Between the Human and the Machinic: Qian Xuesen and AI

Qian Xuesen is one of the best known Chinese scientists of the twentieth century. He made early and foundational contributions to Chinese cybernetics and strategic weapons research, and it seems only natural that textbooks are now beginning to retrospectively treat Qian’s brand of cybernetics, developed from the 1950s onwards, along with his later involvement in the pseudoscience of renti kexue (人体科学) or ‘somatic science’, as a distinct chapter in the history of AI in the PRC. However, neither the idea of a plurality of AI histories nor Qian’s significance with regard to them can be taken for granted. The question of a distinctively Chinese AI requires careful historiographical and paradigmatic reflection, and it is with this in view that this text aims to offer a close reading of some of Qian’s key concepts concerning human and machine thinking.