Promotional Information

Affect and Artificial Intelligence is the first in-depth analysis of affect and intersubjectivity in the computational sciences.

Table of Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction | The Machine Has No Fear

1. The Positive Affects of Alan Turing

2. Shaming AI: Helplessness, Confusion, and Error

3. Artificial Psychotherapy

4. Walter Pitts and the Inhibition of Affect

Notes

Appendixes

References

Index

About the Author

Elizabeth A. Wilson is a professor in the Department of Women's Studies at Emory University. She is the author of Neural Geographies: Feminism and the Microstructure of Cognition and Psychosomatic: Feminism and the Neurological Body.

Reviews

"Original and beautifully written." -Lucy Suchman, Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University "An elegantly written, thoroughly engaging, and absolutely compelling history of the role of emotions and affect in thought about, and design of, 'artificial intelligence.'" Robert Mitchell, Duke University and author of Bioart and the Vitality of Media "In this fresh and provocative contribution to the exploding field of affect studies, Elizabeth Wilson argues convincingly and in a spirit of welcome generosity that from its very beginnings the theory and practice of artificial intelligence has been decisively marked by feelings-surprise, curiosity, delight, shame, and contempt-as well as computational logic. She suggests, with wonderful wit and a fine intelligence, that interiority is conjugated by positive and passionate affects of attachment as well as cognitive circuits among humans and machines. Her own attachment to the archive of AI is palpable and her focus on the biography of key figures in its early history is immensely refreshing." Kathleen Woodward, author of Statistical Panic: Cultural Politics and Poetics of the Emotions