AI and Data Science in Fiction and Society (HWS 2025)
The aim of this seminar is to reflect on how AI and data science influence the world we live in. We will discuss fictional works (i.e., novels) and analyze which developments are described therein and how realistic we deem them.
Goals
In this seminar, you will read and analyze a fictional work (i.e., novel) of your choice, and identify parallels between (a) AI technology described in fiction and actual technological developments, and (b) interactions between technology and society. In particular, we will discuss the societal and ethical impact of AI on modern societies.
Each participant will read a fictional work, present it to the seminar participants, and participate in the discussions. Each presentation is accompanied by a seminar paper, which will undergo a peer review process. Note that you are supposed to also read the novels for which you are peer reviewing the reports, which makes for a total reading workload of several novels throughout the semester. Presentations are supposed to be about 25 minutes long.
Organization
This seminar is organized by Prof. Dr. Heiko Paulheim
Available for master students in Business Informatics and MMDS (2 SWS, 4 ECTS)
Prerequisites: none
Schedule
The seminar takes places on a few Thursday afternoons in HWS 2025. Timeline:
- Kick off meeting: Thursday, September 18th, 13:45–15:15, room B6 26, B1.01 Slides (PDF, 2 MB)
- Presentation and discussion sessions (Thursdays, 13:45–17:00), room B6 26, B1.01
- November 13th
- The Adolescence of P-1
- Quality Land
- November 20th
- Little Brother
- NSA – Nationales Sicherheitsamt
- November 27th
- Player Piano
- Die Optimierer
- November 13th
Timeline:
- Send your topic preferences by the end of Sunday, September 21st
- Get your topic assigned by Tuesday, September 23rd
- October 19th: Deadline for seminar report drafts
- October 26th: Deadline for peer review on seminar report drafts
- January 18th: Deadline for final seminar papers
Registration
- Registration will be available in Portal2
- After getting a confirmation from Portal2, please send a ranked list of three works you would like to read and present in the seminar to Ezgi Yilmaz
- Final assignment of topics will be made after the kick off meeting
Possible Topics
Note: you are invited to propose other works as well, however, we can only guarantee library availability for the books in this list. For books available in English and German, you are free to read either version, but the presentation will be in English.
Author Title (en) Title (de) Max Barry Machine Man Maschinenmann Max Barry Providence Providence Andreas Brandhorst -- Das Erwachen Philip K. Dick Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Träumen Androiden von elektrischen Schafen? Cory Doctorow Little Brother Little Brother Cory Doctorow Walkaway Walkaway Dave Eggers The Circle Der Circle Dave Eggers The Every Every Marc Elsberg Code Zero ZERO Andreas Eschbach Lord of all Things Herr aller Dinge Andreas Eschbach -- NSA – Nationales Sicherheitsamt Louisa Hall Speak -- Theresa Hannig -- Die Optimierer Robert Harris The Fear Index Angst Robert Heinlein The Moon is a Harsh Mistress Mondspuren Tom Hillenbrand Drone State Drohnenland Tom Hillenbrand -- Hologrammatica Marc-Uwe Kling Qualityland Quality Land Marc-Uwe Kling -- Views John Marrs The Passengers The Passengers John Marrs The Marriage Act The Marriage Act Anthony McCarten Going Zero Going Zero Stephan Meier -- Now Bijan Moini -- Der Würfel Karl Olsberg -- Das System Karl Olsberg -- Mirror Kim Stanley Robinson Aurora Aurora Daniel Suarez Kill Decision Kill Decision Daniel Suarez Daemon Daemon Adrian Tchaikovsky Dogs of War Im Krieg Kurt Vonnegut Player Piano Player Piano Martha Wells The Murderbot Diaries Tagebuch eines Killerbots M.G. Wheaton Emily Eternal Emily Eternal Juli Zeh The Method Corpus Delicti Additional Literature & Materials
(You may use those as background material, but you are kindly asked to conduct some further literature research yourself)
Book:
- Nick Bostrom. Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. 2014 (Ebook available via library)
Articles:
- Ethan Fast and Eric Horvitz: Long-Term Trends in the Public Perception of Artificial Intelligence (PDF), 2017
- Keng Siau and Weiyu Wang: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Ethics: Ethics of AI and Ethical AI, 2020
- Luke Munn: The uselessness of AI ethics, 2023
- Jiaming Ji et al.: AI Alignment: A Comprehensive Survey, 2025
- Daniel Kokotajlo et al.: AI 2027, 2025
Other Documents:
- EU AI Act
- Ethics Guidelines for Trustworthy AI by the European Commission
- UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence
Stuff to Play around With: