The Stainless Gaze of Artificial Intelligence: A Lacanian Examination of Surveillance and Smart Architecture

Abstract

This study looks at the phenomenon of surveillance through AI. The Lacanian big Other is central to this surveillance problem, not only in the paranoiac who assumes that someone is watching him, but also in the way this observer is conceived and where he is located. With the ideas of a “smart city” and “smart homes,” artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly taking the place of the watchful big Other and is embodied in architectural space and anchored in electronic virtuality. However, AI is absolutely infantile in the Lacanian sense, it has no access to the objet petit a. The gaze of AI positively corresponds to the panoptic point of view that Foucault identifies; it simultaneously sees less than we would expect. This essay considers this “stainless gaze” as an inversion of the “gaze as stain” introduced by Joan Copjec, focusing on the social implications and consequences for the architectural space we inhabit. The result in modern architecture is an invisible panopticon that no longer relies on the spatial transparency that the classical panopticon required. This new panopticon is much more aware of all our actions, but at the same time it is freed from the “object of desire,” depriving it access to social knowledge as such. This has consequences for the constitution of the subject within a surveilled society, which Lacanian psychoanalysis allows us to indicate.

Keywords:

• Surveillance Keyword: Surveillance
• AI Keyword: AI
• big Other Keyword: big Other
• Mind and Machine Keyword: Mind and Machine
• Psychoanalysis Keyword: Psychoanalysis

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Rights: In Copyright