Exploring Gendered Lives of Artificial Intelligence
Loading...
Authors
Sally Shrake
Issue Date
2026
Type
Language
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
Science fiction invites its audience to imagine what a world could be like when reshaped by emerging and speculative technology. One technology that is commonly featured in science fiction is Artificial Intelligence, an engineered being sometimes taking the form of a supercomputer, android, or robot. This paper will be looking at how AI characters in science fiction are used as a medium to explore aspects of humanity. Analyzing Sidra/Lovelace from Becky Chambers’s A Closed and Common Orbit and L3-37 from Solo: A Star Wars Story, I argue how these AI characters reflect experiences typically associated with women or other gender-marginalized subjects.
Through close reading and feminist media analysis, the paper traces how topics such as bodily autonomy, self-expression, safety, and relationships are articulated through the lens of AI characters. Both Sidra and L3-37 inhabit worlds that simultaneously rely upon and constrain them, positioning AI as a structurally minoritized class whose treatment mirrors intersectional forms of gendered oppression. By exploring how the technological bodies are regulated, this paper will demonstrate how narratives use artificial intelligence as a critique of how definitions of humanity are tethered to systems of exploitation, exclusion, and control.