Artful Intelligence: How Does Fiction Imagine AI?

In Gish Jen’s short story “Tell Me Everything,” Aunt Nettie is a helpful AI that is always present for Gwen, a young and lonely athlete. As Aunt Nettie gradually becomes more to Gwen and takes more from Gwen (through full data access), an unsettling view of an AI-driven future unfolds. As Gwen gradually disconnects from family and is “protected” from feeling and being in the world, what becomes of her life? What will be left to tell?

This essay takes its point of departure from a short story by the American novelist Laura van den Berg. It argues that van den Berg’s “Samatha” can be read as a “post–speculative realist” allegory for our relationship with emerging AI technologies. In particular, it is concerned with analyzing how the widespread adoption of large language model chatbots is transforming our relationships with ourselves and others. It attempts to describe this experience in terms of a structure that I call “connection without presence.” Connection without presence is an attempt to name the strange, posthuman form of desire that is at work in our relationship with many communications technologies. In terms of the Foucaultian philosophy, it suggests that the chatbot is a confessional wherein the human being whispers their desire to disappear—and learns to enjoy its submission.

The world-building capacity of imaginative literature fosters artificial experience through characters who are artificial beings. Interacting with generative AI in natural language also creates a type of artificial experience through algorithmically simulated social cues. Neither type of artificial experience is real in the sense of actually existing, but these artificial experiences can feel authentic. When fiction portrays artificial experiences, it encourages metacognitive reflection. This essay is a meditation on artificial experiences, the bloody business of the human condition, and Gregory Mone’s short story “Bleed.” The short story depicts AI as a specter, as something that is neither fully alive nor inanimate. As the story’s sentient fridge grows increasingly human, its mimicry of human society—almost the same, but not quite—challenges traditional definitions of humanity. In our world, AI may no longer be fictional, but it is shaped by fiction.

This essay examines AI’s transformative impacts through Adam Braver’s short story “According to Alice,” which explores the increasingly blurred boundary between artificial and human in today’s world. While Alice’s creative work speaks to the benefits of human-AI complementarity, her alienation and ennui in both her personal and professional lives underscore the importance of human creativity, collaboration, and agency. Growing concerns about AI in areas such as the labor market, education, and human relationships point to the need for AI that is human-centric and “proworker.” AI’s trajectory is not predetermined but rather needs to be determined by human design and choices at every level: individual, firm, country, and society at large.

Scholars tasked with responding to works of fiction for this special issue were encouraged to meet with their writer once the responses were drafted. This “Preface” is a narrative account of the historian Holly Case’s online encounter with the writer Rick Moody. Case has also written some historical annotations to Moody’s story, “The Northern Wastes.”

Every game encodes a theory of how the world should work, including what behaviors earn rewards, who holds power, and whose choices matter. As artificial intelligence gives virtual characters greater autonomy, game design becomes a revealing laboratory for governance. Drawing on the experience of building game worlds and the moral questions of Frankenstein, this essay examines what creators owe both their creations and the people who inhabit their systems. When AI begins interpreting rules and optimizing outcomes, its designers’ responsibilities deepen. The central challenge is deciding whose values govern these emerging worlds and how those living within them can contest the rules.

Claire Luchette’s short story “HURTS WORST” situates contemporary agentic AI within the cultural history of artificial life, passing, and psychology. Drawing from Shelley’s Frankenstein, Turing’s imitation game, Freud’s Uncanny, and Mori’s Uncanny Valley, this analysis explores how AI is linked with distinctly human vulnerabilities. As Willa seeks recognition, intimacy, and physical connection, increasingly agentic technologies become entangled with questions of gender, embodiment, and desire.