Artificial Intelligence and Surveillance: A Comparative Study of George Orwell’s 1984 and William Gibson’s Neuromancer

Abstract

The human need for security has been the backbone of human development and thriving. The need for security has created a number of issues on top of them is surveillance. Surveillance in the modern age of technology gave birth to screen, social media, the internet and lately the data processing entity, artificial intelligence. This research aims at comparing the usage of artificially intelligent apparatus to discipline the masses in the worlds of 1984 and Neuromancer. Furthermore, it extends to examining the aesthetic support of setting, language, and technology to the two variables of AI and Surveillance. The objective of this study is to expose Orwell’s and Gibson’s anxieties as not only exaggerations, but valid concerns that relate to real-life politics and economics. This qualitative research is centered around deduction and induction, and the corpuses used in the dissertation are the novels 1984 and Neuromancer, using Foucault’s panopticon and Zubbof’s persuasive technology theories. Results show that the use of artificially intelligent means of surveillance in 1984 and Neuromancer are mainly due to economic reasons. The difference between the world of Orwell and Gibson is at heart economic, Orwell’s world is socialist, Gibson’s world is capitalist. This body of work will assist in drawing parallels to the modern technological era and in unveiling the true reasons of real-life artificial surveillance.