Dr Paula Murphy publishes book researching the cultural life of AI

On April 30th, Dr Paula Murphy published her book AI in the Movies with Edinburgh University Press. The book is the first of its kind, examining artificial intelligence across a range of Hollywood and international films, across a time span of 70 years.

With chapters arranged chronologically by decade, the book demonstrates how AI responds to developments in computing technology such as the emergence of the internet and the rise of gaming culture in the 1980s and the advent of ambient intelligence or the internet of things in the 2000s

Common themes that can be traced through the decades emerge like affective intelligence, parent-child relationships, and the female robot. According to Professor Andrew McStay, director of the Emotional AI lab at Bangor University, "AI in the Movies will be of keen value to scholars of the moving image. A timely book helping readers of diverse AI interests understand how AI is imagined, hoped and feared".

Dr Murphy Has previously written about the portrayal of bodies of data, or general artificial intelligence, in Alex Garland's Ex Machina.