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.