The risks of a technocratic utopia and the need to turn to Digital Humanism to empower people in the digital transformation.
«What is the Turing test?»
Nathan, l’inventore del più grande motore di ricerca (il fittizio Bluebook), lo chiede al suo programmatore, Caleb, nel film “Ex Machina” del 2015, diretto da Alex Garland. «Lo so cos’è. È quando un umano interagisce con un computer. E se l’umano non capisce di interagire con un computer, il test è superato».
In the film, Nathan set himself the ambitious goal of developing an AI with a conscience. This is how Ava was born, a humanoid robot that big data has made a perfect imitator of human feelings. Can Ava have real feelings, or has she been programmed to act like she does? Caleb falls in love with Ava, but... we reveal no more.
This example, which is cited by Julian Nida-Rumelin and Nathalie Weidenfeld in the book “ Digital humanism ”, can be an effective example of an introduction to the called Silicon Valley ideology. In recent years, theories of materialistic nature have become widespread, according to which man is nothing more than a very complex computer and that sooner or later technical development will thin out any difference between man and machine.
The technicist utopia of Silicon Valley
According to the concept of strong AI, human complexity can be reduced to digital "mechanisms", which can be modelled, determined by sensory stimuli and are therefore predictable. The interpretation is behaviouristic: being sad is nothing more than displaying a certain behaviour triggered by external stimuli.
For the proponents of this theory, there is no (categorical) difference between human thought and the processing of software, or rather its computation processes. The boom in neuroscience, which holds that the protagonist of action is not the person, but rather his brain, or rather his neurophysiological states has contributed to increasing this thinking.
The concept of AI weak, at the same time, highlights the difference between human and machine thinking but does not deny the possibility that can be simulated identically.
In this technicist utopia what role will the human being play? According to Nida-Rumelin, one of Germany's best-known intellectuals, former Minister of Culture under Schroder and now Professor of Philosophy in Munich, this approach risks becoming dangerously anti-humanistic.
According to the philosopher, there is nothing to suggest that machines have or will have perceptions or emotions. In contrast to robots and AI, human beings, as moral actors, ponder the reasons for their actions. Machines, on the other hand, have a utilitarian logic: the attribution of value is included in a utility logic.
A optimising calculation could compensate human life for human life on the basis of probabilistic calculations, but human life is incompensable. Think of experiments in autonomous driving: to preserve the driver, the task for which it was programmed, the car could injure innocent people.
Digital Humanism is the right fit
After initial enthusiasm, cases of “techclash”, or strong negative reaction against the largest technology companies and their products. The term, which appeared in The Economist in 2013 and was nominated in 2018 as word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries, is associated with disputed cases, such as the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal.
On Netflix, “The social dilemma”, the documentary by Jeff Orlowski, delves into the ethical dilemma of Silicon Valley 'turncoats' that led them to leave the companies where they held top positions because of the priority given to profit and advertising. At the same time, new movements are emerging to make technology more sustainable for humans: is the case of Tristan Harris, former Google digital design ethicist, who founded the Center for Human Technology.
But the critique of Silicon Valley ideology has never been accompanied by a true alternative. A positive thought. Rumelin identifies it in the Digital humanism, a philosophy that recovers the centrality of man vis-à-vis technology: the authorship of human beings is never questioned, the digital is merely an extension of this ability. A booster frees man from repetitive activities to allow him to concentrate on what is most valuable.
This is why it is essential to combine the choice and design of technology with an ability to analyse human uniqueness, which must be valued and protected in every digital interaction. Here you can read the WEGG CEO's thoughts on our digital future.
This component has been incorporated within our consultancy: we are, in fact, promoters of the Manifesto of the Digital Person, to increase the choice of sustainable technologies for companies and the people they work for.
