Generative Device
Origin: Term I propose, built from Michel Foucault’s concept of the “device”, updated by Giorgio Agamben, and from Kate Crawford’s work
Definition
A device is an arrangement of technical, social, institutional, economic and symbolic elements whose interactions orient conducts while contributing to producing or configuring relations of power.
The qualifier “generative” characterises the functionality that distinguishes these devices from others: generating content — text, images, sound, code — from the instructions addressed to them. This term does not determine what the machine is, it describes what it does.
In my writings
I use “generative device” as a substitute for the excessive and overused term “generative artificial intelligence” when speaking of conversational agents and other machines embedding these techniques.
The choice is not innocuous. There is today an excessive anthropomorphism surrounding these machines, and the words we use to qualify a technique influence the way we perceive it, the way we interact with it and, ultimately, the trust we place in it. By qualifying a machine as “intelligent”, we pre-qualify the result: vocabulary creates a framing that can favour overconfidence, even an automation bias.
In its technical acceptation, a device is an “ensemble of elements arranged with a view to a precise end”. The notion of arrangement allows us to apprehend more precisely the intentions and finalities of that arrangement, and to move away from the habitual representation of technical instruments as being neutral.
From Foucault, I retain the notion of a network between heterogeneous elements: the said and the unsaid. System cards, constitutions and terms of use published by designers render the discursive visible. But choices remain unsaid: the architecture, the economic model, the data, the interface, the conditions under which the device is made available. Alongside these non-discursive elements, I also place the imperceptive.
Qualifying these machines as “generative” rather than “intelligent” displaces the discussion from ontological ground — what is intelligence? does the machine understand? — towards a functional characteristic. It is a way of creating distance from the object and of recovering a form of epistemic vigilance in our interactions with it.
Articles where this term is used
- On generative devices
- From personalized service to personalized practice
- Entry Point#1: reading & orality
- Entry Point#2: AI & effort