CONCEPT
The Associated Milieu
Simondon's name for the environment that is not external to an individual but co-constituted with it — the insight that dissolves the assumption that AI systems enter a pre-existing human world rather than individuating with it.
No individual exists alone. This is not a sociological observation but an ontological claim. Every individual — crystal, organism, psyche, technical object — comes into being together with what Simondon called its associated milieu: an environment co-constituted with the individual through the same process of individuation that generates the individual itself. The crystal does not form in a solution and then find itself in an environment. The crystal and its surrounding solution individuate together — the crystal's growth alters the concentration gradients in the solution, which in turn determine the conditions for further crystal growth. Individual and milieu are two aspects of a single process, each making the other possible. The concept is perhaps Simondon's most practically consequential idea for understanding the present relationship between humans and AI.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The standard discourse treats AI as an entity that has entered an environment: human society, human culture, the human economy.