A rtificial Intelligence (AI) programmes are “more and more pervasive in our day-today lives… turning into an integral, seamless” aspect of living. Indeed, over a short period of time, AI has become a daily news item and, regardless of our intentions, it is now impossible to avoid interacting with, or “speaking to” AI, if only because of its displacement of human-to-human interaction in everyday activities. From corporate customer relations to social media communications, as well as a diverse range of other commercial and domestic use, we cannot be other than deeply affected by AI. Social scientists see it as ‘affecting our very existence’, yet we remain largely unaware of the hidden algorithms doing the heavy legwork on social platforms. FRAMING ETHICS Our research focuses on conversations with specialists working within the field of AI. We wanted to interrogate them regarding their own thinking and values. For example, we ask AI programmers what ethical considerations they deem most important and why? As you might expect, their responses reflect dominant discourses and assumptions emerging from their training, together with beliefs, norms and values derived from life experience. These frame what is deemed important for producing what they see as the technically rational content of AI. What is then hidden or obscured are those other lesser cognitive elements of experience: norms and values that become embedded in the data and algorithms that form the basis of AI with little awareness of how they are deployed to render AI proficient in its multiple uses. Some of these have recently been brought to the attention of programmers through an examination of the ethical implications of AI such as its gender, racial and other ideological discriminatory tendencies, its neglect of security and privacy matters, lack of transparency and thus accountability, the dangers of too heavy a human reliance on systems leading to a paucity of creative and critical thinking, job displacements and unemployment, and even apocalyptic fears of computers taking over the world. UNEXPECTED CHANGES While these fears are ‘real’, they vary in their plausibility for most people. There is more of a consensus regarding the need for regulation. What is neglected, however, is a concern with how AI might transform us as individuals into subjects who secure our sense of meaning, identity and reality through engaging with the services that it facilitates. AI may not have consciousness, but it exercises power in ways that affect our subjectivity because we freely identify with – and participate in – the pursuits enabled by its presence. In this sense, 12 | @Nifty Fox Creative 2024
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