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Palgrave Macmillan

The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Isabel Millar

    1. Centre for Critical Thought, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

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  • Stages a novel and productive encounter between psychoanalysis and AI
  • Draws examples from science fiction film and TV to examine the concept of the Sexbot
  • Presents a here-to-fore disregarded dimension of theorizing Artificial Intelligence: enjoyment

Part of the book series: The Palgrave Lacan Series (PALS)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xv
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  2. Introduction

    • Isabel Millar
    Pages 1-12

  3. Part I

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 13-13
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    2. The Stupidity of Intelligence

      • Isabel Millar
      Pages 15-47

    3. The Artificial Object

      • Isabel Millar
      Pages 49-83

    4. The Sexual Abyss

      • Isabel Millar
      Pages 85-121

  4. Part II

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 123-123
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    2. What Can I Know? Artificial Enjoyment

      • Isabel Millar
      Pages 125-146

    3. What Should I Do? Patipolitics: From Sade to Killian

      • Isabel Millar
      Pages 147-168

    4. What Can I Hope For? Reproduction, Replication, Immortality

      • Isabel Millar
      Pages 169-192

    5. Conclusion: What Is Man? Between Matheme and Anxiety

      • Isabel Millar
      Pages 193-203

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 205-220
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Keywords

About this book

This book examines the crucial role of psychoanalysis in understanding what AI means for us as speaking, sexed subjects. Drawing on Lacanian theory and recent clinical developments it explores what philosophy and critical theory of AI has hitherto neglected: enjoyment. Through the reconceptualization of Intelligence, the Artificial Object and the Sexual Abyss the book outlines the Sexbot as a figure who exists on the boundary of psychoanalysis and AI. Through this figure and the medium of film, the author subverts Kant’s three Enlightenment questions and guides readers to transition from asking 'Does it think?' to 'Can it enjoy?' The book will appeal in particular to students and scholars of psychoanalysis, philosophy, film and media studies, critical theory, feminist theory and AI research. 

Reviews

“Does It think? Does It enjoy? Taking the problem of artificial intelligence as a problem that has been in a way always-already inherent to psychoanalytic inquiry Isabel Millar accomplishes a most powerful and productive shift of perspective on both psychoanalysis and AI. Her work takes us on a fascinating journey across a vivid conceptual and figural landscape, and provides an excellent proof that powerful, captivating theory is all about asking the right kind of questions. The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence is both extremely timely and timeless in the way it constructs and tackles its object.”

(Professor Alenka Zupančič, The European Graduate School and Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Author of What is Sex? and Ethics of the Real, Kant and Lacan)




 “Boldly drawing on a vast range of academic disciplines orchestrated by an enviable psychoanalytic erudition and an original treatmentof so-called “sexbots” as a central object for contemporary speculative and social investigation, Millar’s book asks a series of seminal and long-overdue questions, which are here to stay. How should we approach the allegedly forthcoming advent of the “singularity” in terms of sexuality and sexuation? Does sexual reproduction have a future? What new forms of enjoyment, if any, might Artificial Intelligence enable us to think and experience? Or is it rather the case that androids secretly already have wet dreams about the human-all-too-human absence of the sexual relationship?”


(Dr Lorenzo Chiesa, Newcastle University, UK. Author of Subjectivity and Otherness and The Not-Two)




“People tend to respond to artificial intelligence with either fear or love. Isabel Millar proposes a third way: to psychoanalyze artificial intelligence and the persistent investment in it. In a stunning work of expansive intellectual power, Millar shifts the fundamental question concerning artificial intelligence to the terrain of enjoyment. After Millar’s book, the question “Does it enjoy?” should be the starting point for any engagement with artificial intelligence. It is simply an epochal book for understanding this engagement.”


(Professor Todd McGowan, Department of English, University of Vermont, USA. Author of Emancipation after Hegel and The Real Gaze, Film Theory after Lacan)


Authors and Affiliations

  • Centre for Critical Thought, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

    Isabel Millar

About the author

Isabel Millar is a philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist. She is currently Research Fellow at the Centre for Critical Thought, University of Kent, UK.

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