Machine, Organism, and Language: A Comparative Epistemology of AI Models

In Western modernity, the concepts of Machine, Organism, and Language have played fundamental roles in the formation of science and the humanities, recombining into paradigms of increasing complexity at each turn of their evolution. They emerged as abstract forms and then as part of scientific objects claiming their own discipline. They developed, depending on context, into philosophical paradigms, ideological worldviews, political mentalities, and cultural metaphors, in which their role obviously exceed the scale of the originary observation and conception. To clarify the underlying paradigms of current AI, this essay navigates the multistable and nebulous status of these epistemic mediators in the history of knowledge.