Artificial Intelligence is a tool for amplifying our abilities, it doesn't judge. Nor does it have a "civilizing" vision. Even if it has access to all the world's wisdom, it also has access to all its debility, and it's the latter that's most digitized. A.I. has seized humanity's heritage in one fell swoop, and is adding to it a considerable mass of data that is neither qualified nor tested, or if it is, based on self-interested criteria of little civil or social significance.
The use of collective cultural material is a dynamic matter. It depends on many factors, but in the end, what works is retained and the rest is discarded in the short or long term. It's the same principle behind the operation of algorithms, which are an expression of the power of those who control them.
It's one thing for students to use A.I., it's quite another for A.I. to talk to them without anyone knowing the basis on which it selects the data. But if, in addition, the data don't provide any collective social orientation that can be criticized or evolved, the spirit of a community disappears along with coherence, and it's the spirit of those behind the algorithms that imposes itself, without any possibility of negotiation.
Agglomerated groups of frustrated people, ayatollahs of celestial happiness and other exalted individuals can be instrumentalized and stimulated, whether by a government, the commercial interests of a web giant, the oil industry or any well-organized individual. We always come back to the question of who controls A.I. and in whose interests.
The quality of a feedback loop is currently one of the best proposals for educating algorithms, in a constant dialogue between A.I. and those affected by its use. The power and scope of artificial intelligence call for a new form of democracy, hence this appeal to philosophers: we really need you.
Denys Lamontagne - [email protected]
Illustration - Pixabay
