Openness and Closure

Nearly seventy years ago, Gilbert Simondon introduced a transformative perspective on the relationship between technology and culture, emphasizing the need for a “technical mentality” arising from a renewed awareness of and engagement with technical objects. This article revisits the notions of technical object, technical mentality and open machine, in order to analyze explainable artificial intelligence (XAI). Our central question is: under what conditions can XAI be conducive to a technical culture? It is argued that XAI may contain an embryo of technical openness applied to algorithmic systems, fostering greater proximity and dialogue with humans as mediators of technical activity. However, XAI also embeds the tensions between openness and closure that characterize digital technology: while it may enable greater human understanding and intervention, it can also enhance elements of opacity and automatism. It is concluded that XAI has the potential to assist in promoting a broader and more participatory technical culture, conditional on integrating technology into human culture in a reflective and critical manner, provided that, as with any technical deployment, the ethical and structural challenges it entails are taken into account at its conception and not after the fact.