ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE: MYTHOLOGIES OF WESTERN SCIENTIFIC CONTENT

Abstract

Introduction. Artificial intelligence is a trend of NBIC-convergence and information technologies in particular. Since the 70s of the 20th century it has been a subject of intense debate in the scientific community. A direct indicator of the importance of the topic is the publication dynamics and the annual increase in the number of indexed articles. According to the statistics, Western social sciences are in the top five industry leaders. The purpose of the study is to analyze the Scopus database and identify the key mythologems of the scientific discourse of social sciences (in the field of artificial intelligence). The latter go beyond the boundaries of research norms and standards and express non-reflective research intentions. Methods. The reference base of scientific articles includes works published during the decade (2010—2020). Methods for detecting verbal markers and content analysis were used. At the same time, the emphasis was mainly placed not on quantitative, but on qualitative analytics as well. The basis for the choice of markers was the frequency of their use in abstracts (abstracts), headings (titles) and keywords. The selection of verbal markers was made in accordance with two conditionally designated categories: «trends», or frequency engineering, technical and social and humanitarian terms, expressing the direction of research practices and «mythologemes», or elements of a secondary semiotic system. Scientific novelty of the study. Scientific novelty is due to the specification of the research subject. In the West, the direction of the so-called «Technological mythology», which focuses mainly on the discourses of art and ideological documents is being developed. The analytics of scientific content makes it possible to remove the existing researchlimitations of the subject and identify prospects for further study of modern mythology. Content analysis made it possible to identify some extremely general formulations of technological mythologemes, which can be refined and concretized. Results. Following the results of the study, a description of three metatrends was made — technological, social and anthropological. All key directions within the boundaries of each trend are listed. At the same time, it is argued that the anthropotrend has a relatively smaller share in the discourse of Western social sciences. As a debatable aspect of the study, five scientific mythologemes were identified and conditionally designated. Interpretations and characteristic examples of the functioning of each are offered. Conclusion. The technological trend is constituted by the data of technical sciences and engineering developments with a social orientation. Sociotrend is determined by the spectrum of technology application areas. The conclusion is made about the diffusion of two trends and the discourses serving these trends. Discursively, the technotrend serves to construct a strictly scientific discourse based not on abstract, but on specific and precise propositions. Particular attention is paid to the discursive mainstream of «smartization», which is characteristic of the scientific content of the second decade of the 21st century. Emphasis is placed on the anthropological risks of extrapolating «smartization» to specialized practices.