>>Technology, Capitalism, History: The enduring desire for an artificial intelligence, the accumulating suffering of the creatures of nature

Abstract: This paper is an attempt at a critical introduction to the pursuit of constructing machines capable of artificial intelligence, thinking machines. This has defined modernity, historical capitalism, through an endless introduction and use of computing tools and mechanisms (merchant capitalism) and computing machines (industrial capitalism), mechanical, electrical, and, since the 1940s, also, electronic. It is popularly assumed that presenting machines as capable of artificial intelligence is a rather recent phenomenon. The examples offered here suggest that computing artifacts were ideologized as intelligent from the beginning of capitalism. Attention is invited to both offline and online computers, going back to mechanical calculators and steam engine governors respectively. The case of the steam engine governor, an online analog of the steam engine that was connected to the circuit of the steam engine in a ‘negative feedback’ manner, is used to introduce to the limits of artificial intelligence, as these are linked to the unprecedented environmental crisis that all creatures of nature are now living with.