Mind, Machine, and Emotion in Richard Powers’ Novels: Galatea 2.2 and Playground

Abstract

This study aims to examine the American author Richard Powers’ two significant novels, Galatea 2.2 (1995) and Playground (2024), written in different technological eras, from a comparative perspective. The primary objective of the research is to reveal how human-machine interaction and the perception of artificial intelligence have transformed in literary texts during the process spanning from the 1990s vision of Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence (GOFAI) to the 2020s reality of Large Language Models (LLMs) and generative AI. As a methodology, the posthumanist approaches of theorists such as Rosi Braidotti, N. Katherine Hayles, and Donna Haraway are taken as a basis, and a thematic analysis of the texts is conducted through the concepts of embodiment, and agency. The findings of the study indicate that in Galatea 2.2, AI is conceptualized as a "life companion" trained via a top-down approach, attempting to comprehend human emotions, and hindered by the barrier of disembodiment; conversely, in Playground, AI transforms into a subject that manipulates human behavior through bottom-up data, serves colonialist and capitalist mechanisms, and has completely seized agency. In conclusion, Powers, in these two novels written thirty years apart, successfully problematizes the transition from the humanization of artificial intelligence to the post-anthropocentric stage where the human is reduced to a data point within digital networks.