Abstract
Artificial intelligence comes in many conceivable forms. This paper addresses the prospect of hyper-intelligence and identifies key parallels between depictions of its rise and related consequences in three science-fiction films (Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, Sargent’s Colossus: The Forbin Project, and the Wachowskis’ The Matrix, along with its sequels, and The Animatrix), and how classical social theory and the classical critical theory of the early Frankfurt School have examined the underlying logic and social formations of the machine age: industrialization in combination with the logic of capital. In paradoxical ways, hyper-intelligence often is designed to transcend regressive patterns of societal life and constitutes a threat not to society in general, but to regressive aspects of modern societies that are embodied in persistent structures of inequality and systems of power and in contradiction with the images modern societies project of themselves to encourage members to acquiesce to destructive constellations of economics, technology, and organizations and how they conflict with society’s purported social-value orientation. The impossibility to predict the future impact of AI, while hypothetical, is unsettling for two reasons. First, the development especially of highly sophisticated forms of non-human intelligence (hyper-intelligence) is in danger of overreaching and fraught with uncertainty, beyond our direct control, and connected to myriad processes and aspects of societal and technological change in the twenty-first century. Secondly, for humankind as it defines itself because of its purported superior intelligence, the rise of another, artificial kind of intelligence in its midst, will be disconcerting and threatening.
Presenters
Harry DahmsProfessor, Sociology, Unversity of Tennessee - Knoxville, Tennessee, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus: Whose Intelligence? The Corporeality of Thinking Machines
KEYWORDS
Artificial Intelligence, Modern Society, Capital, Contradictions, Complexity, Future
