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Abstract:
(Invited Talk)
Numerous critics of artificial intelligence have argued that
AI researchers, by using computers as the basis for their models,
have misrepresented human beings. Yet little attention has been
paid to a complementary phenomenon: the ways in which AI research
has misrepresented computers. Anthropomorphic metaphors suggest
treating computers in isolation as "boxes" comparable to
individual human beings. But computers, as they have developed
historically, are in fact deeply embedded in their institutional
environments. This paper reviews several theories of the
institutional embedding of computers, and uses these theories to
make sense both of the complaints against AI and of the real
successes that the field has had.
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