Secret Agents: A Psychoanalytic Critique of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

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“Good Old-Fashioned Artificial Intelligence” (GOFAI), which was based on a symbolic information-processing model of the mind, has been superseded by neural-network models to describe and create intelligence. Rather than a symbolic representation of the world, the idea is to mimic the structure of the brain in electronic form, whereby artificial neurons draw their own connections during a self-learning process. Critiquing such a brain physiological model, the following article takes up the idea of a “psychoanalysis of things” and applies it to artificial intelligence and machine learning. This approach may help to reveal some of the hidden layers within the current A. I. debate and hints towards a central mechanism in the psycho-economy of our socio-technological world: The question of “Who speaks?”, central for the analysis of paranoia, becomes paramount at a time, when algorithms, in the form of artificial neural networks, operate more and more as secret agents.
Original languageEnglish
JournalDigital Culture & Society
Volume4
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)29-44
Number of pages16
ISSN2364-2114
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 27.07.2018

DOI

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