The blue brain metaphor for AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an absolute key term in contemporary digital reality. It has become an umbrella term for a wide range of technologies developing rapidly, spanning and influencing diverse sectors and domains and, thereby, with an increasing impact on how more and more people live their daily lives and/or work. Public discourse on AI often involves metaphor or other imagery and thus a common way to represent AI is by what is sometimes called the “blue brain metaphor”. This visual metaphor is frequently used by a number of rather diverse addressers (stakeholders), in order to capture the essential elements of AI by conferring to it human-like characteristics. In the following work we describe the semiosic background of the “blue brain metaphor” for AI. Inspired by the terminology of Umberto Eco, we understand the metaphor as a function of the socio-cultural format of the encyclopaedia which decides the relevant relations of similarity between AI and the human brain underlying the metaphorical production and interpretation. We address what characterises the “blue brain metaphor” visually and try to interpret (some of) its meanings. We will also accentuate how it builds on to the (old) metaphor: the “computer is a brain”. Finally, we briefly describe how the “blue brain metaphor” is related to diverse normative discourse concerning AI.