One of the first images of AI I encountered was a white, spectral, hostile, disembodied head. It was in the computer game Neuromancer, programmed by Troy Miles and based on William Gibson's cyberpunk novel. Other people may have first encountered HAL 9000 from Stanley Kubrik's 2001: A Space Odyssey or Samantha from Spike Jonze's Her. Images from pop culture influence people's impressions of AI, but culture has an even more profound relationship to it. If there's one thing to take away from this article, it is the idea that AI systems are not objective machines, but instead based in human culture: our values, norms, preferences, and behaviours in society.

MIT.nano has announced the first recipients of NCSOFT seed grants to foster hardware and software innovations in gaming technology. The grants are part of the new MIT.nano Immersion Lab Gaming program, with inaugural funding provided by video game developer NCSOFT, a founding member of the MIT.nano The newly awarded projects address topics such as 3-D/4-D data interaction and analysis, behavioral learning, fabrication of sensors, light field manipulation, and micro-display optics. "New technologies and new paradigms of gaming will change the way researchers conduct their work by enabling immersive visualization and multi-dimensional interaction," says MIT.nano Associate Director Brian W. Anthony.

When I look up, I can see wispy clouds passing overhead. Large photos hang on the gallery walls. They're pictures of a landscape devastated by war and portraits of men fighting in those wars. I hear footsteps behind me. I turn around and watch two figures enter the room and take up stations in front of the portraits.

Unlike most people, MIT's Fox Harrell knew what he wanted to do in life from a young age. According to Harrell, an associate professor of digital media who studies self-expression in online media and creates tools to help developers add depth to their work, the impetus for his career came from an epiphany he had one day while doing computer programming as a kid in San Diego. "You heard a lot about TV turning people into couch potatoes, so I thought, 'Whatever comes next, I would like to be a voice for the social and ethical dimension of that form,'" Harrell says. "I couldn't have predicted the exact form it would take, but that [moment] sparked the direction I would go in." Or directions, since Harrell occupies an unusual spot in academic research, with an appointment in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory as well as in its program in Comparative Media Studies/Writing.