Material calculation and its unconscious: approaching computerization with Heidegger and Lacan

Abstract The following paper focuses on discerning a specific epistemic effect that modern computers and especially the technology of artificial intelligence (AI) have. To discern this effect, it is necessary to reflect on the use of mathematics, that is its practice, and its ontological underpinnings. To do this, we combine Heideggerian and Lacanian concepts to approach the theoretical problem that AI and computers pose to the practice of calculation. The paper discusses that the computer as a material calculator has limiting factors that make it unable to utilize important uses of formalization. Central to this is the forced absence of virtual voids, which compels computers to act as if the symbolic would behold to the same structural axioms as the imaginary. Far from being a simple inability of computers, this proximate failure allows us instead to understand AI and modern computation in terms of their use and misuse as an epistemic tool.