Zaal Andronikashvili: Kunst und Freiheit im Zeitalter der künstlichen Intelligenz

Lecture in the context of the exhibition BACK TO FUTURE. Technikvisionen zwischen Fiktion und Realität (3 Dec 2021 – 28 Aug 2022) at the Museum für Kommunikation Berlin

How will human life look like in the age of machine-based intelligence? Does technological progress make us more free, or will we become dependent on our technology? Technological advances throughout the last decades have shaped new visions of the future—visions that have become known as posthumanism or transhumanism. This includes theories of singularity; the “Artificial Intelligence Takeover,” and surveillance capitalism. They all assume a radical decline of human agency and freedom. I will trace these developments using the example of Victor Pelevin’s novel Iphuck10 (2017).

The literary scholar Zaal Andronikashvili is research associate with the project Literature in Georgia. Between Small Literature and World Literature.

Fig. above: Replica of the character Maria from Metropolis. Source: Maria from the film Metropolis, author: Jiuguang  Wang, licence: CC BY-SA 4.0