History of Artificial Intelligence

The course will trace the origins and trajectory of ideas about artificial intelligence, starting with the “active intellect” of Aristotle, early analog computers and automata, Ada Lovelace’s “calculus of the nervous system,” through the “general intellect” and “machine capital” of Karl Marx, Karel Čapek’s “Universal Robots,” the “Turing test,” “cyberpositivity” and Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto,” and concepts like “swarm intelligence,” “singularity,” and the “black box” problem. Sources will encompass a range of disciplinary approaches (philosophy, sociology, computer science, etc.), formats (text, film, graphic novel), and genres including Japanese anime and Afrofuturism.