Prenatal Culture-Making in Robotics: Anthropological reflections on perception and thought. Written 2006, before the machines could answer back

In 2006 a student of anthropology in Heidelberg asked how human beings come to treat machines as though they held intentions. He defined culture as accumulated information, and gave a name to the shaping a thing undergoes before it can act on its own account: prenatal culture-making.He was writing about robots that could barely cross a room.Twenty years later that is a description of how a language model is built. [...]This edition prints the thesis in full and unaltered, with the original title page of 2006 as a divider - a book within the book. [...]The German original is included in the divider; the thesis itself appears here in English for the first time.'... and I have read his definitely impressive thesis. His interests are with robots and humans, with organisms and processes ...'- Prof. Dr. Susanne Kuehling, University of Regina