Public discussions about AI often stress the idea that technologies such as generative AI might lead to the emergence of machines that think and even feel like humans. Drawing on histories of how people project lives onto things that talk, this talk argues that the alleged intelligence of machines has also to do with how humans perceive and relate to machines exhibiting communicative behavior. Taking up this point of view helps reframe AI as technologies that build a convincing illusion of intelligence. As an exemplary case, the presentation will focus on the case of Alex, a grey parrot that was the subject of thirty years of experiments on its communicative behavior at major US universities between 1976 and 2007. These attempts at establishing human-animal communications can help make sense of a present and a close future in which more and more humans engage in communications with machines that are, at the same time, able and not really able to communicate back. The emergence of generative AI should thus be seen not much as the creation of intelligent machines, but rather of technologies that can be perceived by humans as such. 

Simone Natale is Associate Professor in Media Theory and History at the University of Turin, Italy, and an Editor of the journal Media, Culture & Society. He is the author of numerous publications including his monograph Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test (Oxford University Press, 2021), which has been translated into Chinese, Italian, and Portuguese, and of over 50 peer-reviewed research articles. He has participated as an expert on AI for leading international initiatives such as the Global Partnership for Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) and the Brookings Institution’s Global Task Force on AI in Education.