This volume brings together academics from evolutionary biology, literary theory, robotics, digital culture, anthropology, sociology, and environmental studies to consider the impact of robotics and AI on society. By bringing these perspectives together in one book, readers gain a sense of the complex scientific, social, and ideological contexts within which AI and robotics research is unfolding, as well as the illusory suppositions and distorted claims being mobilized by the industry in the name of bettering humanity's future. Discussions about AI and robotics have been shaped by computer science and engineering, steered by corporate and military interests, forged by transhumanist philosophy and libertarian politics, animated by fiction, and hyped by the media. From fiction passing as science to the illusion of AI autonomy to the business of ethics to the automation of war, this collection recognizes the inevitable entanglement of humanity and technology, while exposing the problematic assumptions and myths driving the field in order to better assess its risks and potential.

In 1716, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's husband Edward Montagu was appointed British ambassador to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire. Despite discouragement from friends that feared for her safety, she accompanied her husband to Turkey and wrote an extraordinary series of letters that recorded her experiences as a traveller and her impressions of Ottoman culture and society. These letters, addressed primarily to her sister and to Alexander Pope, became the basis for a highly crafted text that was not published until 1763. Like many women who rebelled against gender conventions, Montagu was the target of vicious attacks from her contemporaries. But her status as a woman traveller is crucial to her distinctive perspective, and one can argue that her letters offer a feminist alternative to much of the orientalist writing of both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This edition includes a broad selection of related historical documents on Turkey, women in the Arab world, Islam, and "Oriental" tales written in Europe.

This volume brings together academics from evolutionary biology, literary theory, robotics, digital culture, anthropology, sociology, and environmental studies to consider the impact of robotics and AI on society. By bringing these perspectives together in one book, readers gain a sense of the complex scientific, social, and ideological contexts within which AI and robotics research is unfolding, as well as the illusory suppositions and distorted claims being mobilized by the industry in the name of bettering humanity's future. Discussions about AI and robotics have been shaped by computer science and engineering, steered by corporate and military interests, forged by transhumanist philosophy and libertarian politics, animated by fiction, and hyped by the media. From fiction passing as science to the illusion of AI autonomy to the business of ethics to the automation of war, this collection recognizes the inevitable entanglement of humanity and technology, while exposing the problematic assumptions and myths driving the field in order to better assess its risks and potential.