Tag Archives: Artificial Intelligence

Strangers too strange to see

During my visit to the Bristol Robotics Lab I heard about the danger of human shaped robots because we naturally attribute them with human qualities they don’t have.

This got me thinking about artificial intelligence that’s embodied in non-human forms but still shows human type behaviour. After all, it’s coded by humans and learns how to behave from humans.

That was part of the inspiration behind The Mythical Moss.

Over the past few months, a film of me reading this story has been in the exhibition, Only Human: Believing the Strangest Things, Loving the Alien. The exhibition recently ended so I can now share the exhibit with you.

I hope you enjoy the story and it doesn’t cause you to spend too much time wondering about what might be lurking in the nooks and crannies of your life.


photo credit: dreaming_of_rivers Intimidation via photopin (license)

The discussion…

After Paul Simon reviewed Fluence in the Morning Star we talked about how reviews could be more collaborative. In some ways I think Eating Robots and Other Stories lends itself to discussion more than a novel because the stories are short and in most cases deliberately written to provoke debate.

Paul starts his recent review of Eating Robots with “IN FEWER than 150 pages, Stephen Oram combines the sharp edginess of a JG Ballard with the vaulting inventiveness of a modernist Ovid.”  (full review

This post is dedicated to discussions about stories in Eating Robots; to start a new discussion post a comment and to join in a discussion already underway post a reply.

If you want some prompts, some provocations, to get started there’s some here.

Over to you…

BusinessCloud podcast

Being interviewed is an interesting experience and one I enjoy. Why? Because it makes me see my work through someone else’s eyes and I’m always intrigued to hear what it is about my writing that has sparked their interest.

Answering questions live is also fascinating and makes me think. Hard. You can hear my brain whirring in this podcast as I discuss the inspirations behind Eating Robots and Other Stories with Jonathan Symcox, the Deputy editor of BusinessCloud.

http://www.businesscloud.co.uk/podcasts/eating-robots-and-the-potential-dystopias-of-the-future