Modern advances in the development of artificial intelligence are
interdisciplinary with discoveries in neuroscience, cybernetics and
biomimetics. The basic tendency in intelligent machine research is to mimic
brain processes; it is therefore a special form of mimetic process, where
the technological mimics the organic, i.e. the natural. The discovery of
neuromorphic technologies (synaptic chips and artificial neurons) has enabled
the cybernetic brain to have a high degree of plasticity, i.e. adaptability and
responsiveness to rapid changes in the input of data, and to process it in a
way that is closer to an organism than a mechanism. The distinction between
the artificial and the natural, which a decade ago was based on highlighting
the differences between artificial systems driven by programmed code
(determinism) and living, sentient organisms that are epigenetically responsive
to their environment, is becoming increasingly obsolete.
There are emerging trends of thought in the humanities, philosophy,
aesthetics and the arts that seek to understand the broader significance of
the integration of intelligent machines in the processes of communication,
creativity and imagination at the level of society or the individual, since the
use of artificial intelligence triggers visible changes in the mental processes
of individualisation, cognition, memory, thinking and experience. The paper
draws on selected philosophical premises on the technological (Malabou,
Stiegler) and reflects on aspects of the new technological mimetic in relation
to traditional notions of passive mimesis and imitation, the differences
between copy and original, model and simulation. The concept of mimesis,
in the light of contemporary neuroscientific concepts of brain plasticity
and mirror neurons (the physiological basis of imitation, empathy and
compassion), is acquiring new meanings with applications in the domain of
cybernetics and neurotechnologies, as it raises questions about the role of
imitation, imagination and creativity in the processes of the constitution of
consciousness and the self, even in intelligent machines.
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