations that this technology generates. Much of the same issues presented within films are also found in science fiction novels, by the likes of such authors as Isaac Asimov, William Gibson and, of course, Arthur C. Clarke who famously wrote in 1964 that ‘the most intelligent inhabitants of the future world won’t be men or monkeys, they will be machines’. This article examines popular films that represent AI as the focus of their content, to create the vision of both innovation and the fears around such advancement in the real world. In considering the historical background of AI development, together with the ever-present threat of science creating an all-powerful and uncontrollable artificial ‘programme’, that would have the ability to dominate and control humanity, these stories within popular culture may also serve as a warning about the implications of AI developments. This article then considers the representation of AI from a communication lens and whether the so-called science fiction is now here.