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Artificial intelligence (AI) is often discussed as something extraordinary, a dream--or a nightmare--that awakens metaphysical questions on human life. Yet far from a distant technology of the future, the true power of AI lies in its subtle revolution of ordinary life. From voice assistants like Siri to natural language processors, AI technologies use cultural biases and modern psychology to fit specific characteristics of how users perceive and navigate the
external world, thereby projecting the illusion of intelligence. Integrating media studies, science and technology studies, and social psychology, Deceitful Media examines the rise of
artificial intelligence throughout history and exposes the very human fallacies behind this technology. Focusing specifically on communicative AIs, Natale argues that what we call "AI" is not a form of intelligence but rather a reflection of the human user. Using the term "banal deception," he reveals that deception forms the basis of all human-computer interactions rooted in AI technologies, as technologies like voice assistants utilize the dynamics of projection and stereotyping as a means
for aligning with our existing habits and social conventions. By exploiting the human instinct to connect, AI reveals our collective vulnerabilities to deception, showing that what machines are primarily
changing is not other technology but ourselves as humans. Deceitful Media illustrates how AI has continued a tradition of technologies that mobilize our liability to deception and shows that only by better understanding our vulnerabilities to deception can we become more sophisticated consumers of interactive media.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is often discussed as something extraordinary, a dream--or a nightmare--that awakens metaphysical questions on human life. Yet far from a distant technology of the future, the true power of AI lies in its subtle revolution of ordinary life. From voice assistants like Siri to natural language processors, AI technologies use cultural biases and modern psychology to fit specific characteristics of how users perceive and navigate the
external world, thereby projecting the illusion of intelligence. Integrating media studies, science and technology studies, and social psychology, Deceitful Media examines the rise of
artificial intelligence throughout history and exposes the very human fallacies behind this technology. Focusing specifically on communicative AIs, Natale argues that what we call "AI" is not a form of intelligence but rather a reflection of the human user. Using the term "banal deception," he reveals that deception forms the basis of all human-computer interactions rooted in AI technologies, as technologies like voice assistants utilize the dynamics of projection and stereotyping as a means
for aligning with our existing habits and social conventions. By exploiting the human instinct to connect, AI reveals our collective vulnerabilities to deception, showing that what machines are primarily
changing is not other technology but ourselves as humans. Deceitful Media illustrates how AI has continued a tradition of technologies that mobilize our liability to deception and shows that only by better understanding our vulnerabilities to deception can we become more sophisticated consumers of interactive media.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Turing Test: Cultural life of an idea
Chapter 2. How to dispel magic: Computers, interfaces, and the
problem of the observer
Chapter 3. The Eliza effect: Joseph Weizenbaum and the emergence of
chatbots
Chapter 4. Of daemons, dogs and trees: Situating AI in software
Chapter 5. How to create a bot: Programming deception at the
Loebner Prize
Chapter 6. To believe in Siri: A critical analysis of voice
assistants
Conclusion: Our sophisticated selves
Bibliography
Simone Natale, Associate Professor in Media Theory and History,
University of Turin
Simone Natale is Associate Professor in media theory and history at
the University of Turin, Italy; Principal Investigator of the
AHRC-funded Circuits of Practice project at Loughborough
University, UK; and Assistant Editor of Media, Culture and Society.
He has been awarded fellowships and grants by organizations
including the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, the
Humboldt Foundation in Germany, and Columbia University's Italian
Academy in the US.
"Deceitful Media makes a compelling case that the development of
artificial intelligence is inextricably woven together with
fallacies of human perception. Analyzing archival documents from
the 1950s onward, Simone Natale demonstrates the prevalence of what
he calls 'banal deception,' the everyday taken-for-granted
interactions that attribute human-equivalent intelligence to
algorithmic processes that in themselves are quite different. A
remarkable
achievement, this accessible and well-written book is a 'must-read'
for media scholars, cultural critics, and anyone interested in the
significance of artificial intelligence for our time." -- N.
Katherine Hayles,
author of Postprint: Books and Becoming Computational
"From the time of Alan Turing's Game of Imitation, the benchmark of
machine intelligence has been deceptive communicative behavior. In
Deceitful Media, Simone Natale provides a decisive and revealing
analysis of the history, significance, and social consequences of
deception in artificial intelligence, demonstrating how and why
deceit is not a bug to be fixed but a defining feature of both the
theory and practice of AI." -- David J. Gunkel, Northern
Illinois University
"A fundamental fear surrounding artificial intelligence is that it
will one day become a technology of deception. As Simone Natale
informs us in Deceitful Media, that day is already here. However,
such deception is not the malicious kind of science fiction;
rather, the deceit of AI is one enacted in our minds as they
encounter technologies carefully crafted to our social nature. By
situating AI within the context of media and communication
theory,
Natale dispels the hype surrounding AI as a technology, replacing
it with a theoretical lens informed by the seemingly mundane
elements of our ongoing interactions with AI as forms of media. As
a result, Deceitful
Media provides us with not only a new way to think about AI, but
also a more grounded approach to assessing its impact for ourselves
and society." -- Andrea Guzman, Northern Illinois University
"A remarkable critical history of the artifice central to
artificial intelligence. Natale has peered beyond the scandalously
uncanny valleys, the many muddily mediated human-machine thought
experiments, and scurrilous bids for grants and investor capital to
uncover the dark heart of artificial intelligence: namely, the
everyday ordinary ways that 'banal deception' is integrated into
our lives. In so doing, Deceitful Media offers pressingly
ethical,
sober, and sophisticated pathways to reclaiming the unnatural
ordinariness of the human psyche in the shadow of artificial
intelligence. Highly readable and deeply instructive." -- Benjamin
Peters, University of
Tulsa
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