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"Vehicles Fiction."
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On land
A young boy learns about land vehicles from bicycles to subways and trolleys as he and his father travel to the train station.
Book
Escaping Al's Magic Black Box
Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The artificial intelligence (AI) technology of chatbots based on large language models (LLMs) is magical in just this sense. Speak a magic word to summon the AI and your wish is granted, with no explanation of how your preferred genie-ChatGPT, Claude, or Siri-does (or sometimes doesn't quite do) the trick. There are two sorts of magic: the supernatural magic of genies and demons, and the natural magic of magicians and escape artists such as Houdi-ni. Engineering technology should be of the second kind. Although a small number of users believe that their chat-bot is the voice of God, most accept it as the magic of engineering. What is unusual about LLMs today, however, is that the engineers themselves are not quite sure how the AI works; LLMs are spoken of as mysterious black boxes.
Journal Article
Banning Lethal Autonomous Weapons: An Education
Lethal autonomous weapons systems--commonly but misleadingly known as \"killer robots\"--are weapons systems that, once activated, can attack objects and people without further human intervention. With more than a dozen nations working to develop highly capable versions of them for use in the air, at sea, and on land, these weapons are not science fiction: they exist now, and they are already being used in some current conflicts. Since 2014, the United Nations has held discussions around a treaty to ban autonomous weapons systems (AWS). So far, in addition to the UN secretary-general and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 30 countries have declared support for such a treaty. But the US and Russia have combined forces to prevent any discussion of a legally binding instrument. Instead, in 2021 the US called for a \"non-binding code of conduct.\"
Journal Article
I love you for miles and miles
Describes the depth, height, and steadiness of one's love for another by comparing it with the deepest drill, tallest crane, and steadiest tugboat.
Book
Learning to Breathe
Heading home on the freeway, the air conditioning in her old car stopped working. How do these two experiences: the smoke alarm being triggered by the air outdoors and the iPhone shutting down in the hot car, help us think through the relationship between failure and design?’ The same student who had haughtily quoted the French philosopher was the first to speak up. Sensorium: Embodied Experience, Technology, and Contemporary Art; 2005; Cambridge, MA, MIT Press: pp. 104-108.
Journal Article
Richard Scarry's busy busy cars and trucks
Hit the road with an exciting array of vehicles, from cement trucks and pickle cars to motorcycles and fire trucks!
Book
I, Yantra
Argues that ancient yantra (robot) tales reveal how their Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain authors thought about the nature of humanity and our role in a cosmos filled with divine and natural forces.
What does it mean to be human? I, Yantra examines ancient Indian narratives about robots and mechanically constructed beings to explore how their Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist authors approached this question. Making translations of many of these texts available in English for the first time, author Signe Cohen argues that they shed considerable light on South Asian religious notions of humanity, self, and agency. She also documents connections between ancient and modern responses to the ethical problems of what precisely constitutes a sentient being and what rights such a being should have. Situated at the intersection of humanities and bioethics, this cross-disciplinary study will be of interest to scholars of South Asian languages and literature as well as specialists in religion and technology.
eBook
Search and spot : go!
Invites the reader to look for various vehicles and related items hidden or camouflaged in the illustrations.
Book
Posthuman Gothic Tale
It is at the intersection of Posthuman thought, Gothic narratives, and the New Weird mode where “Two Houses” from Kelly Link’s Get in Trouble (2016) can be framed. In the story, six female astronauts alternate years of hibernation and moments of wakefulness in search of a habitable planet. The House of Secrets spaceship is controlled by the AI Maureen. Isolated in space, the astronauts amuse themselves by telling ghost stories. Through the stories, the reader is gradually dislocated from the recognizable landscape of a technologically plausible speculative fiction story to be plunged into a Gothic world of murder, haunted houses, and ghosts. The purpose of this paper is to trace the intersection of Posthuman thought and Gothic characteristics in the story to discuss the slippery relationship between what we believe we are and what we actually are.
Journal Article