Insidious Imaginaries: A Critical Overview of AI Speculations

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2602.17383v1
• Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:08:57 GMT
• Title: Insidious Imaginaries: A Critical Overview of AI Speculations
• Authors: Dejan Grba,
• Abstract summary: Speculative thinking about the capabilities and implications of artificial intelligence (AI) influences computer science research, drives AI industry practices, feeds academic studies of existential hazards, and stirs a global political debate.<n>It permeates technophilic philosophies and social movements, fuels the corporate and pundit rhetoric, and remains a potent source of inspiration for the media, popular culture, and arts.<n>This paper offers a critical overview of AI speculations. In three central sections, it traces the intertwined sway of science fiction, religiosity, intellectual charlatanism, dubious academic research, suspicious entrepreneurship, and ominous sociopolitical worldviews that make AI speculations troublesome
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
• Abstract: Speculative thinking about the capabilities and implications of artificial intelligence (AI) influences computer science research, drives AI industry practices, feeds academic studies of existential hazards, and stirs a global political debate. It primarily concerns predictions about the possibilities, benefits, and risks of reaching artificial general intelligence, artificial superintelligence, and technological singularity. It permeates technophilic philosophies and social movements, fuels the corporate and pundit rhetoric, and remains a potent source of inspiration for the media, popular culture, and arts. However, speculative AI is not just a discursive matter. Steeped in vagueness and brimming with unfounded assertions, manipulative claims, and extreme futuristic scenarios, it often has wide-reaching practical consequences. This paper offers a critical overview of AI speculations. In three central sections, it traces the intertwined sway of science fiction, religiosity, intellectual charlatanism, dubious academic research, suspicious entrepreneurship, and ominous sociopolitical worldviews that make AI speculations troublesome and sometimes harmful. The focus is on the field of existential risk studies and the effective altruism movement, whose ideological flux of techno-utopianism, longtermism, and transhumanism aligns with the power struggles in the AI industry to emblematize speculative AI's conceptual, methodological, ethical, and social issues. The following discussion traverses these issues within a wider context to inform the closing summary of suggestions for a more comprehensive appraisal, practical handling, and further study of the potentially impactful AI imaginaries.

Related papers

• Art Notions in the Age of (Mis)anthropic AI [0.0]
  I take the cultural effects of generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) as a context for examining a broader perspective of AI's impact on contemporary art notions.<n>I summarize the distinct but often confused aspects of art notions and review the principal lines in which AI influences them.<n>I introduce several viewpoints for a further critique of AI's cultural zeitgeist.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-02-20T13:27:28Z)
• Strange Undercurrents: A Critical Outlook on AI's Cultural Influence [0.0]
  generative artificial intelligence (generative AI) is being examined extensively.<n>This paper summarizes a broader study of AI's influence on art notions focusing on the confluence of certain foundational concepts in computer science and ideological vectors of the AI industry that transfer into art, culture, and society.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-02-19T21:07:56Z)
• AI Narrative Breakdown. A Critical Assessment of Power and Promise [0.0]
  The article scrutinizes the pervasive narratives that are shaping the societal engagement with AI.<n>It highlights key themes such as agency and decision-making, truthfulness, autonomy, knowledge processing, prediction, general purpose, neutrality and objectivity.<n>The article calls for a more grounded engagement with AI and proposes new narratives recognizing AI as a human-directed tool necessarily subject to societal governance.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2026-01-29T19:26:45Z)
• The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Human Thought [0.0]
  This research paper examines, from a multidimensional perspective, how AI is transforming human thought.<n>It highlights a cognitive offloading effect: the externalization of mental functions to AI can reduce intellectual engagement and weaken critical thinking.<n>On the social level, algorithmic personalization creates filter bubbles that limit the diversity of opinions and can lead to the homogenization of thought and polarization.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-08-15T11:25:05Z)
• AI-Driven Media & Synthetic Knowledge: Rethinking Society in Generative Futures [0.0]
  Students explored core concepts such as generative AI, fake media, and synthetic knowledge production.<n>The two-part format enabled deep reflection on power, responsibility, and education in AI-augmented communication.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2025-07-26T09:12:21Z)
• Imagining and building wise machines: The centrality of AI metacognition [78.76893632793497]
  We examine what is known about human wisdom and sketch a vision of its AI counterpart.<n>We argue that AI systems particularly struggle with metacognition.<n>We discuss how wise AI might be benchmarked, trained, and implemented.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-11-04T18:10:10Z)
• Now, Later, and Lasting: Ten Priorities for AI Research, Policy, and Practice [63.20307830884542]
  Next several decades may well be a turning point for humanity, comparable to the industrial revolution. Launched a decade ago, the project is committed to a perpetual series of studies by multidisciplinary experts. We offer ten recommendations for action that collectively address both the short- and long-term potential impacts of AI technologies.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-04-06T22:18:31Z)
• The Mechanical Turkness: Tactical Media Art and the Critique of Corporate AI [0.0]
  I discuss art practices that thematize creative agency, crowdsourced labor, and delegated artmaking to reveal the social rootage of AI technologies. I focus on works whose poetic features indicate broader issues of contemporary AI-influenced science, technology, economy, and society.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-02-27T13:16:50Z)
• The Global Impact of AI-Artificial Intelligence: Recent Advances and Future Directions, A Review [0.0]
  The article highlights the implications of AI, including its impact on economic, ethical, social, security & privacy, and job displacement aspects. It discusses the ethical concerns surrounding AI development, including issues of bias, security, and privacy violations. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of public engagement and education to promote awareness and understanding of AI's impact on society at large.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-12-22T00:41:21Z)
• Fairness in AI and Its Long-Term Implications on Society [68.8204255655161]
  We take a closer look at AI fairness and analyze how lack of AI fairness can lead to deepening of biases over time. We discuss how biased models can lead to more negative real-world outcomes for certain groups. If the issues persist, they could be reinforced by interactions with other risks and have severe implications on society in the form of social unrest.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-04-16T11:22:59Z)
• Trustworthy AI: A Computational Perspective [54.80482955088197]
  We focus on six of the most crucial dimensions in achieving trustworthy AI: (i) Safety & Robustness, (ii) Non-discrimination & Fairness, (iii) Explainability, (iv) Privacy, (v) Accountability & Auditability, and (vi) Environmental Well-Being. For each dimension, we review the recent related technologies according to a taxonomy and summarize their applications in real-world systems.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-07-12T14:21:46Z)
• Building Bridges: Generative Artworks to Explore AI Ethics [56.058588908294446]
  In recent years, there has been an increased emphasis on understanding and mitigating adverse impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies on society. A significant challenge in the design of ethical AI systems is that there are multiple stakeholders in the AI pipeline, each with their own set of constraints and interests. This position paper outlines some potential ways in which generative artworks can play this role by serving as accessible and powerful educational tools.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2021-06-25T22:31:55Z)
• The Short Anthropological Guide to the Study of Ethical AI [91.3755431537592]
  Short guide serves as both an introduction to AI ethics and social science and anthropological perspectives on the development of AI. Aims to provide those unfamiliar with the field with an insight into the societal impact of AI systems and how, in turn, these systems can lead us to rethink how our world operates.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2020-10-07T12:25:03Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.