Algorithms, AI and towards a dystopia?

A few days ago, I attended an interesting seminar with scholars at Linnaeus University, where I am currently employed. The subject was cultural policy and how cultural politics are undergoing transformation, not least due to the ongoing war. Another theme that was explored concerned algorithms and AI, and as I left the seminar I began to reflect on how the world is currently being challenged by the rise of what might be called “everyday algorithms and AI”.

Basically, almost all information that citizens encounter on social media today is curated by algorithms. This can, in turn, sometimes lead to dangerous outcomes, such as the material one encounters gradually becoming more and more radical. This happens because algorithms measure both the time users spend engaging with information and how they interact with it. This is hardly surprising, and numerous scholars have warned about this development.

With the rise of AI, algorithms have also become an increasingly integral part of everyday life. We use AI to search for information on the web, thereby allowing it to decide what counts as important. We also use AI in our writing, for instance through spelling and grammar tools. In this way, AI is already not only shaping reality but also interfering in our lives without us necessarily noticing it. This becomes even more evident as more and more technology incorporates AI without explicitly declaring it.

I am a strong proponent of AI, as it has a wide range of applications, from medical diagnoses to writing and information retrieval. At the same time, I strongly support the regulation of AI, since I believe we should not allow machines to make formal decisions independently. Concepts such as “human in the loop”, where a human carefully monitors the system, are therefore crucial—especially when it comes to accountability in cases where AI-driven decisions can have concrete impacts on human lives.

Propaganda - perhaps more subtile than ever before.


However, as more and more technology becomes “AI by default”, the line between what we should and should not accept becomes blurred. Using AI to search the web, correct our language, and so forth may seem innocent, but by doing so we also give up part of our autonomy to algorithms. Here a more disturbing thought emerges: these algorithms are controlled by companies that develop AI technologies. What they are actually selling is either the algorithms themselves or the outcomes they produce. This has led to a situation in which we increasingly relinquish our autonomy to private companies—and, in the worst case, even pay them to do so.

It is often emphasized that AI can be used to create deepfakes capable of destabilizing elections. Another, equally important question, however, concerns how AI monitors and filters the information citizens are given, and how this affects political outcomes. It is no coincidence that dictatorships often shut down the internet in order to gain control over the narrative. The question, then, is whether AI will ultimately serve the interests of its users—or the interests of those who finance it.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Contemporary Sexual Politics: Efforts to Silence Sexuality in Politics

Image
Following up on last week’s post, we can ask ourselves where questions of sexuality are being challenged in politics. From a contemporary perspective, I would argue that we are currently witnessing global attempts—particularly from conservative actors—to banish issues of sexuality from public discourse. In Foucauldian theory, we can speak of several forms of the exercise of power. Foucault uses the concept of biopower to analyze social views on sex, capitalism, and power. One of the central aspects of biopower is that it often operates through the individual, who is expected to internalize social norms rather than be externally forced to accept them. Yet, in the case of sexuality, we have over the past decades witnessed rather forceful attempts to silence it, thereby making people unaware of important aspects of their own sexuality. In such cases, the effort seems to lie in banishing "unwanted" expressions from public discourse, thereby limiting the individual’s scope for a...
Read more

Contemporary Sexual Politics: a Background

Image
This is the first part in a series of three posts in which I aim to discuss contemporary sexual politics from a more theoretical and research-based perspective than in my other posts. It forms part of a broader discussion on how sexuality can—and perhaps should—be understood as constituted by a multitude of actors. Therefore, we might not be able to speak of a single contemporary politics of sexuality, but rather of a range of political positions. During the 20th century, numerous philosophers and researchers attempted to write “the history of sexuality,” but the one who has influenced me the most is the French philosopher Michel Foucault. I have actually read all three of his original works on sexuality, but I believe the first book covers the essential foundations for discussing and understanding sexuality. Broadly, this can be said to consist of two levels of particular interest to this series of posts: a) the repressive hypothesis b) the discussion on power/knowledge and the multi...
Read more

The old bucket and me - Hinke Bergegrens philosophical works

Image
(the title of this entry is a play with words, since the name "Hinke" carries resemblance to the word hink in swedish which means bucket).  For the past months I have been working on a project on Swedish politician Henrik "Hinke" Bergegren, who is often forgotten in contemporary history writing. Bergegren was born in an upperclass family in Stockholm in the year of 1861 and early in his life came into contact with rising workers movement. Within the movement he soon gained prominence and was a key person in forming the social democratic party, which would shape Sweden upuntil this day. In the scholarship on Bergegren a key concern have been the framing of him as a political terrorist, where he on the party's congress spoke openly about using violence as a mean to achieve the workers goals. In 1908 he was excluded permantly from the social-democratic party, which often have been described as a result of his agitation for violence. However, historian Åsa Linderbor...
Read more