Digitalization is inexorably conquering our lives - also with artificial intelligence (AI) methods. Search engine operators, social network operators and shipping platform operators know more and more about us, about our buying and living habits. User data has become a valuable commodity. We live and work with computer systems that behave intelligently or are even intelligent. Questions like "Can machines be intelligent?" or "Can they have emotions or a consciousness?" keep popping up. To enable readers to form their own opinion on these questions, the authors clearly explain individual techniques or methods of AI and relate them to approaches from philosophy, art and neurobiology. Topics such as logical reasoning, knowledge and memory play just as important a role as machine learning and artificial neural networks. In the foreground is the question of what constitutes memory and thinking, what role our emotions play when we as humans move through life, through the world. A book that offers unusual perspectives on artificial intelligence.

Warum werden Roboter oft als bedrohlich empfunden? Konnen kunstliche Systeme Emotionen und Bewusstsein haben? Die Autoren gehen von der These aus, dass die Literatur- und Geistesgeschichte uns helfen kann, aktuelle Entwicklungen der Robotik unvoreingenommen zu betrachten. Denn ob es um mittelalterliche Mythen, androide Roboter der Romantik, die Aufklarung oder die Entwicklung der kunstlichen Intelligenz geht, stets stellt sich die Frage nach dem, was der Mensch ist, was sein Bewusstsein ausmacht und was ihn von anderen Wesen unterscheidet."