Matteo Stocchetti, Docent in Political Communication at Åbo Academy and Helsinki University, and Principal Lecturer in Media Culture at Arcada.
Note! The time zone for this event is CEST (Swedish time)
Technological determinism is a notion describing the belief that social change depends on technological progress and, more specifically, that some fundamental socio-political problems can be solved through technological ‘innovation’. In a critical perspective this notion also describes a myth and an ideology associated with the oppressive effects of instrumental rationality that Horkheimer and Adorno described when they discussed the ‘dialectics of enlightenment’. The influence of this myth and the ideology associated with it are particularly dangerous in relation to the affordances of AI. Compared to previous technologies, AI is not merely about doing but about a particular relation between information and decision that is metaphorically and mistakenly described in terms of ‘thinking’. The metaphoric association between (human) intelligence and artificial ‘agency’, and the instrumental rationality of technological determinism creates the communicative and material conditions for the suppression of human experience in the social construction of reality. This suppression, in other words, will be favourable to reinstate the epistemic role of God and the socio-political order that the Enlightenment sought to challenge: what is currently discussed in the terms of Neofeudalism. The possibility to defuse this risk is not only a matter of knowledge. A material confrontation with the social forces that more or less deliberately seek to bring about this techno-Neofeudalism may be unavoidable. In the meantime, and in preparation for that, education can play a fundamental role in giving younger generations the intellectual tools to defend the Enlightenment from its enemies in the 21st century.
This is one of three talks that are partly funded by the Faculty of Humanities' seed money, and given this fall semester within the framework of Humlabs focus area Digital Practices. Other talks include:
20 Aug: Niels Brügger, Professor in Media Studies, Aarhus University (recording availble)
29 Oct: Kevin Driscoll, Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Virginia