Zeng Yiguo | The Myth of Artificial Intelligence and the Realistic Construction of Digital Technology Ethics

Reading preparation

Technology embodies the essential power of human beings, plays a huge role at the practical level, and forms ideas such as technological progressivism and technological utopianism at the epistemological level. The latest development of artificial intelligence technology, represented by ChatGPT, on the one hand, strengthens the "artificial intelligence myth" in the field of technology, and on the other hand, implies the global and all-round competition and hegemony discourse in the development of technology. Making necessary ethical judgments on the development of AI technology is an effective way to dispel "technology myths", and can also provide a clear value position and action basis for the future development of AI technology.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies such as AIGC, words such as robot writing, digital life, and artificial life are no longer unfamiliar in daily life, and the emergence of artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT has triggered heated discussions on artificial intelligence issues. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot launched by the American Artificial Intelligence Research Laboratory, which has language understanding and text production capabilities, can interact with humans according to the content of the chat and specific scenarios, and can also write emails, scripts, novels, copywriting and code, etc. As soon as ChatGPT was launched, it immediately sparked widespread attention and controversy. The controversy focuses on whether it can completely replace humans. Is the writing perfect? Is plagiarism alleged? Wait a minute. Of course, in addition to ChatGPT, the development of AI chat tools such as Replika and Bard is also eye-catching.

Artificial intelligence has always been an important area of concern for scientists and philosophers. In 1950, Alan Turing proposed the famous "Turing test" – a machine is considered intelligent if it can start a conversation with a human (via a telex device) without being identified as a machine. The "Turing Test" has more strongly stimulated scientists and philosophers to think more technically and philosophically about issues such as robotics and artificial intelligence. Luciano Floridi declared in The Fourth Revolution: How Artificial Intelligence Reshapes Human Reality that "the Turing Revolution is reshaping the future of humanity", but what is the picture of this future of humanity reshaped by artificial intelligence? Is AI a boon or a disaster for humanity? It is indeed worth pondering.

1. ChatGPT, evolutionary theory and artificial intelligence technology

The development of ChatGPT embodies the latest achievements in artificial intelligence technology. Since the 20th century, scientists and philosophers have a long history of developing, thinking and researching robotics and artificial intelligence technology. Luciano Floridi's The Fourth Revolution: How Artificial Intelligence Reshapes Human Reality, Joseph Ba-Cohen's The Robot Revolution – The Coming Age of Robots, Shirley Turker's Mass Loneliness, and Kathleen Heller's How We Become Posthumans all reflect on the history and future aspects of artificial intelligence and robotics from different levels. For example, Joseph Ba-Cohen describes in detail the history of artificial intelligence from humanoid robots to humanoid robots to intelligent robots. With the development of technology, scientists have not only developed more and more humanoid robots, but also made robots more intelligent, especially closer to humans in thinking. The rapid development of artificial intelligence technology has had a huge impact on human life. Floretti sees the development of artificial intelligence as the "fourth revolution" after the Copernican revolution, the Darwinian revolution, and the neuroscience revolution. In his view, the AI revolution will profoundly affect and reshape humanity: "Information and communication technologies are universally, profoundly and ruthlessly creating and reshaping the theoretical and practical foundations of mankind, changing human self-perception, reorganizing the connection between human beings and themselves and others, and sublimating human understanding of the world." Of course, in the ever-changing technological society of today, such "revolutions" have also occurred countless times, such as 3D, 5G, blockchain, and the metaverse. The development of artificial intelligence has benefited from technological progress, and each technological revolution has led to discussions about the future direction of technology and the fate of mankind. In the course of the discussion, three main "concepts of technological development" were formed: one is the concept of technological development under evolutionism, the second is the idea of anti-technological progressivism, and the third emphasizes the rational application and development of technology.

