Human rights: Food for a spurious controlling thought ‘HR and the internet’
HRR 717
[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about the past, present and future of the internet and how it impinges on us and on HR. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
1. Let us recall the internet: it began some thirty years ago. It was a capitalism-free-zone lacking a profit-generating market motive where horizontal communication, a digital commons, was offered us uncommodified, i.e., without advertising; call it ‘Internet One’. Along then came ‘Internet Two’ that created fences (or enclosures, silos) that take us back to the conditions at the origins of Capitalism.
2. Internet Two‘s boundaries, all of a sudden, required you to hand over your identity to the lords in the cloud. How? It is the algorithms, stupid!
3. Algorithms monitor who and where you are, what your likes are and plays upon your emotions. The technology becomes the source of cloud capital. The algorithms reprogram themselves to follow your whims. Using smart phones, you already surrendered yourself to the iCloud where you inadvertently toil –for no wages. Companies that produce stuff in the capitalist system, such as cars, clothes and candies cannot keep up with the profits generated in the cloud. Private equity funds began raiding such companies, re-packaging them and selling them to the cloud investors. (Stephen Bezruchka)
Internet Three?
—Unless we address the question of artificial intelligence, human rights may not have much to say to a world confused and transformed (beware: not only by AI though).
4. The immediate risk of an unregulated AI is that the same actors and companies that manufacture or disseminate the lies that have shaken democracies and HR will now do so on an infinitely larger scale, further blurring the line between what is true or false.* If the public sphere ends up flooded with texts as impeccable as they are fallacious, or images and videos as ‘credible’ as they are dishonest and deceitful, the time-honored HR tactic of speaking truth to power will also drown out. (Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito)
*: Truth does not need publicity, lies do. (A. Naskar)
5. Artificial Intelligence represents a significant, transformational technological breakthrough, and how it will shape society and HR is not yet clear. Nobody can accurately predict the longer-term or even medium-term outcomes of such radical technological change. (Marginal Revolution)
6. If the digital order becomes increasingly dominant and governments forego their capacity to regulate, technology companies will become the dominant actors on the global stage in every way (if not already…). This will result in a techno-polar order, which will determine whether the world has limitless opportunities or simply no freedom. (TED)
7. In fact, according to ethicists, and many others in the scientific community, engineers are not supposed to be aiming nor working towards making a machine sentient or human, but even if they were just focusing on making high functioning language models, neither should they be reckless in their arms race to this imaginary finish line as many unintended harmful consequences can happen along the way. The hubris of these developers must be held in check as history has very well shown too much hubris never ends well. The mythology that superintelligence is coming, is posited by some as just that, a myth. With the technology we have seen so far, many experts express that these advancements are not even anywhere near the true level of AI, since its architects are not abiding by ethical standards early-on agreed-upon. (Mary Louise Malig)
The message is clear: Do not buy the hype of AI!
8. This is not to say that the various fields developing AI and automated systems are not important to discuss. There is also now gaining momentum a demand from various organizations and personalities that a temporary moratorium be placed on the training of powerful AI systems. Part of the letter states “AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts. Are these benign tools simply using algorithms to advance technology, the digital economy and beyond or are some of them being implemented at the cost of harm, ethics, college cheating, bias, theft, racism, privacy, pornography and the violation of the rights of humans? Is there a recklessness being ignored in the name of speed or being the first to develop in this burgeoning ‘arms race’ or ‘gold rush’ in the highly competitive world of AI developers? Policies should**move with great urgency and should go hand in hand with a framework for legally implementing and enforcing them to ensure that these protections and guarantees do not remain on paper but rather become enforceable actions”. (M. L. Malig)
**: As I always say, Stop the bullshould! I would have said ought-to or must.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
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I am happy to report that a bilingual booklet on moving HR beyond Capitalism was just published in Mexico. It is authored by me with the invaluable help of Howard Waitzkin.
The link here below gives all the details about it.
Claudio