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Simone Natale, Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test

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By Domenico Napolitano

Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test, Simone Natale (2021) 191pp., £20 paperback, Oxford University Press, New York, ISBN: 978-0190080372

In the scenario that sees the spread of enthusiastic, solutionist rhetoric about artificial intelligence (AI), Simone Natale’s Deceitful Media is a real breath of fresh air. Not that cultural studies about AI are a new thing, but (among calls to materialism and socio-political approaches) what was missing was consideration of human–machine communication as essential to the development of knowl- edge and practices of AI. As the author argues, the long sustained separation between the fields of AI and human–machine communication is misleading, since the very idea of AI is historically, socially and epistemologically dependent on imagining a machine interacting and communicating with humans. A machine can show intelligence not only because it is interacting with humans, but also because communication (especially in its linguistic meaning) is itself one of the central repre- sentations of intelligence. It is not by chance that the form through which AI has gained a foothold in the contemporary world is that of speaking machines, such as the so-called ‘voice assistants’ embedded in smartphones and smart speakers. Voice is traditionally considered to be what makes humans human, so our imagination projects onto a machine endowed with voice the other charac- teristics of humanity as well, intelligence in primis (Dolar, 2006). From the very beginnings of AI, coming immediately after computer science, natural language has been considered the paradigm inspiring the attempt to produce an intelligent machine (Bianchini, 2007). At the same time, intel- ligent machines have been imagined as possessing a voice since the beginning of technological modernity, both in the scientific milieu and in popular representations, from novels to cinema (from 2001 A Space Odyssey or Star Wars to Her).

page: 236 – 241
Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation
Volume 38, Issue 2
SKU: 380206

SKU: 380206 Category: Tag:

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By Domenico Napolitano

Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test, Simone Natale (2021) 191pp., £20 paperback, Oxford University Press, New York, ISBN: 978-0190080372

In the scenario that sees the spread of enthusiastic, solutionist rhetoric about artificial intelligence (AI), Simone Natale’s Deceitful Media is a real breath of fresh air. Not that cultural studies about AI are a new thing, but (among calls to materialism and socio-political approaches) what was missing was consideration of human–machine communication as essential to the development of knowl- edge and practices of AI. As the author argues, the long sustained separation between the fields of AI and human–machine communication is misleading, since the very idea of AI is historically, socially and epistemologically dependent on imagining a machine interacting and communicating with humans. A machine can show intelligence not only because it is interacting with humans, but also because communication (especially in its linguistic meaning) is itself one of the central repre- sentations of intelligence. It is not by chance that the form through which AI has gained a foothold in the contemporary world is that of speaking machines, such as the so-called ‘voice assistants’ embedded in smartphones and smart speakers. Voice is traditionally considered to be what makes humans human, so our imagination projects onto a machine endowed with voice the other charac- teristics of humanity as well, intelligence in primis (Dolar, 2006). From the very beginnings of AI, coming immediately after computer science, natural language has been considered the paradigm inspiring the attempt to produce an intelligent machine (Bianchini, 2007). At the same time, intel- ligent machines have been imagined as possessing a voice since the beginning of technological modernity, both in the scientific milieu and in popular representations, from novels to cinema (from 2001 A Space Odyssey or Star Wars to Her).

page: 236 – 241
Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation
Volume 38, Issue 2
SKU: 380206

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