Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

What is artificial intelligence (AI)? What moral, ethical, or even political concerns have you encountered related to the topic? Should humans continue to develop and advance AI? When, if ever, should they stop?  

Teaching Suggestion: These questions can activate prior knowledge before reading the following articles or may be used as the basis for debate after reading them. Students may benefit from a brief explanation of how current questions around AI relate to questions raised in the novel.

• This article from Science explores the difficulties of identifying sentience in AI.
• This article from Rolling Stone explores how creator and user biases replicate and grow within AI programs.

Short Activity

Read the article from The Onion, then write about or discuss whether someone might mistake it for a real report. Where does it closely resemble a real news report? What clues indicate that it is not? Then, using the elements of satire as a guide, create a checklist, question set, or another diagnostic that someone could use to determine whether or not a piece is satirical.