Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 326.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2026-02-11 17:33:57+00:00
From: Tim Smithers <tim.smithers@cantab.net>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.325: ’ΑΙ’ is a forgetting
Dear Jon, Willard, and Maurizio,
Jon: ... and "machine learning" might be described as a
cunning re-branding of computational function fitting with
data.
Willard: You're right. AI is not a thing. It's the name of a
field of research; a science of the Artificial, according to
Herbert Simon. AI research is the investigation of
intelligent behaviour by trying to build and study it in the
Artificial, as opposed to studying it in the Natural, which is
what Cognitive Science does, for example.
Maurizio: I therefore like a lot your talk of AI systems;
systems built by people working in AI.
Calling a thing an AI is silly. We don't call things, like
humans and other animals, Natural Intelligences (NIs), and we
wouldn't.
Calling things AIs is done for effect, to make it look like
we're saying something impressive. In reality it's an empty
name for anything. ... But it does allow for the telling of
Fairy Stories, to the delight of many, it seems.
The same has happened to the word agent. Agenthood requires
taking responsibility for all consequences of your decisions
and actions. AI systems don't, and can't, do this. So the
actions they do take are just examples of automation; a
capacity for independent action. But automatic doesn't sound
impressive any more.
The same has happened to the word autonomous. Autonomy is
self law making. So you need to have a self to be autonomous;
you have to be a being. Autonomy is orthogonal to automatic.
You can't get to autonomy by building more and more automation
into a system. But try telling that to the robot builders and
Agentic system builders. [I did once, back in 1997, to no
discernible effect: Brain and Cognition, Vol 34, pp 88-106.]
Serious research requires strong terminological discipline.
AI has never been famous for this. As a research field
interested in intelligent behaviour, AI might be said to have
done more to demonstrate the stupidity of humans, than
understand much about intelligent behaviour. Today, the
larger the LLM the more stupidity we see, it seems.
The utility and the hazard of natural languaging both lie in
the fact there is no any necessary correspondence between what
is languaged and what is reality. So, we must either struggle
up the slippery slope of establishing some correspondence, to
some knowing and understanding, or joyfully slide down the
same slope to nothingness and idiocy.
It's nice to see plenty of people here engaged in struggling
up the slope.
Best regards,
Tim
> On 11 Feb 2026, at 07:36, Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 325.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
> [1] From: J.J. Naughton <jjn1@cam.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.321: ’ΑΙ’ is a forgetting (63)
>
> [2] From: maurizio lana <maurizio.lana@uniupo.it>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.321: ’ΑΙ’ is a forgetting (24)
>
>
> --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2026-02-10 08:30:46+00:00
> From: J.J. Naughton <jjn1@cam.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.321: ’ΑΙ’ is a forgetting
>
> Dear Willard
>
>
> “AI” was a cunning re-branding of “machine learning” by the tech industry.
And,
> sadly, it worked.
>
> Best
>
> John
> .........
> Professor John Naughton
> Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy
> University of Cambridge
> Director, Press Fellowship
> Wolfson College
> e: jjn1@cam.ac.uk
> w: memex.naughtons.org
> t: +44 7836 373799
>
>> On 10 Feb 2026, at 06:59, Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 321.
>> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
>> Hosted by DH-Cologne
>> http://www.dhhumanist.org/
>> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Date: 2026-02-09 09:49:14+00:00
>> From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
>> Subject: taking 'AI' at its word (or acronym)
>>
>> Thanks to John Naughton for underscoring the enshittification Abbate
>> highlights in Susskind's "glib survey". But I would go a step further
>> back to the act which makes it trivially easy for glibbers like Susskind
>> to darken the public mind: reifying the phenomena uncovered (or
>> created) by artificial intelligence research, reducing them to a
>> ghostly acronym. Befuddled by a deluge of promotionalism we fail
>> to ask the core question: What is 'AI'?
>>
>> In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments ([1969] 2002),
>> Max Horkheim and Theodor Adorno put the problem in a nutshell: “all
>> reification is forgetting” (p. 191). 'AI' is a forgetting of the significance
>> of what the products of artificial intelligence research has enabled.
>> Mindlessly using 'AI' as if it were a thing, we drop the question before
>> it can be asked. We are dumbed down.
>>
>> Much work to do, no?
>>
>> Comments?
>>
>> All best,
>> WM
>> --
>> Willard McCarty,
>> Professor emeritus, King's College London;
>> Editor, Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts,
>> Sciences and Humanities (Berghahn); Humanist
>> http://www.mccarty.org.uk/
>
>
> --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2026-02-10 08:45:36+00:00
> From: maurizio lana <maurizio.lana@uniupo.it>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.321: ’ΑΙ’ is a forgetting
>
> as teachers, as many of us are, but also in broader sense as thinking
> persons, we face the problem that with all the endless important and
> interesting things that can be said about AI systems, which ones matter
> most in activating and maintaining the ability to /think/ about the
> subject, and not just making its /use/ interesting?
>
> the reification/hypostatization/personification of AI systems is
> probably a clear boundary between a critical and an uncritical approach.
> hence the need to choose carefully the expressions, verbs, adjectives,
> and pronouns we use when talking about AI systems.
>
> Maurizio
>
>
> ----------
>
> tout est et n'est rien
> motto dei conti di challant
>
> -----------
> Maurizio Lana
> Università del Piemonte Orientale
> Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
> Piazza Roma 36 - 13100 Vercelli
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted
List posts to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
List info and archives at at: http://dhhumanist.org
Listmember interface at: http://dhhumanist.org/Restricted/
Subscribe at: http://dhhumanist.org/membership_form.php
