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- Convenor:
-
Stephen Oram
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- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Friday 10 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Acknowledging the messiness and uncertainty of futurity and the rich aesthetic reality of speculative fiction, the panel will discuss what 'applied' role speculative fiction (such as science fiction) can play in the social and technological transformations of AI, and in shaping future history.
Long Abstract:
A forthcoming issue of Vector, the British Science Fiction Association's critical journal, is focused on the role (or not) of speculative fiction in relation to prediction, innovation, and futures.
This roundtable panel, formed from contributors and convened by the guest-editor, will address the central question of AI and the future of society by covering topics such as: the predictable perils of super-forecasting and its ability to reframe questions and understand contexts; why SF as an anticipatory narrative model matters for public reasoning and decision making; and how to use SF to inform and influence policy makers on the key issues of tomorrow.
• Near-future fiction author Stephen Oram works with scientists and technologists, exploring possible futures through short stories. Current project with King's College London: "piloting development of an automated approach to coding expressed emotion."
• Cybersalon.org is a UK-based collective and think-tank, focusing on the process and effect of the digital revolution in industry, society and its emerging digital cultures. Recently development - a Digital Rights Charter proposition for the Labour Party (2019).
• Will Slocombe is Director of the Science Fiction Studies MA pathway at the University of Liverpool and one of the Directors of the Olaf Stapledon Centre for Speculative Futures.
• Professor Sarah Dillon is co-author of Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning (Routledge 2021) and co-editor of AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines (OUP 2020).
British Science Fiction Association is a national organisation of science fiction writers, readers and scholars.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Friday 10 June, 2022, -Paper short abstract:
Does speculative fiction influence scientists and technologists in what and how they research, discover and invent? Does its predictions affect the future? If so, does it have a responsibility to be accurate, not sensational? To inspire not demoralise? Or is fiction simply there for entertainment?
Paper long abstract:
As an author of speculative fiction, who often works alongside scientists and technologists on projects to explore the ethical implications of their work through near-future science fiction stories, I am fascinated by the question of how this work influences them, their publics, and by implication, the future. If at all.
There is a place for stories that provide us with warnings, but there is a danger that they focus our attention on the wrong things. For example, AI is going to become sentient, take over and wipe out humanity. As opposed to, AI could entrench existing prejudice and inequality so deeply we cease to see it or be able to tackle it.
There is also a place for stories that inspire us by showing possible positive futures. Stories set in worlds where humans and AI work together and create more than the sum of their parts.
If speculative fiction does have an influence on the future, then does it also have a responsibility to be as accurate as it can when it extrapolates today’s science into the near-future? Or was Aurthur C Clarke correct when he said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
Speculative fiction’s role is primarily to entertain, and too much adherence to accuracy and the most probable future, can tend towards a dull story. Therefore, there is a dilemma for the writer – how to entertain and engage the imagination without causing ripples that create futures we most certainly do not want.
Paper short abstract:
The year-long horizon scanning project, ‘Tales from the Cyber Salon’ was a series of experimental communication and research workshops, tied to public events. This paper documents the project, details our methodology and shares key outcomes and discoveries in the use of speculative fiction.
Paper long abstract:
The year-long horizon scanning project, ‘Tales from the Cyber Salon’ was a series of experimental communication and research workshops, tied to public events, by the think-tank Cybersalon.org. This paper documents the project, details our methodology and shares key outcomes and discoveries in the use of speculative fiction for research, policy development and public engagement in the technologisation of Health Care, High Street Renewal, Community and Representation, and Digital Money. Cybersalon.org works to address the process and effect of the digital revolution and to document its emerging digital cultures. Our members and audiences include entrepreneurs, technologists, hackers, activists, government officials, business and community leaders, academics, artists, creatives, and designers.
Paper short abstract:
SF stories are anticipatory narrative models that enable surrogative reasoning about possible futures and the pathways to those futures. Gathering narrative evidence through storylistening can help inform decision-making around AI technologies by governments, businesses and civil society.
Paper long abstract:
Whilst futures studies and practices engage with stories and narrative methods to a certain extent, neither futurists nor decision-makers fully engage with the vast body of SF. This paper presents insights of particular relevance to SF and AI from the co-authored book 'Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning'. It focuses on the ‘applied’ role of science fiction in the context of public reasoning. SF stories are anticipatory narrative models that enable surrogative reasoning about possible futures and the pathways to those futures. Gathering narrative evidence through storylistening can help inform decision-making around AI technologies by governments, businesses and civil society. Narrative models can aid decision-making with the same caveats and cautions with which scientific models also need to be used. The paper addresses scepticism about such a method, on the one hand driven by fears about the possible lack of robustness of such a method compared with forms of more commonly used evidence or knowledge, on the other driven by fear of 'reducing' SF to 'merely' its cognitive value. It argues that much is lost by not drawing effectively on this important resource for thinking about the future and acting in the present. Focusing on AI, the paper discusses what a rigorous conceptual and practical framework for taking SF stories seriously looks like; how to embed their study into public reasoning alongside other forms of evidence and anticipation; and the kind of changes that are needed to make this happen at every level, from the local to the global.