De la promisiunile himerice ale „turcului mecanic”, la mythos-ul actualizat al inteligenței artificiale

Built in 1770 by the eccentric engineer Wolfgang von Kempelen, the so-called “Mechanical Turk” is said to have recommended itself as a fully automated proto-robot. Although it was eventually debunked as a fake, recent treatises on the mechanism will have voiced a seductive apology of its ostensible cultural significance, taking into account not only its prototypical pseudo-artificial intelligence valences, but also its performative functionality. As we will demonstrate, the ethos that engendered the creation of von Kempelen's automaton will have imposed itself both as a symptom of the intellectual paradigm most endemic to the Enlightenment, eager to proclaim the advent of a universal technological brand of soteriology, and also as a recrudescence of those more ancient fascinations harbored by the medieval mind in relation to the phantasmagoric “automata” that often made their appearance at various royal and nobiliary courts, fashioned as they were into objects of “mere” performative entertainment.