Tech Anxiety: Artificial Intelligence and Ontological Awakening in Four Science Fiction Novels

This project examines the representation of anxiety about technology that humans feel when encountering artificial intelligences in four science fiction novels: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Neuromancer, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Cloud Atlas. By exploring this anxiety, something profound can be revealed about what it means to be a person living in a technologically saturated society. While many critical investigations of these novels focus on the dangerous and negative implications of artificial intelligence, this work uses Martin Heidegger’s later writings on technology to argue that AIs might be more usefully read as catalysts for a reawakening of human thought.