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Abstract :
[en] In Britain and around the world, historical analogies are frequently used in public discourse on artificial intelligence (AI). From articles in The Guardian to heated Reddit threads, the rise of AI is often likened to the Industrial Revolution or the invention of the printing press. Historical parallels are also drawn between AI systems and earlier inventions that disrupted cognitive or creative practices: ChatGPT, for example, is claimed by some to simply be the new calculator, while AI image generators are likened to the camera. While in some cases such analogies are employed to advocate for caution and increased regulation, they are frequently used to normalise the adoption of AI by suggesting historical precedent. Indeed, AI industry leaders (such as OpenAI’s CTO and the president of Microsoft) have used historical analogy in public communications in order to both minimize perceived disruption and frame technological change as inevitable.
This paper argues that, in many cases, such analogies are reductive and misleading – outlining some key particularities of AI technologies and historical contexts that render overly simplistic parallels unhelpful. It then moves on to argue that, although these analogies may often be problematic, historians of Britain and beyond should not dismiss them out of hand, but rather actively engage with this popular tendency to look to the past to make sense of AI’s destabilising effects. Drawing on scholarship on historical analogy and analogical reasoning from history, philosophy of science, and psychology, the paper proposes more nuanced and clearly defined historical comparisons that highlight the biases, monopolised power dynamics, and potential benefits of AI uptake.
