Quick Summary:
A woman lives in a future America where parasites have taken control of human bodies. She will have to do the unthinkable to break free from this dystopic nightmare.

About N.K. Jemisin:
Nora Keita Jemisin (born September 19, 1972) is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. Her fiction includes a wide range of themes, notably cultural conflict and oppression.

Her debut novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and the subsequent books in her Inheritance Trilogy received critical acclaim. She has won several awards for her work, including the Locus Award. The three books of her Broken Earth series made her the first author to win the Hugo Award for Best Novel in three consecutive years, as well as the first to win for all three novels in a trilogy. She won a fourth Hugo Award, for Best Novelette, in 2020 for Emergency Skin. 

Jemisin was a recipient of the MacArthur Fellows Program Genius Grant in 2020.

Link to Story: docs.google.com/document/d/1c8jSPiVEu_As60Vjm-k3PqqGS9AzyzvL2k6rWoJl6F4/edit

Prompt: 

In 2014 Afrofuturist NK Jemisin, most famous for her Broken Earth trilogy and short story collection How Long 'til Black Future Month?,” imagines worlds where white colonization has never occurred and where alien technologies have run out of control. In her short story, “Walking Awake,” Jemisin images a dangerous future. In doing so, she establishes an allegorical text that holds deep messages for her readers about the role of AI in our lives. Read the short story carefully. Then, in a well-written essay, analyze the rhetorical choices Jemisin makes to establish an allegorical message to her reader.

What is the message? How does she establish it through different rhetorical moves?

Prompt:

“Walking Awake” imagines an alternative universe where alien parasites have taken control of human minds and bodies. N K Jemisin’s Afrofuturism and sci-fi realities set stories in spaces that erase white culture and oppression, that question the role and use of technology, and create complex allegories that advocate for political and social change. In “Walking Awake,” the parasitic invasion can be read as an allegory about AI and the invasiveness of technology. 

Carefully read the source packet. Then write an essay that synthesizes material from at least 3 of the sources and develops your position on the allegorical messages and warnings woven into Jesmisin’s short story.

Synthesis Materials:

Source Packet

Individual Materials Found in Packet:

• Source A: Dating in the Metaverse

• Source B: The Imminent Danger of AI is One We’re Not Talking About

• Source C: A Conversation with Bing’s Chatbot Left me Deeply Unsettled

• Source D: What is Afrofuturism? (video)

• Source E: AI vs. Humans (graph)

• Source F: My AI Lover

Prompt: 

“The upheavals [of artificial intelligence] can escalate quickly and become scarier and even cataclysmic. Imagine how a medical robot, originally programmed to rid cancer, could conclude that the best way to obliterate cancer is to exterminate humans who are genetically prone to the disease.”

— Nick Bilton, tech columnist for
The New York Times

This quote from Bilton is an extreme statement, but the point is worth considering. As artificial intelligence (AI) learns and refines itself, many argue that we will AI will put millions of people out of work and that -- left unchecked -- AI will eventually become sentient (capable of thinking on its own) and at that point no longer be in our control. Agree, disagree, qualify – the benefits of AI outweigh the dangers.

In a well-organized essay, take a position on the relationship between progress and AI. 

Support your argument with appropriate evidence and examples.