CONCEPT
'Neural Network' as Metaphor
The single most important metaphor in AI — a piece of engineering shorthand whose inflation into literal description is the textbook case of Midgleyian pipe failure.
'Neural network' is a metaphor. The computational structures called neural networks bear a superficial resemblance to biological neural networks — weighted connections between simple processing units — in the same way that a child's drawing of a house bears a resemblance to a house. The resemblance is useful for certain explanatory purposes. It is catastrophic when taken literally. Midgley's framework identifies the inflation of 'neural network' from engineering shorthand to literal description as the paradigm case of the pattern she spent her career exposing: a useful analytical tool promoted to a total description, with the promotion doing metaphysical work that no technical finding authorizes. When people conclude that because the machine has 'neural networks,' the machine thinks the way brains think, the metaphor has escaped its scope and the pipes are flooding.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The history of the term is instructive. Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts introduced the mathematical model in their 1943 paper 'A Logical Calculus of