If speech has long been an emblem of the human species, then talking machines seem to be harbingers of some kind of technological singularity. Indeed, if the brilliance--or at least eloquence--of large language models is any indication, we seem to be poised at the threshold of general AI, a form of artificial intelligence that will not only surpass human intelligence but maybe even replace humans altogether.

This slim text lays out a critical genealogy of the highly contested relation between human values, machinic parameters, and corporate powers. It also provides a theory of the reasons for, and effects of, our current social and technological horizon.