Immaginario Black Box: prospettive mitiche e critiche tra innovazione bellica ed esplorazione artistica

Within the imaginaries of AI, automation occupies a central position and receives varying nuanced connotations. In both technical-scientific and popular discourses, this notion takes on the rhetorical and visually metaphorical form of the black box, implying the inability to fully visualize and understand what happens inside AI systems due to a complex and intricate layering of neural networks and algorithms. The rhetoric of the black box shapes both the justification and the critique of the use of AI, by showing or obscuring implications regarding accountability, values, and ethics. The present contribution explores how the myth of the black box and various corresponding imaginaries manifest across diverse case studies in two distinct domains, revealing their political, social, and semiotic implications. Through the analysis of the representation of AI by military websites (such as Palantir and Gospel) and of artworks on AI (like Paglen’s 2019 and Akten’s 2019 works), this paper endeavors to showcase how contrasting perspectives – mythical and critical – characterize the metaphor of the black box within the imaginary of AI.