Neural Networks

RANJODH SINGH DHALIWAL, THÉO LEPAGE-RICHER, AND LUCY SUCHMAN

A critical examination of the figure of the neural network as it mediates neuroscientific and computational discourses and technical practices

Neural Networks proposes to reconstruct situated practices, social histories, mediating techniques, and ontological assumptions that inform the computational project of the same name. If so-called machine learning comprises a statistical approach to pattern extraction, then neural networks can be defined as a biologically inspired model that relies on probabilistically weighted neuronlike units to identify such patterns. Far from signaling the ultimate convergence of human and machine intelligence, however, neural networks highlight the technologization of neurophysiology that characterizes virtually all strands of neuroscientific and AI research of the past century. Taking this traffic as its starting point, this volume explores how cognition came to be constructed as essentially computational in nature, to the point of underwriting a technologized view of human biology, psychology, and sociability, and how countermovements provide resources for thinking otherwise.

MEDIA STUDIES

$18.00x Paper ISBN: 978-1-5179-1669-5

$18.00 Retail e-book ISBN: 978-1-4529-7049-3

JANUARY 2024

110 pages 5 x 7

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