Episode 14: Tech Gothic — AI, Algorithms, and the New Haunted World

**Tech Gothic: AI, Algorithms, and the New Haunted World** What if artificial intelligence isn't just a technology story, but a Gothic one? In this episode, I'm exploring how the oldest fears in Gothic fiction have quietly migrated into our modern world. The castle became the data centre. The ghost became data. The doppelgänger became digital. We'll start with Frankenstein, but differently. Rather than a failed experiment, we look at it as a *successful* story whose consequences its creator never understood. From there, we'll trace that same anxiety through deepfakes and digital doubles, the strange new hauntings of social media profiles that outlive their owners, and the almost supernatural way people talk about "the algorithm" — as if it were an invisible force acting on their lives. Along the way we'll touch on Blade Runner, Neuromancer, Ex Machina, and Black Mirror, and ask why so much of our modern unease sounds like it was lifted straight from a Gothic novel. Because Gothic fiction has never really been about castles or monsters. It's about what happens when we create something we can't fully control, and that question is more relevant now than ever.