The Imagination of AI from Hobbes to Shelley

• In Event: Contrasting Theoretical Perspectives on AI, Enhancement, and Transhumanism (Virtual Session)

Abstract

I will show how a political and moral vision of artificial intelligence emerged in early modern and Enlightenment political thought—from Hobbes and Milton, to Locke and Defoe, to the Federalist and Kant, to Rousseau, Burke, and Wollstonecraft—which was then translated into an influential literary imaginary by Mary Shelley in her novel Frankenstein. Shelley's vision of AI in the figure of Frankenstein's Creature simultaneously brings to life the ideas of Enlightenment political philosophy and delivers a devastating critique of their failure to unite the emotions of the heart, as felt and expressed by women and children in the often dystopian conditions of family life, with the cold deductive rigors of reason, science, and law, as used by men to justify their patriarchal political orders. Her highly sympathetic Creature went on to influence many artforms including novels and films that shaped the youthful imagination of Alan Turing, the founder of modern computer science and AI research.

Author

• Eileen M. Hunt, University of Notre Dame