In the know

Alison Adam’s fascinating study of gender and artificial intelligence,
Artificial Knowing: gender and the thinking machine, examines theories of the
knower and the known which underlie attempts to create artificial intelligence,
in particular to Cyc database of “common sense” and the Soar architecture for
“intelligent agents”. She argues persuasively that their narrow, problem-solving
perspectives fail to encompass relational or embodied ways of knowing which have
traditionally been equated with women’s knowledge. Published by Routledge,
£40/$65, ISBN 0415129621.