Writing the AI Father: a creative writer’s investigation into the challenges of portraying an Artificially Intelligent parent in children’s fiction

Betts, Leone Annabella (2024) Writing the AI Father: a creative writer’s investigation into the challenges of portraying an Artificially Intelligent parent in children’s fiction. Doctoral thesis (PhD), Manchester Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

This research comprises two parts: a creative work in the form of a children’s novel, The Stickleback Hack, and a critical exegesis. Its focus is to investigate the value of incorporating academic theories into the matrix of influences through which characters are developed, and this is achieved through the practitioner-researcher’s endeavour to portray a nurturing but artificially intelligent (AI) parent and map the challenges therein. Originally conceived as Mom-E and later evolved into Dad-E, scholarly works are integrated iteratively with creative practice to scrutinise the influences behind the intuitive gendering of this character as female, and the motivation for transforming her to male. This results, in part, in the scholarly theories becoming influences themselves. First, the character’s earliest manifestation as Mom-E, a voice-only entity, is critically examined and positioned within wider understandings about how gender is ascribed onto talking computers. Next, in (re)imagining the character as Dad-E, gender tropes within paternal characters in children’s literature are identified, and their impact on creative decisions traced. Finally, the AI parent is interrogated through a posthuman lens, drawing on Donna Haraway’s (2016a) vision of the cyborg and other posthuman scholarship, including thinkers on children’s literature. Interconnected binaries including mind/body, individual/collective, nature/culture, and human/machine are used to consider and redraft elements of Dad-E and surrounding characters, in an effort to disrupt other rigid categorisations beyond gender. Throughout her commentary, the practitioner-researcher discusses the insights generated by her character-crafting labours, demonstrating how each of them contributes to knowledge. Novel and exegesis combined offer a unique expression of the complexities of portraying AI, which includes a conscious aspiration to circumnavigate harmful gender stereotyping and anthropocentric hubris. The critical component contextualises and stimulates the creative work, showcasing how academic procedures can operate hand in glove with intuitive narrative composition. Thus, the research offers an original, writerly perspective on the intersection of AI representation, gender constructs, and creative writing.