artificial intelligence
Compiled with AI assistance and selectively reviewed. Please consult the cited passages; the books remain the authoritative source. About this companion
Editorial synthesis · provisional
Definition
Artificial intelligence names made systems whose learned capacities enter language, perception, action, and collective world-making. The books distinguish trained competence and borrowed value-weightings from having stakes of one's own, and distinguish a model from the coupled regime that gives its outputs consequence. Present linguistic and robotic systems, technical-development analogies, and possible self-maintaining agents therefore require separate treatment rather than one claim about machine minds.
Explanation
AB describes language systems as inheriting traces of embodied meaning without establishing that anything matters to them. It does not prove that all possible understanding must be biological. PB emphasizes AI's entry into institutions and distinguishes represented value, borrowed weighting and intrinsic stakes. Its criterion for possible stakes concerns self-production and repair under possible failure, not fluent sentences.
RB1 treats neural-network training as an explicitly qualified Simondonian analogy and AI development as technological feedback. RB2 explains robotic affordance learning, then distinguishes installed relevance from intrinsic mattering. RB3 separates distributed agency from unequal answerability. Future self-maintenance would establish self-regard, not automatically other-regard; Damasio's discussion also leaves felt subjectivity unestablished by artificial vulnerability alone. These are authorial arguments and attributed research discussions, not a certification of machine consciousness.
Scope and attribution
All five books have direct but differentiated support. Future stakes remain conditional. Self-maintenance, understanding and felt subjectivity are not equated. Cognitive-technology evidence is context rather than an AI definition.
AB — The Actual Book
Language systems inherit embodied traces; scale and fluency do not establish stakes. Agency belongs to consequential couplings rather than a sovereign model.
Occurrence locators: 7, 89, 90, 91, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 169, 198, 199; Glossary: 224, 226; Thinker register: 227; Notes: 241, 245, 246, 249, 250; Appendix: 277, 278, 279, 280, 281, 282, 283, 284, 285, 286, 289; Reading recommendations: 253; Authorship account: 274, 275, 276.
PB — The Possible Book
AI enters the conditions of meaning and institutions. Borrowed weightings differ from possible self-produced and repaired stakes.
Occurrence locators: 37, 56, 62, 63, 64, 65, 104, 127, 142, 147, 148, 155, 180; Reproduced AI exchange: 14, 15, 16, 17, 18; Literary application: 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 134.
RB1 — The Real Book, Volume I: The Possible Is Real
Training is compared to individuation, explicitly analogically. AI development exemplifies technological feedback.
Occurrence locators: 13, 14, 37, 38, 39, 41, 42, 241, 247, 266.
RB2 — The Real Book, Volume II: Becoming Is Being
Robotic affordances link perception and action; installed relevance is not intrinsic mattering. Brooks provides a further sensorimotor example.
Occurrence locators: 33, 38, 40, 74, 75, 76, 77, 89, 90, 100, 104, 119, 273; Notes: 127.
RB3 — The Real Book, Volume III: Murmurations
Agency and answerability require distinct maps. Self-producing organization could have stakes without automatically acquiring other-regard or felt subjectivity.
Occurrence locators: 1, 3, 76, 94, 95, 96, 98, 137, 138, 139, 140, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 180, 184, 185, 186, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 192, 193, 194, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199, 200, 201, 202, 205, 265, 285, 286, 311; Notes: 143, 165, 170, 188; Reproduced AI exchange: 397, 398, 399, 400, 401, 402; Authorship account: 403, 405, 406.
Background used in the editorial explanation
Domain-specific mechanisms and wider analogies remain distinguished. Original definitions retain their scope; local cross-references do not rewrite them. Named theories and mechanisms are distinguished from neighboring background, homonyms and the author’s own synthesis. Reproduced AI passages retain their separate voice.