AI is also complemented by a mythical imaginary where the end point is a conscious machine, capable of reasoning, abstraction, speech, and language and even sentience. Just as robots are portrayed as a threshold technology where boundaries between human and machine and animate and inanimate are dissolved, so too is AI. These fantasies underscore the cultural imagination of robots and AI, and, arguably, contribute to an illusion fused with anxiety: will they or won’t they rise up?
