The Push Towards An Artificially Intelligent Society

Komal D'Souza

SYBA

We are currently living in a world that is highly interconnected and idolises information and knowledge about any number of subjects. We thus live in an information age. This 'information society' refers to a system where information and technology take precedence over physical labour and industrialism as the main mode of production and the service sector is pedestalized over other sectors for the growth of the economy. It involves technological advancement (focused on ICT, i.e. 'Information Communication Technology’), formation of networks of people and information, information explosion and increase in media propagation, and spread of higher education. This has accompanied many different cultural changes. The UN adopted 'information or knowledge society' as the next stage of social progress (Bhuiyan, 2008). It was seen as a way to help the Global South countries come closer to their 'developed' counterparts in the Global North. Development and modernization are also important aspects of this kind of society. This was a process that was started post decolonisation movements, to supposedly bridge the gap between the colonies and colonialists. One of the ways adopted to facilitate this was through flow of technology from western developed countries to other countries. Information technologies are the engine of growth in society today and are owned by MNCs that are mostly located in Western countries. While the recently independent/decolonised countries were focussed on rehabilitation and nation-building activities, the Global North was engaged in a technological race.

The Technology sector has rapidly developed in the last 20 years. It is integrated into every nook and corner of our life. But the recent advancement has crossed leaps and bounds to make our lives easier and companies are trying very hard to one-up each other. Artificial intelligence has been at the forefront of this and has been booming recently. Artificial intelligence involves cloud computing, pattern recognition, cognitive computing, machine learning, deep learning and all sorts of other processes that can help such a system mimic or match up to human intelligence. They differ from the usual algorithm in that they can produce knowledge and perform tasks not previously possible by a computer or any other digital device. These technologies/softwares can range from virtual assistants and chatbots to robots and supercomputers. 'Ambient Intelligence' or AmI for short, refers to AI implemented on machines which won't require explicit input and output devices, and includes Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa. There are also softwares like ChatGPT, DALL-E, Bard, etc. that use prompts to deliver creativity. These softwares combine human ingenuity and technology to simplify and democratise knowledge and creativity. AI has also come to be used in other fields like in judicial courts, in hospital settings, finance, manufacturing and production, retail among other things. Some AI softwares like these tout themselves to 'outperform humans'. At the same time, long term use has proven that sometimes AI has indeed had very 'human' flaws when it has mirrored stereotyped information and displayed prejudice, in accordance with the data it is fed. Thus, it has spread to all spaces in our life, sometimes it fits well and eases the processes, but in other areas, there are many ethical concerns for the employees and consumers both to negotiate. 

Let's take ChatGPT for instance, you can get all sorts of written data from it, if you can specify it. It works much like a search engine, but the difference comes with its content. It doesn't provide links to webpages for the information you want, instead it writes seemingly original content, as if you've asked another knowledgeable human some question. This is a 'Large Language model' that in simple words, is fed data, which is then compressed and when prompted the system recognises the closest possible response and provides it to the user through interpolation. It can't really provide original responses, but we humans don't either, we also study pre-existing text and experiences to come up with our responses. If we take the case of AI art, many people have reported feeling a sense of discomfort when looking at it, due to the very awkward distortions that one finds in it. Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, and maybe art lies in the perception of the audience. Thus, we essentially put meaning into any piece of art while interpreting it. Many artists have come out and opposed these softwares, as it jeopardises their livelihood and calls to question the very point of art, be it visual, written, performance or otherwise. In a world where the commodification of art has taken great toll on its creators, many artists have emphasised on how art is an essential human expression of oneself and should be treated as such. AI generated algorithmic creativity brings forth questions about artistic production, authorship, and agency. In the future, there might be systems that may actually respond and create based on its own experience rather than other human experiences. What will happen to us then? Will we treat it as a peer or an intermediary or a superior? While the use of algorithms and other tools to aid any production process isn't new, big data has changed the scene. Big data has created a lot of concern in people's minds due to the implications of hyper-surveillance, data theft and what not. The foremost concern with AI taking over, is that there is often a loss of ‘human touch’ in the process of production, creation, deliberation. Supporters of AI detract by saying that at present AI is used more so in conjunction with humans and once it starts outperforming them, it's natural for it to take over.

The more immediate questions are about infringement of people's data and employment. People's employment will be at stake and even if they adapt there is a likelihood of further alienation of workers from the process of production when AI becomes a stakeholder. Capitalism inherently creates division between the owning class and the labour class, and this might widen the accessibility gap in the population. Though many have claimed that AI can in fact be used to bridge the gap, it feels improbable at present when access to the internet has also not reached all. "Our mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.", says the home page of OpenAI, a parent company of many new AI softwares. The attitude towards such technology from the larger demographic has mostly been positive, and we've been primed to these situations because of science fiction and other media for a long time. But there are various other cultural exigencies involved. Not only is the work culture going to change due to hyper specialisation of labour, but the acceptability of this will vary according to cultural practices and may thus create gaps of understanding among people. Considering Weber's conception of the effect of cultural values on economic activity, the introduction of AI could either fit right in or create dissonance in people's minds. AI has been largely developed in context of the Western value emphasis on efficiency and adaptation. AI like any other technology has the potential of being used as another medium of power assertion. It could also be used as a tool to propagate the 'culture industry'. The narrative of the information society as a tool for social progress has already changed the socio-political and economic relations between the states and its people. If various Information society laws are taken into consideration, AI is only one part of ICT that is contributing to this progress (Gams, 2021). Some have gone so far as to argue that we may be moving towards a posthuman technocratic society. 

References

Chiang, T. (2023, February 9). ChatGPT Is a Blurry JPEG of the Web. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/chatgpt-is-a-blurry-jpeg-of-the-web 

Gams, M., & Kolenik, T. (2021). Relations between Electronics, Artificial Intelligence and Information Society through Information Society Rules. Electronics, 10(4), 514. https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics10040514 

information society. (n.d.). Oxford Reference. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803100003718;jsessionid=E6D825BBB650E6BEFE79F5DC8443F4A2 

Shafiul Alam Bhuiyan, A. J. M. (2008). Peripheral View: Conceptualizing the Information Society as a Postcolonial Subject. International Communication Gazette, 70(2), 99–116. https://doi.org/10.1177/1748048507086907 

Uricchio, W. (2017). Data, Culture and the Ambivalence of Algorithms. In M. T. Schäfer & K. van Es (Eds.), The Datafied Society: Studying Culture through Data (pp. 125–138). Amsterdam University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1v2xsqn.13