Pop Culture and AI: How Media Is Reshaping Public Perceptions – ReadWrite

When you think of artificial intelligence (AI), what do you envision? Depending on what generation you were born into, you might think of HAL 9000's glowing red eye from 2001: A Space Odyssey, or you might think of the surprisingly humanlike Ava from Ex Machina. Or, if you're knee-deep in AI programming, you might envision AI as nothing more than a complex web of computational frameworks. For decades, pop culture and science fiction have illustrated the possibilities of AI--but these depictions aren't always accurate, and they aren't always in ways that positively encourage its development. By that same token, these depictions have inspired thousands, if not millions of curious minds to push the boundaries of what AI can accomplish (and even take efforts to improve our safety).