Artificial Intelligence on Keren Wang

What Is AI? Part 2 – Demystifying AI Through Four Acts

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 09:35:52 +0000

Scene from the 1983 sci-fi thriller WarGames, directed by John Badham. The film dramatizes a near-catastrophe triggered by a military decision to entrust U.S. nuclear deterrence to an autonomous AI system that treats thermonuclear war as a solvable optimization problem. Source: DVDXtras, “WarGames (1983) | Behind the Scenes,” Internet Archive, June 2, 2022. <LINK>

Continuing from: “What Is AI?” Part 1: A Survey of Imaginaries, Mythologies, and Rhetorical Structures of Thinking Machines*

In the previous segment of our genealogical survey, we have traced ancient imaginaries that seeded today’s visions of machine intelligence. From Yan Shi’s mechanical performers to Talos’ bronze vigilance and the ritual logic of golems and Homunculi, we explored how mythic prototypes shaped the rhetorical terrain on which “AI” would later emerge as a technological category.

Whereas earlier societies used myth and ritual to make sense of uncanny forms of artificial agency and “thinking machines,” in this second part we turn from historical mythologies to present-day technological possibilities. The term “artificial intelligence” circulates in our cultural lifeworld with astonishing fluidity. It appears in commercials, policy reports, sci-fi movies, legal disputes, and everyday conversations. It is used to describe everything from basic computer programs to sophisticated generative models capable of complex knowledge-performance.

"What Is AI?" Part 1: A Survey of Imaginaries, Mythologies, and Rhetorical Structures of Thinking Machines

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 14:18:43 +0000

*Online lesson module and WIP chapter draft.

When our own era proclaims artificial intelligence (AI) as the centerpiece of contemporary technological fetishism, it often points to its sweeping impact on medicine, autonomous mobility, creative production, and the evolving rituals of law and civic life. Yet even amid these transformations, we should resist the impulse to treat AI as a clean break with the past, for the imaginaries that animate it are far older than the machines themselves.¹

Long before the first integrated circuit pulsed with electricity, societies from the past contemplated thinking machines in forms that now read like allegories of our contemporary anxieties.

The Internet - from "Nuclear Hardened" Networks to Algorithmic Governmentality

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 17:15:36 +0000

References

Beck, Estee. "Who Is Tracking You?: A Rhetorical Framework for Evaluating Surveillance and Privacy Practices." In Cyber Law, Privacy, and Security: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, pp. 121-138. IGI Global, 2019.

Belk, Russell. “Extended self and the digital world.” Current Opinion in Psychology 10 (2016): 50-54.

Chen, Ning, and Yu Chen. “Smart city surveillance at the network edge in the era of iot: opportunities and challenges.” Smart cities: development and governance frameworks (2018): 153-176.

Lesson 7: Rhetorical Artifacts

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 21:00:04 +0000

Posted by: Keren Wang

Before you start this lesson, please READ: Berger, Arthur Asa. 2024. Media and Communication Research Methods: An Introduction to Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. 3rd ed. Chapter 4, “Rhetorical Analysis.” Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781071939017.

1. Overview

What do you think of when you hear the word “artifact”? In rhetorical scholarship, the term “artifact” is not limited to historical objects or museum pieces. Instead, it encompasses various texts, speeches, symbolic objects, and events produced by humans.

In communication research, one key difference between rhetorical and critical methods and other qualitative research methods is that, while qualitative methods such as interviews, observations, and focus group studies revolve around studying human subjects, rhetorical scholars analyze rhetorical artifacts, or “texts” that have already been produced.

New Research Project: Artificial Intelligence and Human Sacrifice

Mon, 25 Aug 2025 02:36:41 +0000

On December 4, 2024, news broke that a lone gunman had assassinated UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive officer, Brian Thompson, outside the company’s headquarters.¹ The killing itself was shocking, but what unsettled many observers was the wave of sympathy that quickly coalesced around the perpetrator—donations, online tributes, and statements of support that revealed a raw seam in America’s collective experience of health care.² This dramatic act of killing is entangled with the dark trajectory in the devolution of the marketized healthcare industry in the United States: normalizing traumatic acts of takings, with increasingly unsustainable industry practices justifying the suspension of pre-existing taboos concerning the sanctity of life and the boundaries of wealth transfer.³

Demystifying The Chinese Social Credit System - Presentation for the Symposium on China’s Data Governance and its Impact on US-China Relations, hosted by the Carter Center China Focus

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 21:46:45 +0000

Demystifying The Chinese Social Credit System - Presentation for the Symposium on China’s Data Governance and its Impact on US-China Relations, hosted by the Carter Center China Focus

Introduction:

There is nothing new about public authorities using collected numerical info as a governing technology. Census has been a central governance tool throughout Ancient Rome and Imperial China. In fact, the need for keeping taxation records was a key historical exigence driving the invention of many earliest writing systems.

Throughout human history, public authorities have relied on collected numerical data as a tool for governance. This was evident with the census in Ancient Rome and Imperial China, where early writing systems were developed primarily for taxation records. The digitization of data and advancements in data science have revolutionized governance-by-data, making it continuously updated and more encompassing. The Chinese Social Credit System (SCS) is a testament to this evolution. Despite its significance, the SCS remains misunderstood, especially outside the Global North. Today, I aim to provide clarity on this topic, considering its implications on human rights and rule of law both within and beyond China, and shedding light on US-China relations. This talk will bring together relevant historical, rhetorical, socio-cultural and legal contexts to unpack the emergent structures of the Chinese social credit system and data governance experiments. By catalyzing greater open dialogue and critical inquiry on this thorny topic, this lecture seeks to advance the vision of The Carter Center and contribute to a deeper understanding of the past, present, and future of US-China relations.

Artificial Intelligence on Keren Wang

What Is AI? Part 2 – Demystifying AI Through Four Acts

*Continuing from: “What Is AI?” Part 1: A Survey of Imaginaries, Mythologies, and Rhetorical Structures of Thinking Machines

"What Is AI?" Part 1: A Survey of Imaginaries, Mythologies, and Rhetorical Structures of Thinking Machines

Table of Contents

The Internet - from "Nuclear Hardened" Networks to Algorithmic Governmentality

References

Lesson 7: Rhetorical Artifacts

1. Overview

New Research Project: Artificial Intelligence and Human Sacrifice

Demystifying The Chinese Social Credit System - Presentation for the Symposium on China’s Data Governance and its Impact on US-China Relations, hosted by the Carter Center China Focus

Demystifying The Chinese Social Credit System - Presentation for the Symposium on China’s Data Governance and its Impact on US-China Relations, hosted by the Carter Center China Focus

Introduction:

Continuing from: “What Is AI?” Part 1: A Survey of Imaginaries, Mythologies, and Rhetorical Structures of Thinking Machines*