Philosophic-anthropological Aspects of the Development of Artificial Intelligence: a View From 2024
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: The article focuses on philosophic-anthropological issues related to the development of artificial intelligence (AI). The author analyzes a set of possible positive and negative consequences of digitalization for humanity. In studying the dialectics of digital technology development, some novelty points concern an attempt to look at this complex process systematically, highlighting the anthropological aspects of this controversial development. In particular, there is an intention to understand how AI may affect the evolution of our consciousness and ethics, and how it correlates with human nature. The article mentions the AI's prominent achievements as on the beginning of 2024, demonstrating how advanced artificial intelligence has already opened up unique opportunities in fundamental and applied sciences. These impressive results give grounds to evaluate AI as a challenging technology, which questions traditional notions of what makes humans the most intelligent creatures on the planet. The development of AI is forcing us to rethink a number of ethical, psychological, and existential issues, including our place in the world and our relationship with smart technologies. The article emphasizes the ambivalent potential of the emerging digital technologies, which: can disrupt existing markets for labor, goods and services, and at the same time create new ones; can contribute to overcoming poverty and inequality, or exacerbate them in other ways; have the potential to serve humanistic goals, or to amplify processes of dehumanization when AI is integrated into new means of mass destruction or enslavement of humans. One of the important conclusions proposed in the article is that current AI-based technologies remain entirely within the anthropological paradigm: they do not (yet) have any self-interest that has not been built in by humans in advance. Therefore, the main source of danger comes from people, and the primary risks lie in attempts to instrumentalize AI by people to achieve some wrong and misguided goals. In the article, a call is made for a thorough study of the ethical and social implications of the large-scale deployment of digital technologies, in order to ensure their safe and responsible use. Among other things, a number of systemic measures are proposed that could contribute to effective public control over these innovative processes.
Author: Oleksandr Stovpets
Institution: Odessa National Maritime University
Language: English
Subfield: Safety Research
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4405916490