When it was originally published in 2002, Sue Curry Jansenโs โWhat Was Artificial Intelligence?โ attracted little notice. The long essay was published as a chapter in Jansenโsย Critical Communication Theory, a book whose wisdom and erudition failed to register across the many fields it addressed. One explanation for the neglect, ironic and telling, is that Jansenโs sheer scope as an intellectual had few competent readers in the communication studies discipline into which she published the book. โWhat Was Artificial Intelligence?โ was buried treasure. In this mediastudies.press edition, Jansenโs prescient autopsy of AI self-sellingโthe rhetoric of the masculinist sublimeโis reprinted with a new introduction. Now an open access book, โWhat Was Artificial Intelligence?โ is a message in a bottle, addressed to Musk, Bezos, and the latest generation of AI myth-makers.