Mechanical Brains: Autism and Artificial Intelligence

IF 0.2 4区文学 0 LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM

DIACRITICS-A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM Pub Date : 2021-02-26 DOI:10.1353/dia.2020.0002

D. Squires

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract:This essay shows how popular and technical discourses of autism treat the condition as a form of artificial intelligence. Offering a genealogy of so-called mechanical brains, it argues that attempts to rehabilitate liberal subjectivity in an age of information overload created the conceptual and cultural conditions necessary for computational theories of mind, which inform the most prominent studies of autism. As distinctions between biological and machinic intelligence gave way to distinctions between authentic and artificial intelligence, autism emerged as an intermediary for consolidating divergent understandings of cognitive difference. Since the mid-twentieth century, autism has come to signal the superhuman potential of artificial intelligence and, at the same time, mark the threshold computers must surpass to achieve authentic intelligence. Autism contains anxieties about automation while also sustaining fantasies of maximized brainpower. It indicates both deficit and surfeit, strength and weakness. This essay leverages those oppositions to suggest how theories of disability and posthumanism might productively trouble one another: first to track constructions of intelligent personhood alongside information technologies, then to read an alternative construction of autistic intelligence that points toward new cognitive subjectivities.

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机械大脑：自闭症与人工智能

摘要：本文展示了自闭症的流行和技术话语是如何将自闭症视为一种人工智能形式的。它提供了一个所谓机械大脑的谱系，认为在信息过载的时代恢复自由主体性的尝试为心理计算理论创造了必要的概念和文化条件，这为自闭症的最著名研究提供了信息。随着生物智能和机器智能之间的区别被真实智能和人工智能之间的区分所取代，自闭症成为巩固对认知差异的不同理解的中介。自20世纪中期以来，自闭症已经成为人工智能的超人潜力的信号，同时也标志着计算机必须超越才能实现真正的智能。自闭症包含了对自动化的焦虑，同时也维持着对脑力最大化的幻想。它既表示赤字又表示过度，既表示强势又表示弱势。这篇文章利用这些对立来暗示残疾和后人道主义理论可能会如何有效地相互困扰：首先，在信息技术的基础上跟踪智能人格的构建，然后阅读自闭症智能的另一种构建，它指向新的认知主观主义。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

DIACRITICS-A REVIEW OF CONTEMPORARY CRITICISM LITERARY THEORY & CRITICISM-

CiteScore

0.80

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： For over thirty years, diacritics has been an exceptional and influential forum for scholars writing on the problems of literary criticism. Each issue features articles in which contributors compare and analyze books on particular theoretical works and develop their own positions on the theses, methods, and theoretical implications of those works.