Mind the Machine: Experientiality and Artificial Consciousness in A Closed and Common Orbit and Detroit: Become Human

Sammanfattning

Artificial intelligence has penetrated almost every aspect of human life, raising questions not just about technological development but also about how human beings should navigate their encounters with these artificial entities. Contributing to this broader discourse on the conceptualization of human-machine intersubjectivity, this study examines how fictional narratives mediate the experiences of AI characters and give rise to experiential engagement with artificial consciousness. Drawing on Marco Caracciolo’s framework of experientiality, the study analyzes Becky Chambers’s novel A Closed and Common Orbit (2016), and Quantic Dream’s video game Detroit: Become Human (2018), focusing on the mediation of androids’ environment-oriented perception and perception of bodily vulnerability. This study argues that both texts render artificial consciousness experientially meaningful by configuring android experiences into recognizable structures while preserving their nonhuman otherness. The analysis demonstrates how a meaningful engagement is not premised on rendering artificial consciousness completely accessible to the human mind, but rather can occur even through partial forms of experiential alignment. Viewed in this light, narratives about artificial intelligence offer more than speculative glimpses into technological futures; they provide opportunities to reflect on how humans may co-exist with subjects whose forms of consciousness differ from their own.