Students use humanities and social sciences research to imagine game worlds shaped by AI • LAS News • Iowa State University
This spring semester, the History Department and the English Department hosted an innovative world-building competition that challenged teams of students to answer this question: “Can you imagine a future that includes AI?”
Students creatively used humanities and social sciences research to design a game world – a universe in which multiple narratives could unfold – set in an imagined future shaped by AI.
History professor John Monroe, who led the competition along with English Department graduate student Kelli Fitzpatrick, said the exercise gave students the opportunity to combine preparatory research with fun.
“The idea that sparked all this for me was a hypothetical teaching: the thought that, in some interesting ways, science fiction works like historical analysis in reverse,” Monroe said. “Thinking speculatively about the future involves an understanding of the ramifications of simultaneous processes of change over time that is very similar to what historians apply to the evidence they gather in their research process – only in the case of science fiction, the act of imagining these change processes lead the way rather than being derived from empirical evidence.
My hope was that asking students to take a speculative leap based on preparatory research would give them a chance to play around a bit, flexing some intellectual muscles that don’t necessarily get as much exercise in regular undergraduate history courses, where much of the focus is – as it should be – in the realm of factual content. From the results, it is quite clear that the experiment worked!”
Viral spread of AI in human brains, a Marxist-Leninist “supermind” among winning proposals
The competition awarded a first prize of US$750, a second prize of US$250 and an honorable mention.
First prize winners Quinn Young, junior in aerospace engineering, and Lev Schaul, junior in computer science, designed a world called “Eikre” for their proposal. They imagined an AI that would spread virally into people’s brains, trying to “optimize” them, but in effect stripping them of the unique qualities that make people human in the first place.
Lilah Hegarty, junior in English, and Ian Hutchison, graduate student in business administration, received second prize for their world, “Clergymen of Europe.” Their proposal envisioned a distant future derived from a counterfactual past in which the Soviet Union achieved world domination in the 1950s. This, they imagined, would lead to the creation of an AI that would serve as a Marxist-Leninist “supermind” that would ultimately blur the boundaries between political ideology and religion.
Zara Babinat, senior in computer science; Emma Callaghan, senior in mechanical engineering; and Ashley Kleve, senior in environmental science, received an honorable mention for their proposal, “Banana Republic,” which imagined a future in Latin America transformed by AI-driven state surveillance and AI-intensified global economic inequality.
Entries were judged by a panel of experts that included Jeffrey Wheatley, assistant professor of philosophy and religious studies; Rachel Haywood, associate professor of world languages and cultures; Karen Menzel, Graduate School program specialist and local author; and Dallas Dickinson, a leading figure in the video game industry and executive producer and general manager of Crystal Dynamics.
Published: April 30, 2024
