From Tech Wars to Tech Culture Wars?
Online talk by Pascal D. König (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) as part of the DEMOCRACY & AI series.
As Artificial intelligence (AI) systems are becoming increasingly sophisticated in emulating human communication and expressing social values, they also gain greater relevance for questions of culture and identity. We see this dimension play out in discourses around AI not only in international relations, but also within countries, such as in recent discussions on ‘woke AI’ in the US.
There are thus emerging struggles over embedding values into generative AI systems. The shape that these struggles take depends on the ways in which this values dimension becomes salient in politics. While values are often unintentionally incorporated in AI in different stages of its life cycle, governments and businesses also shape the values of AI systems in very deliberate and intentional ways – leading to tensions within and between societies both on the level of AI system design and governance.
Governments and businesses furthermore engage in values signaling, recognizing and attempting to instrumentalize that certain social values and political ideas are embedded in AI systems. These developments have consequences for the politics of technology, the study of global AI governance, and national regulation and discourse concerning AI. They also make AI and its regulation more contentious in democratic politics.
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DEMOCRACY & AI is a series of online talks exploring the political thought, theory, and philosophy of artificial intelligence. Envisioned as an international platform for the politics-and-AI research community, the series aims to bring voices together to examine how AI is shaping democracy, both positively and negatively.