2020/09/24 by Simone Natale
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Cybernetics and Technology in Society #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
paper · doi:10.1093/ct/qtaa022
openalex publication_date 2020/09/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
Abstract This review article examines two recent publications that explore the relationship between Artificial Intelligence (AI) and communication. Discussing Human–Machine Communication (HMC) as an emerging area of inquiry within communication and media studies, two important implications of this body of work are highlighted. First, the "human" component still plays a key role in HMC, since what we call “AI” derives from the technical and material functioning of computing technologies as much as from the contribution of the humans who enter in communication with AI technologies. Second, HMC challenges the very concept of medium, because the machine is at the same time the channel as well as the producer of communication messages. A potential way to solve this challenge is to mobilize existing approaches in media history and theory that expand the concept of medium beyond its conceptualization as mere channel.