The Artificial in "Artificial Intelligence": How Imagination Shapes AI Regulation

<p><span>Much of the hype about AI exploits the fact that human cognition, language, and categorization rely on imaginative scaffolding. Some degree of metaphor and conceptual borrowing should not be seen as a methodological failure. </span><span>Law</span><span> does not meet AI as a blank slate. It reaches for metaphors and other imaginative patterns that make the unfamiliar legible, channeling attention toward certain features and away from others. These are not superficial rhetorical devices</span><span>, but imaginative patterns that</span><span> do real work: They frame risks, allocate authority, and steer doctrinal development. </span><span>The paper uses cognitive linguistics to trace</span><span> how imaginative patterns </span><span>structure the regulatory agenda and create path dependence. It concentrates on </span><span>three </span><span>especially influential conceptions that circulate across technical, legal, and public discourse: (artificial)</span><span> intelligence, black box, and hallucinations. </span><span>“Intelligence” invites personification and prototype effects that lead to misplaced assumptions about agency and intention. “Black box” turns a distributed sociotechnical system into a metaphoric bounded container, misleadingly focusing concerns about transparency and responsibility on</span><span> the </span><span>model abstracted from its development and implementation. “Hallucinations” imports from psycho-pathology an inappropriate frame which obscures the fact that many errors are foreseeable products of intentional choices</span><span>. We suggest, instead, reframing them as deferential hazards that arise from design features</span><span> and expected interactional dynamics</span><span>.</span></p>