CONCEPT
Imaginary Icebergs
The four ideological structures — techno-optimism, techno-pessimism, techno-determinism, human exceptionalism — that constrain AI discourse by appearing to be features of reality rather than positions within it.
Midgley noticed that people arguing about technology are rarely arguing about technology. They are arguing from inside ideological structures they mistake for empirical reality — structures so familiar they feel like the world itself rather than like one interpretation of it. She called these structures myths in her technical sense: framing narratives that organize experience and determine what counts as evidence. The AI discourse is controlled by at least four such myths, which function as imaginary icebergs — structures that appear solid and natural, that seem to be features of the landscape rather than constructions, and that constrain the available routes of navigation so severely that anyone trying to think clearly about AI must sail between them without running aground on any.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The first iceberg is techno-optimism: the myth that technology inherently produces net benefit, that the arc of innovation bends toward human flourishing, and that the appropriate response to any new technology is to accelerate adoption and trust