Research project An aging population, fertility in decline, decreasing nativity – society is facing many challenges and for some the solution lies with various forms of AI. But can a robot be family – a mother, a sibling, a child? These are questions debated in speculative fiction. The project Circuits of Care – AI and Kinship analyses these stories and gives insight into how cultures make sense of the challenges and what alternatives can be envisaged.
An analysis of how AI is imagined as entering kinship formations in such stories helps us see how and where AI can become part of intimately human concerns, as well as how these concerns interplay with current social challenges. The project will contribute to our ability to think critically and coherently about the roles that we want AI to play in society. The analysis gives insights into how cultures make sense of current challenges to kinship formations and practices of care and in what terms possible alternatives can be envisaged
Artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly central to many aspects of human life, including the ones we tend to think of as most intimately human: those of care, nurture, and love. As developments in AI research pushes at borders between human and non-human, there is an urgent need to engage with potential possibilities and problems of such developments. Such engagements are currently taking place in speculative fiction, stories in different media that explore future AI scenarios, such as parenting androids in the television series Raised by Wolves or the care-robot in the novel Today I am Carey who becomes a beloved family member.
Kinship studies – close relations
This project will examine these narratives through critical kinship theory. Kinship underpins the state, functioning as a social, legal, and emotional web in a society, regulating not just who is responsible for providing care or making life-or-death decisions, but also who is recognized as a citizen and as a person.
Imagining our future society
An analysis of how AI is imagined as entering kinship formations in contemporary speculative fiction narratives helps us see how and where AI becomes entangled with intimately human concerns, as well as how these concerns interplay with current social challenges, especially of a demographic nature: aging populations, decreasing fertility or birth rates. The purpose of the project is to contribute to our ability to think critically and coherently about the roles that we want AI to play in society. The analysis gives insights into how cultures make sense of current challenges to kinship formations and practices of care and in what terms possible alternatives can be envisaged.
