Philosophy of the Face and Neural Network Agents

Social and humanitarian reflection of neural network technologies, as a rule, is carried out at the level of socio-anthropological effects and hypothetical social risks. A characteristic practice of understanding the possible consequences of neural network expansion is the sporadic emergence of lists of “dying” / “disappearing” professions. Alarmism has penetrated all areas of humanitarian knowledge, including the anthropological cluster. In particular, the philosophical concept of “deanthropologization”, whatever it means, serves a critical position in relation to NBIC-technologies in general and each one separately. Destructive criticism and alarmist sentiments are catalyzed by the well-known historical metaphor of the “black box”, popular both among engineers and among humanists. Taking the cybernetic ontologeme to its logical limit, it can also be applied to the anthropological world. As a way out of the epistemological impasse of impenetrability, the philosophy of the face, developed by George Hegel and Pavel A. Florensky, is considered. Florensky's concept allows us to speak about the face in a broad and non-figurative sense, applying this ontologeme to non-anthropological entities. The ontology of the face shades the historically popular metaphor of the “black box”, replacing it with the concepts of “handwriting” and “face” of neural networks. These categories capture the uniqueness of the effects and products produced by technology. In particular, we are talking about popular narratives and agents / characters of neuronetworking. Their popularity is direct evidence of the meeting of the anthropological and technological worlds. The article provides a content analysis of microformats (tags) marking audio-visual products, and analytics of narratives, key patterns of action of neural network agents of mass culture.