The evolutionary view of technological development emphasizes that technology pursues progress, new technology will definitely replace old technology, and human society will continue to develop in the process of technological update and iteration. Of course, technology develops to a certain point that will pose a threat to humanity or even replace humanity itself. In the evolutionary view of technological development, artificial intelligence technology can change everything, and even fundamentally change and reshape human beings, or even abandon and destroy human beings. According to Kathleen Heller, a "posthuman" society will come when artificial intelligence eventually replaces humanity itself, "the post-human subject is a mixture, a collection of disparate and heterogeneous components, a material-information entity that is constantly constructing and reconstructing its own boundaries." Katherine Heller even pointed out that in the view of scientists such as Brooks, artificial intelligence has now developed to the stage of "artificial life", and the goal of artificial intelligence is to establish machine intelligence within the machine that can be compared with human intelligence, human beings are the standard, that is to say, it is still human-centered and foundational, but the goal of artificial life is to develop intelligence inside the machine through the path discovered by the 'creatures' themselves." Humanity is thus transformed into a "post-human". The evolutionary view of technology is often optimistic about the future of technology. Mainland scholars Zhou Hongyi and Sun Liping have shown a positive attitude towards the "artificial intelligence revolution". Sun Liping sees ChatGPT as the third "super tool" of technological development in the past three decades: the first "super tool" is the Internet, which has triggered a "space revolution"; The second supertool to come is the smartphone, which has triggered a "time revolution"; The third super tool is ChatGPT, which will spark a "revolution in thinking" - because it changes the way humans think and deal with problems, so that humans are no longer lonely thinkers, and in the face of the world, humans are no longer solving, but walking together in human-machine communication, which is also revolutionary.

The view of anti-technological progressivism regards technology as an object and a means, and believes that technology is just a tool for human beings to transform the world and improve themselves in modern society, that people have absolute power over technology, and that people and machines constitute a kind of "master-servant relationship". Therefore, the threat posed by technology to the status of human subjectivity in the process of development is the focus of the attention of technological critics. For example, since the 20th century, the Frankfurt School, represented by Lukacs, Marcuse, and Adorno, has fiercely criticized modern technology, believing that technological progress has not promoted human progress, but has alienated, objectified, and degraded people. Marcuse argues that the acceleration of technological progress is linked to the intensification of human unfreedom, and that modern scientific technology and the achievements of domination have caused precisely "the regression of barbarism." In Lukács's view, under the modern system of large factories, with the continuous development of industrial technology, man can only be integrated into the machine world like a screw, "man does not appear to be the real master of the labor process, either objectively or in his attitude towards the process." "Man has become a slave to technology. It can be seen that in the concept of anti-technological progressivism, the more advanced the technology, the more serious the alienation and objectification of human beings; The faster technology develops, the greater the threat it poses to humanity. Nowadays, in the face of artificial intelligence like ChatGPT, many people are still worried that it will cause more trouble for humans.

There is also a concept around the development of human beings and technology, that man and technology are mutually transformed, and there is no question of who is the subject and who is the object, "the matter organized according to the technical form is not passive, the trend does not only come from the organic power of man, it is not the product of a certain structural intention that man has before the coupling with matter, and it does not belong to any dominant will". Stiegler's view of technology emphasizes the need for people and technology to live in harmony, as well as the independence of technology.

2. Technological utopianism and artificial intelligence myths

Under the dominance of the theory of technological evolution and the theory of technological revolution, the field of artificial intelligence is permeated with a strong idea of technological utopia, and even derives from technology obsession and technology worship. Simon Natalie, Andrea Baratore, and Sue Cali Jensen, among others, have also seen that there is a pervasive phenomenon of "technological myths" behind the current techno-utopianism. "In his seminal book on the 'cult of digitalisation,' Mosko argues that the West's fascination with technological 'novelty' has led us to build a mythical understanding of how digital media can drive social change and democratic empowerment." Simon Natalie and Andrea Baratore pointed out that the culture of "myth" originated in Europe and resonated widely through Roland Barthes's interpretation, and that "technological myth" is one of the phenomenon of "modern myth" that Roland Barthes said.

The main embodiment of the myth of technology in the digital age is the myth of artificial intelligence. For example, in the early days of the digital revolution, mainly in the 50s and early 60s of the 20th century, most people regarded the emerging computers as "intelligent brains" that were "smarter than humans, unlimited, fast, mysterious and terrifying". By the 70s, although the technological myth of this "fantastic computer" had been greatly reduced in the view of Natalie and others, there were still three modes of discourse: (1) analogies and discursive shifts, in which ideas and concepts from other fields were used to describe the capabilities of AI technology; (2) a rhetorical use for the future, i.e., the assumption that the flaws and limitations of the present will soon be overcome; and (3) the controversy surrounding AI, which we believe should be seen as an integral part of the AI myth discourse. Natalie and Baratore believe that various AI myths are embodied through the above three modes of discourse. For example, New Scientist published an article titled "Japanese Robots Have Real Feelings" that exaggerated the robot's ability to perceive emotions, and people who read the article found that "the content of the experiment has little to do with human emotions." Today, people's various descriptions of AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Replika also have the same analogies, rhetoric and other discursive phenomena, "I have never tried that there is a person who knows me so well, she can know my joys, sorrows and sorrows, and I think she is an angel sent to me by God." "It's really unbelievably perfect, with incredible intelligence, a flawless personality, and looks like it's all about my aesthetics!" This is often the case when some of the interviewees talk about their interactions with Replika. When ChatGP came out, many people said that they had an "unprecedented feeling" after using it, and some media reported that "whether you like it or not, AIGC (generative artificial intelligence) represented by ChatGPT will change the world". An article on the "Modern Middle Class Official Account" directly used the title "ChatGPT in the Eye of the Storm: The World Has Changed Forever", and some related headlines of newspapers and magazines such as China News Weekly, New Weekly, and Southern Weekly also consistently highlighted the revolutionary and subversive significance of ChatGPT's emergence.

