Artificially voiced intelligences: voice and the myth of AI

Abstract

Abstract The debate around artificial intelligence tends to re-affirm a narrow approach, positioning AI as a mythical being, a form of ‘superhuman’ knowledge or ‘intelligence’ capable of going ‘beyond’ humanity. Such an assumption is based on anthropo-white-centric knowledge that turns AIs into mythical/godlike figures. Starting from the role of voice and prosopopoeia as foundational aspects of such ‘godification’ of AI, I will unpack the relations between Voice and AI and how the previous influenced the identification and mythisation of the latter. This article explores multiple myths: myths of automated speech, myths of artificial intelligences, and myths of social solutionism, shifting the attention to the relations we entertain with the ‘mythical’ AI, deidentifying the machine, focussing on which forms of relation are already happening and could happen. I will do so through a critique of transhumanist derives of speculative AI and a posthumanist angle, rooted in new materialist and anti-racist critique, to then highlight artistic forms that resist ‘AI = superhuman’ and reconceive the relation between AI and Voice.

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