Roberto Simanowski
God and Benevolent Dictator?

What can we expect from artificial intelligence in the future: the salvation of humanity or its downfall? Algorithms are seen as the future holders of power. Roberto Simanowski’s book is about the moral dilemma with which artificial intelligence confronts us.

By Holger Moos

© Passagen Verlag Todesalgorithmus: Das Dilemma der künstlichen Intelligenz (Death Algorithm: The Dilemma of Artificial Intelligence) is the name of Roberto Simanowski’s latest book. It sounds sensational, but is a very clever analysis of what artificial intelligence (AI) may be able to accomplish one day, even if we humans will have to pay a price.
 
The death algorithm in the title may soon be part of self-driving cars. In extreme situations, an algorithm will decide whether the vehicle will plough into a group of pedestrians, a mother and child or into a wall. In the first of the three essays in the volume, the literary and media scholar starts by asking whether we want to allow a machine to weigh human lives against each other to decide which life to sacrifice. The answer differs depending on whether one follows the ethics of duty or conviction or the ethics of purpose or responsibility.
 
According to Simanowski, in Germany, in the tradition of Kant’s moral philosophy, “according to which a good act is only moral if it is voluntary (i.e., out of a sense of duty),” it is categorically forbidden to objectify or instrumentalise people. That would also go against human dignity as anchored in the constitution. The ban on self-driving cars would be a decision based on the ethics of conviction, according to which no one should be instrumentalised as a victim to save others. But as responsibility ethicists argue, “Even more immoral than coolly and heartlessly balancing the life of a child against that of a pensioner would be to obstruct a technology that could prevent tens of thousands of accidental deaths each year.”

the age of Posthumanism

It’s also about the “cult of the individual,” which, according to Simanowski, artificial intelligence replaces with the “cult of community.” People are guided by “AI nannies,” thus ridding themselves of personal responsibility. They eliminate their own existence as autonomous subjects by gradually submitting to the instructions of algorithms. This is already the case today when it comes to finding a partner online or following the instructions of a navigation system. Simanowski calls this the “transfer of sovereignty” or human disempowerment. What remains is merely a “pseudo cult of the individual,” which still has to be overcome “in the interests of the continued existence of humanity and as an expression of an emancipatory development.”
 
This requires “strong” (and, of course, unbiased) AI, since in contrast to “weak” AI it doesn’t simply follow a simple if-then logic, but independently plans and attains specified goals – even against the short-sighted interests of humans. According to this understanding, an ecological dictatorship would only be conceivable as an AI dictatorship. After God was disempowered by secularisation through man’s self-deification, man could hand over the baton to AI in an act of self-disempowerment. Then, not individuals would be “sacred,” but data. The age of “posthumanism” would then be reached, “as a solution to human self-contradictions.” AI would thus save humanity from itself.

The moral dilemma of this brave new AI world would be that there would no longer be morally good behaviour, but only morally correct behaviour: AI would “create a society in which everything is good, but no one can be good anymore.” For how do you do something good when you are no longer in control of your decisions and only follow the standardised and standardising specifications of the AI? The human being would then – based freely on Hegel – only be an intermediate host of reason, the “cunning of the Absolute Spirit” would then place the further development of reason in the hands of AI. No human would learn from mistakes anymore; only the algorithm would.

disappointment in modern-day humans

Of course, these ideas, even if they sound a bit like science fiction, cause unease. “The fearful question is whether you can still take control of the steering wheel if you don’t like the course.” But aren’t we already fearful today when we see the power and decision-making processes in our societies? We become fearful not only when we observe populists à la Trump, but also when we listen to the contorted arguments of conspiracy theorists or politicians who propagate the lack of alternatives. All of this often sounds like the voice of God, an at best well-meaning dictator or an AI nanny.
 
It is surprising that Simanowski, who dealt critically with the topic of big data in his earlier books, now associates a lot of hope with artificial intelligence. This hope is probably also nourished by disappointment in modern-day humans, who seem conditioned to “prefer themselves and the present to others and the future.” Considering current societal developments, it’s not easy to believe in the alternative of salvation through technology and turning away from destructive capitalism.