Metaphors of symbiosis: What science fiction movies reveal about human-AI imaginaries.

Abstract

How we think about the use of AI to achieve business goals has become normalized as a ‘working together’ symbiosis metaphor. Yet public discourse and popular fiction oppose such a view with alternative critical and dystopian positions. We advocate that in order to negotiate their own positions around AI, management learners can engage with such contradictory views through the sociotechnical imaginaries captured by science fiction. We interpret 15 movies featuring AI to reveal multiple human-AI imaginaries and the metaphors that structure them. We find metaphors of: competitive symbiosis, where humans and AI compete for work, symbiotic mutualism, where humans and AI benefit each other, symbiotic parasitism, where either humans or AI feed off the other, and we also uncover the degree to which these relations are facultative (optional) or obligate (inescapable). We show how movies can be used to support learning by inviting sensitivity to the unreflective reproduction of dominant sociotechnical imaginaries and their structuring metaphors.