Mythology In General Context
“Mythology” (or “myth”) refers to ancient folklore, legends, or fairy tales.
Mythology In Technology Studies
Atlas of AI, Crawford 1
We can see two distinct mythologies at work. The first myth is that nonhuman systems (be it computers or horses) are analogues for human minds. This perspective assumes that with sufficient training, or enough resources, humanlike intelligence can be created from scratch, without addressing the fundamental ways in which humans are embodied, relational, and set within wider ecologies. The second myth is that intelligence is something that exists independently, as though it were natural and distinct from social, cultural, historical, and political forces. In fact, the concept of intelligence has done inordinate harm over centuries and has been used to justify relations of domination from slavery to eugenics.
It refers to a pervasive, naturalized belief or ideological narrative—a story society tells itself that is widely accepted as an objective truth, but actually masks a much more complex (and often flawed) reality.
In critical theory and technology studies, a “mythology” is a worldview that feels self-evident until you examine the assumptions and power dynamics driving it. The text identifies two specific cultural myths:
Myth 1: The “Mind-as-Machine” Myth (Computational Anthropomorphism)
“The first myth is that nonhuman systems… are analogues for human minds.”
-
The Belief: Intelligence is simply a matter of computational processing power, data, and training. If you feed an algorithm (or a horse) enough data or resources, human-like intelligence will automatically emerge.
-
Why it’s a Myth: It treats human intelligence as abstract code isolated in a jar. It ignores that human thinking is deeply embodied (tied to our physical bodies), relational (shaped by interaction with other humans), and ecological (embedded in our physical environment and culture). A computer or horse doesn’t think like a human because it doesn’t live like a human.
Myth 2: The “Pure & Objective Intelligence” Myth (Decontextualization)
“The second myth is that intelligence is something that exists independently… distinct from social, cultural, historical, and political forces.”
-
The Belief: “Intelligence” is a neutral, scientific, universal trait that can be neatly measured, ranked, and abstracted away from human society.
-
Why it’s a Myth: The definition of what counts as “smart” or “intelligent” has never been neutral. Historically, the concept of intelligence was constructed by specific institutions and used as a tool of power—for example, using standardized IQ tests or pseudo-scientific metrics to justify eugenics, colonial rule, and racial slavery by declaring certain groups “less intelligent.”
Summary: Why the Author Calls Them “Mythologies”
The author calls these ideas mythologies because they disguise social and political choices as technical or natural facts:
-
Myth 1 tricks us into thinking that building AI is just a technical engineering problem of scaling up systems to mirror the human brain.
-
Myth 2 tricks us into ignoring who gets to define what “intelligence” means, who profits from that definition, and who gets harmed by it.
Together, these mythologies create a comfortable narrative around AI and cognition that obscures the real-world power, labor, and biases behind them.