CAPAS RESEARCH PROJECT - Elke Schwarz Whose Robo-Apocalypse is it anyways? Power, politics, posthumanism
The political stakes of contemporary forms of apocalyptic imagination around AI are high. We are familiar with some of the patterns of this imaginary from sci-fi texts, popular culture, and hyperbolic media accounts, but when tech experts today espouse warnings and advice about how to forestall or hasten the end of civilization through further investment in AI and related technologies, they remix elements from these and other diverse strands of thought. Apocalyptic thinking in relation to AI and posthumanism therefore extends in multiple directions, assuming new forms with significant implications for politics and power, both now and in the future. In this research, I focus on the implicit ‘revelation’ that comes with these diverse narratives of robo-apocalypse and ask, what is the role of these accounts in shaping future politics. The first stage of the project aims to clarify the structural parameters of apocalyptic AI narratives across a range of fields, including pop culture, academia, and the general media, but with a specific focus on expert circles. The second stage examines the ‘eschatological ambiguities’ that accompany such narratives and asks how power circulates and is wielded through these.