ABSTRACT
In the novel Galatea 2.2 the protagonist, a fiction writer, settles into a year-long stint as Humanist-in-Residence at the Center for the Study of Advanced Sciences, located at an unnamed, yet Ivy-League-esque university on the East Coast of the USA. Early in the fall quarter he becomes involved in a cognitive science experiment. The purpose: to build an artificially intelligent machine that can provide answers to an English Literature comprehensive exam that seem to replicate that of a college student. I emphasize seem because the real quest for the experimenters becomes awareness or consciousness, or artificial intelligence, the Holy Grail of cognitive science and computer engineering. And while the program does inquire about her gender (“authored” as female), her name (Helen), and eventually asks “who am I?” and other seemingly existentially significant questions, the program is actually running as a simulation of a biological human mind, instead of as the actual thing—a far more complex and tricky enterprise.