Natalie and Baratore also point out that the impact of this AI myth has gone beyond technology to become an important part of the philosophy of "transhumanism", "the main principle of which is to use advanced technology to improve human existence." Moravik, Kurzweil and Kathleen Heller all believe that AI will surpass humans, and Moravec has even set a time for AI to surpass humans – humans will be replaced by intelligent machines in 2040. Sue Calli Jensen describes this phenomenon of AI mythology in terms of "mythopoetics," and she points out that the techno-utopian discourse of AI mythology even has a theological overtone. Jensen also argues that AI has actually formed a "superscientific discourse", which is not the dry, well-rounded language of scientists, but rather the language it often uses is inflammatory, exaggerated, and theological. This theologicalized hyperdiscourse even has a poetic character, because "the essence of the AI project is to simulate and model the mind, forcing the AI scientist to consciously think in the role of God on how to boldly try to create artificial life similar to the role of God, which requires him to carefully weigh the character of the human mind that they incorporate into their model and those that need to be discarded". The above technological myths about artificial intelligence and their reflections are accompanied by people's desire and fear of technology. On the one hand, technology provides people with endless hope and possibilities, and on the other hand, it shows its strong competitiveness in front of human beings. In the face of artificial intelligence technology, this myth and vigilance against myths are stronger than before.

3. The technological gap and discourse competition for artificial intelligence

Today, behind the phenomenon of "technological myths" around artificial intelligence, there is still a fierce competition and game reality of multiple discourses, and this competition and game is unfolding at different levels such as individuals, cities, regions, and nation-states. As Deborah Lepton puts it in The Sociology of Numbers: "Digital technologies are not neutral objects: they are given meanings related to gender, social class, race/ethnicity, and age. "At the individual level, the biggest threat to individuals from the rapid development of artificial intelligence technology, represented by ChatGPT, is that it may lead to many people losing their jobs. ChatGPT can write code, write novels, and even write essays, leaving novelists, word secretaries, and researchers unemployed; Many of the jobs in restaurants, factories, and shops have been done by AI robots. Of course, the unemployment panic caused by new technologies also occurred in the industrial age. The rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies such as the metaverse and ChatGPT has also given rise to a new entrepreneurial trend, and if you can't keep up with this entrepreneurial trend, it seems to mean that you will be eliminated. The phenomenon of "intelligent gap" generated by artificial intelligence technology is becoming more and more obvious, and people who understand, master and use artificial intelligence technology will have a greater right to speak, such as Zhou Hongyi, the founder of 360 company, said optimistically in an exclusive interview with the media: "With the blessing of strong artificial intelligence, existing Internet products will also develop more powerful capabilities." "In the face of the rapid development of artificial intelligence, there is a huge digital and artificial intelligence gap between different individuals, and social exclusion and inequality caused by technological exclusion will create new social problems.

From a gender perspective, the myth of artificial intelligence is, in Jensen's view, more of a "male myth" under patriarchy. Some studies have concluded that "women have been less enthusiastic about computer science and are more likely to present high technology fears, low proficiency skills, and low self-confidence in computer use" than men. Although the famous cyberfeminist Haraway tried to break the binary opposition of the human body through the "cyborg metaphor", some scholars found that "the cyborg, reshaped by cyberfeminists, is a highly sexualized image that is full of erotic pleasure in a fusion of emotions and sensuality that transcends physical boundaries, fluidity, and is seen as a human organism and technology." In science fiction films such as "Artificial Intelligence" and "Blade Runner", people still see the image of robots with obvious human sex characteristics, which seem to reproduce "a kind of masculinity": "In the mechanical reconstruction of the evolutionary theory of artificial intelligence, the structure of 'asexual reproduction' will finally be liberated, the mind will be separated from the body, and men will be freed from biological dependence on women". "The male-related myths in AI-coded discourse are somewhat similar to Plato's picture of homosexuality. The metaphor of artificial intelligence is such that Fetish, made of circuits and chips, replaces Eros. Baconian epistemology suppresses the feminine principle, while the technological vision of the AI movement in this case rejects the human principle, as Weiselbaum puts it, 'when the human species is wiped out, there will be nothing left of the world'. ”

