This book is designed to provide students in the field of Communication Studies with the basic knowledge, insight, and skill to make sense of emerging technology, specifically artificial intelligence, robots, and algorithms. As we know from our experiences with twentieth-century information and communication technology (ICT) – i.e., the personal computer and the Internet – students outside science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (the so-called STEM disciplines) need to understand the way emerging technology affects their lives and how their particular field of study can contribute to the conversations and debates about responsible employment and integration of technological innovation. But the basic information and technical facility necessary for this to happen are often inaccessible or difficult to obtain.

The basic problem is perhaps best formulated by Arthur C. Clarke, the celebrated science fiction writer and futurist: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” (Clarke 1973). For many of us – especially those not in one of the STEM fields – advanced technology does appear to be a kind of magic. Most of us have, and carry around, a kind of magical object or talisman. We call it a “smartphone,” and it is powerful. We touch the device in just the right way, and our wish is its command. We enter the words of an incantation either by typing on a keypad or talking directly to the object, and it performs all kinds of supernatural feats, like teleporting our voice to a distant place, connecting us to an inexhaustible supply of knowledge residing in the clouds, or providing personalized recommendations and direction so that we do not lose our way. We all use and depend on these devices. But how they actually work – and (maybe even more importantly) understanding how and why they sometimes don’t work – is something that remains hidden from view and underappreciated by most users. This is the problem. When technology appears to be magic, it has the power. When you do not know how your devices work, they are in control.

This book has been designed for and is specifically formulated to change this. It aims to demystify the technology by making the “secret powers” of artificial intelligence, robots, and algorithms accessible and understandable even if – and especially if – this is not your selected area of endeavor. And it does this for one good reason: to empower you to take control of your technology, your life, and your future. How we get to this destination involves a combination of different activities and approaches.

• Introduction and Orientation. We will begin with three introductory chapters that deal with the fundamentals and are designed to orient you to the concepts, terminology, and basic operations of the technology. Yes, there will be some math and some computer science, but it will be minimal, requiring nothing more than basic high-school-level knowledge. And the explanations that are provided have been formulated using accessible language specifically designed to “speak” to students from a wide range of different disciplines.
• Applications. These three introductory chapters are followed by detailed investigations of AI applications. Because this technology is now finding its way into virtually every aspect of life, it is impossible to deal with everything. So we need to be selective. In particular, we will take up and investigate four applications that, in one way or another, involve human social interaction and communication – machine translation, natural language processing, computational creativity, and social robotics.
• Impact and Consequences. AI applications do not exist in a vacuum. They have been developed and deployed in specific social contexts and have important consequences for human individuals and communities. For this reason, the book includes two chapters that investigate the impact and significance of AI, looking in particular at the social opportunities and challenges of the technology and investigating the range of available technical, legal, and moral responses.
• Maker Exercises. Reading about emerging technology is only half the story. In order to get the full picture, we will also need to do some practical, hands-on learning. For this reason, the book also includes “maker exercises” that are designed to give you direct experience with the technology by way of building actually working applications. The exercises are designed to illustrate the concepts that are considered in the “explainer” chapters, and they have been developed with step-by-step instructions suitable for students with little or no experience in writing code.

This particular hybrid approach was devised in the course of teaching students in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University. Communication is an interesting monstrosity of a discipline that combines the humanities, social sciences, media technology, and art and design. Consequently, it provides what has been the perfect location to develop this material and to test it out on a diverse population of students with a wide range of different backgrounds and interests. What you hold in your hands is the result of a number of years of collaborative interaction between me and my students in the COMS 493 AI, Robots and Communication seminar. In other words, what is presented in the book has been thoroughly tested and revised several times over based on input from students like yourself. And it is for this reason that I dedicate this book to my students, who taught me so much over the years. This publication would not have been possible without their enthusiasm for the subject matter, their courage for jumping into the deep end of the pool and trying new things, and their insightful feedback and comments.

Finally, much of the material that has been incorporated in the book has been derived from my own research in emerging technology and written up for publication in journal articles and book chapters. Although I have not reproduced any of these previous published texts here in their entirety, the following have provided raw material for the book’s chapters and maker exercises:

Mind the Gap: Responsible Robotics and the Problem of Responsibility. Ethics and Information Technology, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-017-9428-2.

Ars Ex Machina: Rethinking Responsibility in the Age of Creative Machines. In Human-Machine Communication: Rethinking Communication, Technology, and Ourselves, ed. Andrea L. Guzman, 221–236. New York: Peter Lang, 2018.

The Other Question: Can and Should Robots Have Rights? Ethics and Information Technology 20(2): 87–99. 2018. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10676-017-9442-4.

Other Things: AI, Robots, and Society. In A Networked Self: Human Augmentics, Artificial Intelligence, Sentience, ed. Zizi Papacharissi, 51–68. New York: Routledge, 2019.

Rage Against the Machine: Rethinking Education in the Face of Technological Unemployment. In Surviving the Machine Age: Intelligent Technology and the Transformation of Human Work, ed. Kevin LaGrandeur and James J. Hughes, 147–162. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

Computational Interpersonal Communication: Communication Studies and Spoken Dialogue Systems. Communication +1 5(1), 2016. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cpo/vol5/iss1/7/.

Communication and Artificial Intelligence: Opportunities and Challenges for the 21st Century. Communication +1 1(1), August 2012. http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cpo/vol1/iss1/1.