Frequency Response (Amplifier Metaphor)

An amplifier in the literal engineering sense is not neutral. It has a frequency response—a range of input signals it can process with high fidelity and a range outside which it distorts or rejects the input. A guitar amplifier designed for electric guitars will distort an acoustic guitar's signal not because the acoustic signal is inferior but because the amplifier's circuitry was optimized for a different input. Srinivasan's critical extension of Edo Segal's amplifier metaphor reveals that AI systems similarly have a frequency response: they are tuned to English-language inputs, Western epistemological frameworks, individual-user workflows, and propositional knowledge forms. Inputs outside this range—Yoruba prompts, relational knowledge, communal decision processes—receive degraded amplification not because they lack worth but because the amplifier was not designed to hear them.