Nnedi Okorafor’s short story “Mother of Invention” (2018) brings into focus several key thematics in the scholarly studies of ecology and AI. Set in near-future Nigeria, Okorafor imagines a moment when a sophisticated smart home becomes a life-saving extension of an expectant mother’s immune system. The protagonist, Anwuli, goes into labor during a pollen storm caused by a GMO crop of peri grass, a nutritious substitute for rice whose pollination cycle has been thrown off by climate change. Yet the smart home has a kind of external immune system—and womb—that protects Anwuli and her child from the worst of the pollen storm, able to learn and adapt to the changing situation. It filters both pollen and information, sifting through data and shutting out the harmful peri grass.
Okorafor’s story animates the intimacies between AI and ecology in a variety of important ways. It centers uses of AI technology located in...
