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- Convenors:
-
Arnold Groh
(Technical University of Berlin)
Louise Sundararajan
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- Chairs:
-
Arnold Groh
(Technical University of Berlin)
Louise Sundararajan
- Format:
- Panel
- Sessions:
- Thursday 9 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
This interdisciplinary panel investigates the degradation of human values under the joint forces of market and technology. The presentations are going to be discussed against the backdrop of transhumanism, in which machine intelligence has become the defining measure of humanity and its future.
Long Abstract:
The Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu saw it coming: "whoever uses machines does all his work like a machine. (...) It is not that I do not know of such things; I am ashamed to use them." Gone are the days when the use of the machine was a matter of personal choice. As machines, ranging from smart phones to personal computers, become a necessity in our daily lives, Norbert Wiener, the father of cybernetics, predicted that our relationship to the machine "concerns some of the most important moral traps into which the present generation of human beings is likely to fall." One of the consequences of this trapped relationship with the machine is value degradation.
This international and interdisciplinary panel will investigate the degradation of human values under the joint forces of market and technology. The first paper examines how in its defense against mortality, AI-assisted technology degrades the carbon-based humanity; the second paper examines the commodification of religion and spirituality in psychology as the latter falls prey to neoliberalism; the third and fourth papers investigate the disruptive impact of technology on Indigenous peoples in general, and on a hunter-gatherer tribe (Temiars) in Malaysia, respectively. The fifth paper examines alienation and value degradation among social workers in China. The discussant will review the presentations against the backdrop of transhumanism, which is a glaring example of how machine intelligence has become the defining measure of humanity and its future.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 9 June, 2022, -Rachel Ting (Monash University Malaysia) Louise Sundararajan Justine Thong (Monash University Malaysia)
Paper short abstract:
Swept by the irreversible tide of modernity, how can the indigenous populations keep their rightful place in the society of humanity? In this paper we explore this question by investigating the impact of religious conversion of a hunter-gatherer tribe (Temiar) in Malaysia.
Paper long abstract:
This paper investigates the impact of religious conversion on three groups of the Temiar - traditional, Christian, and Muslim-- in Malaysia. Our analysis shows that while the three religious groups of Temiar are distinctly different in cognitive styles and cultural/religious identities, they share the same fate. Religious conversion offers the hunter gatherer tribes a path to the larger society, but these Indigenous populations are doomed to be marginalized, whether or not they cross, through religious conversion, the epistemic divide between their traditional rationality and that of modernity. For the traditional Temiar, their failure to cross the epistemic divide to the modern sector of society contributed to their social rejection and land-right exploitations. Temiar Christians did cross the epistemic gap, as evidenced by their abstract-conceptual cognitive style characteristic of Christianity and the modern world. But this led to rejection from within their Indigenous community. The Temiar Muslims were more assimilated into the larger Malay society, but that did not deliver them from the fate they shared with the other Temiar groups, whose rivers are polluted by the international logging companies, whose crops are being ravaged by the hungry elephants as a result of deforestation, and whose children have little access to school at a distance due to poor road conditions. The case of the Temiars reveals an irony in the religious conversion of the marginalized populations, namely that it is easier for them to cross the epistemic divide than the social-economic gap of the mainstream society.
Jie Yang (Simon Fraser University) Wenlei Huang (Simon Fraser University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the experiences of social workers and their sense of alienation, value degradation, and spiritual lethargy, in their own words, becoming gongju ren “tool people” as a result of China’s emphasis on technological advancement including AI and the market economy.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic research on social work and post-pandemic community life in Chengdu, Sichuan province, this paper examines the experiences of social workers and their sense of alienation, value degradation, and spiritual lethargy, in their own words, becoming gongju ren “tool people” as a result of China’s emphasis on technological advancement including AI and the market economy. While aiming to re-establish connectivity amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, social work integral to the government-funded initiatives for “community development,” has increasingly become oriented toward re-engineering community life to boost technology-mediated economy. We identify in this process a certain value orientation toward quantification and abstraction, which renders local networks and the role of social workers superfluous and even internal “frictions” to be eliminated. The double bind of social work and the market economy has cultivated a particular subjectivity—“tool people.” Instead of working hard to meet shifting needs from both residents and the local government, social workers chose to tang ping, literally “lie flat,” lowering their expectations and taking on an apathetic outlook on life. We contend while these world views appear to be associated with passivity or spiritual lethargy, they were navigational tactics for social workers to avoid distress and burnout. Their tactful adoption of such balancing strategies highlights their defiance and resistance against excessive exploitation of their affective labor as a way of maintaining spiritual resilience and wellbeing under the joint forces of market and technology.
Toyin Agbetu (University College London)
Paper short abstract:
Does mechanisation inhibit socially just behaviour? This paper suggests the quest for a transhuman future encourages the abdication of our collective moral responsibilities to AI. Without normalising ethical coding practices, processes of racialisation become embedded within technological solutions.
Paper long abstract:
In 2022, the computing power in our mobile devices are of several magnitudes faster and more powerful than the computer used in the Apollo 11, 1969 space mission. Yet despite the huge increases in memory storage and central processing clock speeds, the weakest component in the link thwarting a transhuman, digi-utopia are the biases of the humans that program code or "algorithms". However, as many technologists now envisage a future where decisions involving the welfare of lives, as in hospitals and transport, or the opposite, as in military drones and automated weaponry - what does this mean for people racialised as subhuman by virtue of not matching ‘default’ profiles? This paper asks anthropologists to explore our role in a world where social behaviour and culture are shaped by human-created algorithms embedded in almost every aspect of our digitally enabled lives. We fantasise about the growth of artificial intelligence in popular culture, but we are nowhere near the realisation of sentient bots. Nevertheless, what we do have are machines capable of moving data around at extraordinary speeds and distances, some for social purposes, others that are extractive. How do we, as anthropologists, prevent the proliferation of commercially exploitative, anti-social coding that in being designed to adapt to identify and highlight human preferences, often ends up replicating repellent human prejudices? Are our fears about the risks posed by Terminators as far removed from meaningful concerns about social injustice on Earth as when Gil Scott Heron documented “whitey’s” first walk on the moon?