ABSTRACT
The technical advances in artificial intelligence and robotics fuel many predictions and controversies. They appear as a good mean to represent how natural processes work. This chapter deals with the anthropology of science, starting from the history of automatons. The anthropology of artificial intelligence and robotics can be understood first as an inquiry on the representations linked to the construction of models of what life is. Simulations in robotics and artificial intelligence, and their concordance to reality, raise many issues which are central in computer science and robotic research. Programming using a connectionist approach turns an interest in symbol manipulation into an interest for the rules of management of individual operations created by networks of artificial neurons. Anthropologist Emmanuel Grimaud and scenographer Zaven Pare explored this valley, experimenting on Professor Hiroshi Ishiguro’s Geminoïd robot in Japan with the help of computer scientist Ilona Straub.
