Fafnir (Dec 2020)
The AI Computer as Therapist: Using Lacan to Read AI and (All-Too-Human) Subjectivities in Science Fiction Stories by Bruce Sterling and Naomi Kritzer
Abstract
Naomi Kritzer’s 2016 Hugo Award-winning story “Cat Pictures Please” is narrated by a sentient AI that is interested not in being evil, like Hal, Skynet, or the Matrix, but in being every human being’s best friend and glorified life-coach; all it asks for in return is for everyone to post more cat pictures. In this essay I mine this story – along with a similar story from 1998 by Bruce Sterling that to which computer alludes explicitly – to read the potential personhood and subjectivity of this AI that just wants everyone to be happy. Placing this story in conversation with Lacanian psychoanalytic thought raises fascinating questions about the nature of subjectivity, personhood, desire, and the psychoanalytic “cure”.
