ABSTRACT
Technology insiders, medical personnel and researchers are increasingly warning that a continuous stream of digital distractions, engineered to shape our thoughts, feelings and actions, are being designed to create addictive behavior. This chapter addresses the myriad of fears and concerns that connected with digital technologies, in particular the development of robotics and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and considers how contemporary society may change as a result of these developments. Simply stated, A.I. is “a collection of ideas, technologies and techniques” that can solve problems and learn. Popular Hollywood movies have regularly addressed the social representations of new discoveries, questioning cultural, social and economic changes thought to be connected to the creation of digital technologies. The idea of A.I. seemed difficult for many interviewees to grasp without visual representations from movies and several used the term robot interchangeably with A.I. to represent all aspects of robots and machine learning.
