Tempering the AI Revolution: Polanyi’s Insights and Current Questions

Zoom Session Recordings and Transcript

Saturday March 14, 2026
11:00 am to 12:30 pm Central Daylight Time
4:00 pm to 5:30 pm UTC

In emerging digital culture, AI seems increasingly present in every development, raising questions about human intelligence and morality, and the ethics of social control. More than 50 years ago, Michael Polanyi attempted both to distinguish and link living beings and “contrivances” (PK, 328). He also developed a notion of tacit knowing that defied analytics. Is Polanyi helpful today for understanding the future of AI and constructing a sensible social order in a world increasingly reliant upon many-leveled neural network devices and the products of “predictive analytics”?  What sort of issues in the domain of ethics and policy lie before us as AI becomes a more pervasive presence in the systems constructed by articulate human beings?

Several available resources for participants in this Zoom Discussion are listed below:

  1. See Phil Mullins, “Michael Polanyi and Contemporary AI” (Polanyiana, 2022). Particularly the final summary section of this essay “Applying Polanyi in Digital Culture” (124-133). Earlier sections briefly discuss “neural networks” and “predictive analytics” and review historically Polanyi’s early discussions of the computer and the tacit dimension of computer use, Polanyi’s interaction with Turing and his skepticism about some early discussion of cybernetics. Perhaps also of special interest is the review (115-117) of Polanyi’s account of "contrivances" as a type of dual controlled comprehensive entity.
  2. Charles Lowney’s “The Rise of the Machine, Body-Knowing, Neural Nets, and Emergent Freedom” (included in the 2021 anthology Cybermedia: Explorations in Science, Sound and Vision, published by Bloomsbury Collections) is a 29-page, dense, but very provocative discussion. This essay has been succinctly summarized by the AI device Claude (2 pages) and Lowney has made some human adjustment to this summary, posted HERE. He has also recently written a 6000-word abridged version of “The Rise of the Machine, Body-Knowing, Neural Nets, and Emergent Freedom” and it is HERE. The essay builds with the following sections: 1.Defending a Line: Dismal Prospects for Human Creativity and Freedom?; 2.Can a Machine—Or Artificial Intelligence—Perform Achievements of Tacit Knowing?; 3. Does a Machine’s Ability to Perform Achievements of Tacit Knowing Mean that Knowledge is Now Fully Explicable?; 4. Dwelling in the System: Evolution, Animals and Intelligent Machines.
  3. Alessio Tartaro and Mihaly Heder’s 6-page essay “Ethics of AI,” a recent encyclopedia article that (quoting the abstract) is “a comprehensive overview of AI ethics, delving into various ethical and social issues arising from AI’s expanding role in different facets of private and societal life.” Although Polanyi is not mentioned in this essay, Tartaro and Heder are European Polanyi scholars who also have backgrounds in Computer Science. Heder has been one of the principal organizers of the several central European “Philosophy and Technology” conferences in Budapest. (N.B. We are providing the paper here because the link to the Abstract on the publishers site is very slow.)
  4. “Prompt Diagnosis” by Dhruv Khullar, a physician, is a 9/29/25 New Yorker article (13 illuminating pages treating liabilities and benefits) on the practical contemporary use of AI in medical diagnostics. As the notice at the end of this article indicates, this is a copyrighted essay but individuals can download it and read it and this we recommend for anyone who participates in this Zoom Discussion.

Anyone interested can participate in this Zoom Discussion. Register for the session by sending an e-mail to Phil Mullins (mullins@missouriwestern.edu). As in other recent Zoom sessions, Gus Breytspraak (gus.breytspraak@ottawa.edu) will send to registrants a couple of e-mail notices with the link in the week of this session as well another link for the recording of the session afterward. We will also post the link for the session on the Polanyi Society website during the week in which the session occurs. Send any questions or suggestions to Phil Mullins and Gus Breytspraak.