From Monsters to Mazes: Sociotechnical Imaginaries of AI Between Frankenstein and Kafka

Gideon Dishon

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Cybernetics and Technology in Society Digital Education and Society Literary and Philosophical Studies

Abstract

Abstract The emergence of ChatGPT and other Generative AI tools (GenAI) capable of producing human-like texts sparked debates concerning whether we are at the dawn of a new age of writing and meaning-making. Rather than weighing in on the potential impact of GenAI, this paper engages with the implicit sociotechnical imaginaries underpinning reactions to GenAI. One particularly evocative source for sociotechnical imaginaries are fictional texts, which can shape our shared imagination of possible and probable futures. Accordingly, I analyze two seminal works of fiction: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (Planet eBooks, 1818) and Franz Kafka’s The Trial (Echo Library, 1925). Frankenstein is regarded as an enduring myth that has shaped perceptions of artificial life. This paper sets out to explore the limitations of the ‘Frankensteinian sociotechnical imaginary’ by unpacking AI’s assumed modes of meaning-making along three axes: (1) agency, (2) relations, and (3) control. Within the Frankensteinian sociotechnical imaginary, AI is approached in anthropomorphic terms, emphasizing the struggle over control of meaning-making without reshaping its overarching logic. The Trial, in contrast, offers a lens that challenges common dichotomies underpinning the Frankenstein model: (1) highlighting the entanglement between AI and human intentionality in processes of meaning-making, (2) exploring human-AI relations as recursively shaped through the complementary tendency of humans and GenAI to generate and infer meaning, and (3) shifting the notion of control from a struggle over domination to an emphasis on how GenAI concurrently expands the available choices while limiting humans’ influence over patterns of meaning-making.

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References

1986Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature 2015Dreamscapes of Modernity 2021Talking AI into Being: The Narratives and Imaginaries of National AI Strategies and Their Performative Politics 2019Hopes and fears for intelligent machines in fiction and reality 2001Privacy and Power: Computer Databases and Metaphors for Information Privacy 2017Imagining the thinking machine: Technological myths and the rise of artificial intelligence 2022Minding the gap(s): public perceptions of AI and socio-technical imaginaries 2023AI Supported Degradation of the Self Concept: A Theoretical Framework Grounded in Established Cognitive and Computational Mechanisms

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