Telling Stories

Telling Stories:
On Culturally Responsive
Artificial Intelligence

Edited by
Ryan Calo, Batya Friedman, Tadayoshi Kohno,
Hannah Almeter and Nick Logler

What world—what worlds—will we build with artificial intelligence?

Intended for policymakers, technologists, educators and others, this international collection of 19 short stories delves into AI’s cultural impacts with hesitation and wonder. Authors from Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, India, Rwanda, Sri Lanka, the United States, and elsewhere vividly recount the anticipated influences of AI on love, time, justice, identity, language, trust, and knowledge through the power of narrative.

THE STORIES

Deceptively simple in form, these original stories introduce and legitimate perspectives on AI spanning five continents. Individually and together, they open the reader to a deeper conversation about cultural responsiveness at a time of rapid, often unilateral technological change.

United States of Brazil

Dennys Antonialli, InternetLab, Brazil

Watch Them

Chinmayi Arun, National Law University, Delhi, India

Br’er Rabbit and the Mirror Baby

Joanna Bryson, University of Bath, England

Face Changes

Darren Byler, University of Washington, United States

The Box

Ryan Calo, University of Washington, United States

In Search of Robot Love

Jeff Cao, Tencent Research Institute, China

The Boy Whose Light Went Out

Jack Clark, OpenAI, United States

What Justice

Batya Friedman, University of Washington, United States

True Love?

Sue Glueck, Microsoft, United States

Lia’s AI Future 2036

Sabine Hauert, University of Bristol, England

A Well-Meaning Robot

Alejandro Hevia, University of Chile, Chile

With the Lights Out, It’s Less Dangerous

Ian Kerr, University of Ottawa, Canada

Lost Knowledge? Forbidden Knowledge?

Tadayoshi Kohno, University of Washington, United States

Language Matters

Lisa Nathan, University of British Columbia, Canada

Do We Have the Right Metrics?

Joseph Nkurunziza, Never Again Rwanda, Rwanda

Moussas of the Savanna

Nnenna Nwakanma, World Wide Web Foundation, Côte d’Ivoire

Bug

Amir Rashidi, Center for Human Rights in Iran, Iran

The Goddess

Rohan Samarajiva, LIRNEasia, Sri Lanka

Of Genies and Magic Lamps

Jeroen van den Hoven, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands