Book excerpt: In The Risk Perception of Artificial Intelligence, Hugo Neri examines how society has come to understand artificial intelligence by studying how cultural productions, intellectuals, and the media have shaped society’s views, understandings, and fears of artificial intelligence. As an abstract term, artificial intelligence has been understood both as a discipline and a "robot's mind." In the twenty and twenty-first centuries, cultural representations in comics, television shows, and movies converged with public lectures about the risks of A.I. by prominent public figures such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk. Neri analyzes how this cultural and intellectual miscellany shapes the way we perceive artificial intelligence and whether this perception is universal or restricted to the Western world.