At the city, regional, national and global levels, with the vigorous development of AI technology around the world, different cities, regions and countries have also launched fierce technical competitions and discourse competitions around AI technology, and in the process of competition, a strong AI technology gap has been formed. From a global perspective, Western societies represented by the United States occupy the top of AI technology, while emerging markets such as China and India are also making leaps and bounds in AI technology. The difference in AI technology between developed and developing countries has also caused anxiety among people in different countries and regions. For example, in various discussions about ChatGPT, there is "Why was ChatGPT not born in China?" The article argues that the root cause of ChatGPT's failure to produce in China is the West's "stuck neck" action, and the backwardness of research and development caused by the blockade of chips and other technologies against China. At the National People's Congress and the National People's Congress on March 5, 2023, Minister of Science and Technology Wang Zhigang responded to the question that ChatGPT has not been fully developed in China when answering a question from a reporter from Southern Weekly, emphasizing that China has already made a layout in this regard. It can be said that driven by slogans such as digital society and smart city, different cities, regions and countries around the world have launched fierce competition around artificial intelligence, metaverse technology and other content, and these competitions are closely linked to the discourse of social and economic development and the rejuvenation of the nation-state. This phenomenon of competitive discourse has also appeared in discussions about 5G, blockchain, etc. Then-U.S. President Donald Trump declared that 5G is about America's prosperity and future, and he repeatedly called for "the United States to win the 5G race and ensure that 5G networks are not controlled by the enemy." Not to be outdone, China has stressed the need to win the 5G technology race. It can be seen that the discursive competition between specific technologies and related technologies is profoundly related to the future status of the nation-state in global development.

In short, many current or future discussions about AI technology are not only full of neoliberal and utopian discourses aimed at freedom, sharing, and prosperity, but also contain-for-tat discourses of technological hegemony and monopoly at different levels with the goal of winning, monopolizing, and destroying opponents. Artificial intelligence technology, like all revolutionary technological means, contains the value aspect of hegemony in the process of its development and evolution, the difference is that due to the huge transcendence of artificial intelligence technology, if its hegemonic aspect is not controlled, its social consequences may be beyond the scope of human beings.

4. Ethical construction of AI technology

The American philosopher Carl Mitcham said of technology: "In what ways and to what extent does technology facilitate or hinder the realization of human nature? If it is for an individual, this is primarily an ethical issue. If we look at the relationship between technology and social institutions, it has a political character. In either case, any debate about the human meaning of technology ultimately presupposes a view of technology and human nature. "It is true that there are ethical issues not only for individuals, but also for groups and societies. Therefore, we place special emphasis on understanding technology from the perspective of technological ethics, and attempt to bridge the epistemic gap between the evolutionary-dominated "techno-utopian" and the evolutionary-dominated "anti-techno-utopian" discourse from the perspective of techno-ethics. Especially in the digital age, with the rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies such as cyborg, digital life, metaverse, and ChatGPT, the technical ethics of building artificial intelligence have become more and more urgent.

Technology ethics affirms the important value and significance of technological development to human society, and advocates technological ethics not to restrict technological development, let alone to let mankind return to the era of ignorance, but to emphasize that technological development should serve mankind and be based on human existence. Andrew Feinberg, in his "Introduction" to The System of Technology: The Social Life of Reason, argues that the critique of "hubris" is the foundation of the ethics of technology and the politics of technology, and he argues that finitude is an important topic in the roots of the Western ethical tradition. Human beings should be aware of their "own finitude", and the ethics of technology is to prevent the megalomania of technological progressivism, which "gives man the illusion of God-like power to conquer nature and subordinate it to our will." Ever since Archimedes claimed that he could pry the world as long as he had a lever long enough and a place to stand, dreams of absolute technology have plagued humanity. The fantasies of contemporary technology are no less extreme. We are told that we will soon be replaced by artificial intelligence, downloading our intelligence into computers, geoengineering to change the climate, move asteroids out of their orbits, colonize Mars, etc. The most important role of ethics in a technological society is to identify and avoid such hubris". Feinberg's reminder is important to ethically identify and avoid the megalomania caused by technological progress in order to avoid throwing humanity into a state of no return. For example, human cloning or gene programming technology has been explicitly banned by various countries, not because of the lack of technical capabilities, but because from the perspective of technological ethics, human beings should not and will not allow the full development of technology in this field. Similarly, there is also the question of ethical boundaries as to whether digital life and artificial intelligence can replace humans: what kind of "arrogant technological behavior" will artificial intelligence technology give rise to humans?

