The Uncanny and the Historical Boundaries of Human-Machine Intelligence

The article investigates the historical boundaries between human and machine intelligence through the conceptual lens of the uncanny. Rejecting essentialist accounts of intelligence, it argues that intelligence and autonomy are culturally and historically contingent categories rather than metaphysical properties. Two case studies support this thesis: eighteenth-century musical automata and twentieth-century cybernetics, particularly Norbert Wiener’s anti-aircraft predictors. While early automata were received with wonder and admiration, cybernetic machines provoked uncanny reactions because they embodied functional traits—anticipation, adaptation, and goal-directed behavior—associated with human agency in a wartime context. The comparison shows that the attribution of intelligence to machines depends on changing epistemic frameworks, and that the uncanny marks moments in which these frameworks shift.