Human rights: Food for a thought devoid of ethics  ‘HR and AI’

HRR 745

[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are you care about HR. This Reader is about  how, using AI, monopolies profit from using our data and maliciously control our access to knowledge. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com

AI is like an amoeba that is in a constant state of change. AI monopolies control our access to our knowledge metamorphosis, forever changing its shape and adjusting to its surroundings.

1. As we see challenges on the horizon, we see the boom in AI today, we see growing automation stripping away jobs and raising questions about the fitness of our social security models and we see ever more clearly the effect of opaque algorithms making decisions. The need for an ethical framework thus is abundantly clear. Human rights champions need to rise to this challenge and articulate answers. (Salil Shetty, Amnesty International)

2. Rather than serving to promote global equality, an AI-dominated future will well result in the greatest concentration of resources and power the world has ever known. Rapid adopters of AI technology will reap significant advantages compared to those who are slower to embrace it.* Additionally, there is a risk of a gap emerging between workers who possess the skills needed to thrive in the AI era and those who lack these skills. While we have only begun to scratch the surface of how the AI revolution may affect the global dynamics, importantly including human rights (HR), it is not difficult to imagine a future where power, resources, and technology become even more concentrated than they already are. AI risks to inadvertently consolidate resources and power to an unprecedented extent. Companies from nations rendered rich will maintain a notable edge in the global economic landscape, giving them a yet larger competitive advantage. This risks consolidating their position as leaders in various sectors, further solidifying their economic supremacy. (Rameen Siddiqui)

*: AI systems will require investment in knowledge infrastructure, especially in developing economies, where data gaps persist and those rendered poor are digitally underrepresented.

Bottom line here

3. We risk becoming victims of knowledge slavery where corporate and/or government AI monopolies control our access to our knowledge. (Jovan Kurbalija,  https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/6/12/the-case-for-bottom-up-ai)

4. In short: There can be no artificial intelligence without ethics and politics. (Pope Francis)

Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City

Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com

All Readers are available at www.claudioschuftan.com

Postscript/Marginalia

[I add the following as related complementary food for thought pieces]:

A) Some existential questions I wish I had answers for

1. What is digital capitalism?: How is digitalization shaped by capitalism and how is digitalization shaping capitalism? Is data today’s most important commodity? What will be the impact of algorithms for social movements? How is digitalization impacting on labor and on the environment?

2. Big Tech and the Digital Overlords: How did a few digital companies become so powerful? How do they differ from other non-digital corporations? What is the source of their power, finance and influence? How successful have regulatory attempts been to limit their power? How can we effectively rein them in?

3. Digital colonialism; Geopolitics of data and development: How has digitalization perpetuated global inequality? Who benefits and loses from global value chains? How is the internet and data management governed globally? What are the strategies of the major state digital powers – US, China and Europe – and where does that leave everyone else? 

4. The digital trade agenda: How are Big Tech corporations trying to solidify their control of data? What are the big trade battles that are emerging?  How do proposed digital trade rules hinder meeting basic needs and protecting the rights of people and of nature? What could a development-based digital trade agenda look like? 

5. Digitalization and the Security State: How is digitalization being used by state systems of repression and control? Who is most impacted? What protections exist in liberal democratic regimes to protect civil liberties and what are their limitations? What examples exist of successful resistance against state digital surveillance?

6. What is the alternative?: What digital world do we want to live in? How are social movements resisting Big Tech? What are the values, principles and foundations of alternatives based on social and environmental justice? What models exist already? What infrastructures, policies and models for digital justice need to be created? What do we understand by reparative justice? (food for a mega-thought…) **

**: “Justice is like a snake, it only bites the barefooted”. That is the sentence of the gaucho Martín Fierro in the epic poem by José Hernández (1872). Justice is often the mask for the injustice of the powers-that-be. (Politika)

–B) Reflections on zoomophobia, webinophobia, skypophobia

1. I do not, know about you, but how many webinars have you attended in the last year? And what do we have to show-for from them in terms of action? Are we not talking mostly among intellectuals and mostly talking to the converts?  …and not only talking, but repeatedly talking around the same analyses and similar suggestions? Am I being a cynic?

2. Are we perhaps deceiving ourselves thinking that we have the right (or left…?) solutions since we are talking to ‘insiders’? What does throwing webinars at our problems achieve/do to actions needed ‘outside’? Do not many of the liberal views we ventilate in webinars rarely serve the ultimate interests of claim holders rendered poor? Do we really ‘represent them’? …What will you and I do differently come next Monday morning? 

3. Who are/will be the doers that will ultimately change things around? us? If not us, who should we be webinaring with …to learn from their non-scholar/reality-rooted analyses and suggestions for action? Does the real energy to find workable solutions not ultimately only come from the oppressed themselves?

4. I do not even want to start to talk about what is achieved by the dozens of petitions we are asked to sign that are sent to governments, agencies, individuals, decision makers… and that end up in their inboxes to die a quiet death. We all know the problem with petitions is that it is easy to sign-on and then forget about the fact that prompted them. Do you remember the last one you signed…?.

5. “I was hungry and you formed a committee; I was homeless and you filed a report; I was sick and you held a webinar. You have investigated all aspects of my plights. Yet I am still hungry, homeless and sick.”. (David Watson, Life in the Eighties)

6. The major problem is that most webinars are organized on the basis of that ancient pedagogy style based on having the audience to just shut up and listen. If you do have a question, you are permitted to carefully type it in o the little white box at the bottom (or right side) of your screen, only to have it ignored.

7. Most webinars are staged (theatrical?) events, with loud performers and a silent audience The best action plans come out of raucous debates among peers. Few webinars encourage or even allow for active engagement of their audience.

8. Engagement could be achieved in roundtable discussion even on Zoom-style platforms, but very few webinar organizers organize such events. The major product of today’s online webinars is new lines on the presenters’ vitae. Discussion-based events could be organized around simple but important questions such as how should x be regulated?

9. Another way to get discussions started would be organize them around specific articles published in recent open access journals. The authors could be invited to spend no more than five minutes introducing their article, and then open discussion by those who attend. The moderators should not be the authors. No one should be allowed to read a prepared script to people sitting at a round table to engage in discussion. (George Kent)

10. I rest my case. Reactions?

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