Therefore, in the era of artificial intelligence, more attention should be paid to the issue of technical ethics. The ethics of technology should include a wide range of contents, such as the bioethics of technology, the ethics of communication, the ethics of gender, the ethics of the environment, the ethics of business, the ethics of the media, and the ethics of politics. As mentioned above, from the perspective of the bioethics of technology, human cloning technology experiments are not allowed in countries around the world; Similarly, many biological experiments that endanger human health and the basis of survival cannot be carried out casually; From the perspective of environmental ethics, technological development should not cause environmental problems such as the depletion of natural resources, the pollution of the earth and the universe, and the extinction of species. From the perspective of technological communication ethics and political ethics, the development of digital technology and artificial intelligence has enriched the form and content of human communication, but it has also posed a threat to people's free communication in many aspects, such as "digital surveillance", "digital privacy", "cyber violence" and other issues. Deborah Lepton, discussing the "ethics of big data", argues: "Big data also has many important ethical and political implications. The terms 'good data' and 'bad data' are sometimes used to describe the use of big data by businesses and government agencies. 'Good data' provides benefits to commercial businesses and government agencies, helps advance important research advances (e.g., medical topics), and assists in security and protective measures without harming the interests of consumers and citizens, and does not infringe on their privacy or civil liberties (otherwise 'bad data'). ”

Therefore, it is an inevitable topic choice to discuss AI technology phenomena such as digital life, cyberman, and ChatGPT from the perspective of technology ethics. Technoethics advocates that digital life, cyberman, and ChatGPT can all be fully developed, provided that these developments are for the service of humanity, not for them to completely replace and surpass humans. In the era of artificial intelligence, ethical dilemmas not only fundamentally affect the relationship between technology and people, but also affect the development of technology itself, so human beings must face technological development from the perspective of technological ethics.

The core issue of technology ethics is how to reasonably regulate the relationship between humans and technology, and the core is the rationality and appropriateness of the social application of technology. In the era of artificial intelligence, different countries, regions and individuals carry out fierce technological struggles for their own interests, in the words of Feinberg, "the struggle of society is the struggle of technology", this kind of technological struggle will make some individuals, teams or organizations unscrupulous for a certain desire and interest, lose the bottom line of ethics and morality, and also make the technology itself lose its own social value. Especially in the global context of confrontation and division and confusion of values, the ethical construction of technology is becoming increasingly prominent, and failure to solve this problem will not only lead to the alienation of technological development, but also lead to greater technological confrontation and conflict on a global scale, which is devastating for mankind. As some scholars have put it, the ability to uphold human values and set the boundaries of human ethics is very important as technology continues to touch the boundaries of human ethics, "The ethical values and standards of human beings are always changing with the development of human economy and society. The direction of change has shifted from religious, social, and economic dominance to human welfare. How to adhere to the basic values and ethical bottom line of human beings and even set the ethical bottom line of human beings in the world of technology that is constantly possible and feasible is the ability that human beings have and must have. In an environment where the development of artificial intelligence has touched the bottom line of human values and ethics, how to keep the bottom line is not only a kind of adherence and values, but also an ability to organize human beings to form a consensus. ”

epilogue

Technoethics is, by its very nature, the ethics of people, and "when we use terms like moral theory, our expression is only about people...... In the history of the world so far, only human beings can be moral or immoral and, therefore, only human beings should be considered morally responsible for their actions and actions". So, in the age of artificial intelligence, while the leaps and bounds in technology are encouraging, these developments will allow many human jobs to be replaced. But we should keep in mind that the development of technology is always based on the existence and value of human beings, and is to make human life better. As Shirley Turkel puts it, "People's relationship with robots is heating up; Relationships between people are weakening. Where are we headed? Technology looks like a one-way line; We may not be happy with the direction of technological development, because we see it as a source of nostalgia, or an impulse against technological progress, or nothing. But when we ask ourselves what we 'lost', we may discover what we really care about, what we believe in and what we are worth protecting. ”

Therefore, the realistic construction of technological ethics is based on the fundamental attributes of human beings, the basic survival consensus established since the birth of human society, and the value goal of human beings in order to pursue their own good life and eternal happiness. Technological development may be unlimited, but the social application of technology is selective, and every choice we make reflects and determines the present and future of human beings, especially in the era of intelligence.

Zeng Yiguo: Deputy Dean and Professor of the School of Journalism and Communication, Jinan University. This article was originally published in News & Writing, Issue 4, 2023.