Bot Terrorism and the Rise of Machinehood: A Critical Analysis of AI-Driven Threats in S.B. Divya's Novel Machinehood

Abstract

Bot terrorism is a kind of terrorism in which terrorist attacks are carried out by robots and artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. This plays a crucial role in S.B. Divya’s novel Machinehood. This novel is set in 2095, when the world saw significant changes in the previous century due to rapid advances in biotechnology, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence. To characterise the organisation and collective consciousness of these entities, which aimed to reinterpret their place in the world, the term “Machinehood” was created. Machinehood is the name of the organisation that is striving to re-envision its place in society. Machinehood is a terrorist organisation that uses robots and cyborgs to assassinate its enemies.

The paper is based on posthumanism, Critical AI Studies and Actor-Network Theory, and draws on contemporary theory on terrorism to assert that bot terrorism serves as a metaphor for the unintended consequences of technological acceleration and algorithmic governance. The analysis shows that, contrary to the typical notion of terrorism as irrational violence, in the novel, it arises from systemic inequalities in societies dependent on AI.

This paper examines the ideas behind bot terrorism and cyborgs, which are compared to terrorist organisations that have used cyberterrorism activities in the real world. This study adopts qualitative textual analysis and posthumanist criticism to understand the novel better. The paper makes a significant interdisciplinary contribution to the fields of literary studies, artificial intelligence ethics, digital humanities, and security studies by framing Machinehood as a critical intervention in the discourse on AI governance, automation, surveillance capitalism, and posthuman citizenship. It asserts that the novel is a dialogue with the present discourse of terrorism that goes beyond the human agent and suggests a new model of thinking about technologically mediated political violence in the era of the intelligent machine.