This paper introduces the collection of essays by proposing a long-term perspective on the impact of the advent of artificial intelligence on the way human societies and cultures manage meaning. Like the emergence of language, and then that of writing, the increasingly exponential development of artificial intelligence changes the conditions of production, circulation, and preservation of meaning, and even its status. Artificial intelligence, this introduction argues, both fascinates and disquiets, makes one smile in its first vagaries and dismay at its possibilities. There are two areas in particular in which it makes one dream and tremble at the same time: that in which it now far surpasses human faculties, as in the game of chess, and that in which it imitates them in an increasingly indistinguishable manner. Then there are specific domains in which these two dimensions merge, as in the production of images or the imitation of human language. The ending of this introduction, then, holds a great surprise for its reader, inviting the perusal of the essays collected in the volume.