AI is definitely going to impact human future. The intelligent use of AI requires us to develop techno-IQ that will enable us to direct AI towards a human focussed future. The techno-IQ will enable us humans who have become digitotd to navigate our transformative era in a responsible and sustainable manner. We have to embrace the disruptive technology with ethics that will promote environmental sustainability and wholistic human wellbeing.
We have the challenge to be future ready where AI and GenAI will be integrated responsibly aligning with global standards and contributing positively to humanity and the natural order. But it is feared that such an integration will promote algocracy ( A. Aneesh) and we will enter society of algorithms where power will operate through algorithms. We have already become part of algorithmic regimes. Our society is increasingly had over its decision making to algorithms.
There are obvious benefits of algorithmic governance. It can enable real time dynamic intervention that is based on predictive analytics. These interventions can assist us to manage traffic, police people, intervene to avoid accidents etc. But there is also the downside. We are under the surveillance. We are constantly monitored , nudged and even led into action often against our will. We have the notorious case of Cambridge Analytica being accused of influencing American elections. Questions of human autonomy becomes central in our societies of Algorithms.
Algorithms collect, and sought out our data, spot patterns , anticipate errors and issue instructions. Algorithmic governance is mode possible by Big Data Analytics. Data is what drives machine learning algorithms to develop impressive abilities to sort and mine data and even predict future behaviours of persons based on learning from large data sets of the past of the person. Police use predictive analytics to anticipate and prevent crimes. We are guided on the road by our algorithmic-routing . We may be given or denied loan by credit-scoring algorithms. We may be prompted to eat certain kind of food for our health by our algorithmic system.
Algocratic systems do things: They make recommendations , they set incentives, they structure possible forms of behaviours and so on. They depend on data to influence us. There three main stages of this process of influence: a) a data collection stage ( where information about the world and relevant human being is being is collected and stored), b) data analysis stage , ( where algorithms structure , process that data into useful salient chucks of information) c) data usage stage ( where algorithms decisions or recommendations based on information that they have processed are suggested or effected).
There is a complexity in the operation as well as the influence of algocratic systems. There are human-in-the-loop systems wherein humans retain the ultimate decision making authority. There are also human-on-the-loop systems wherein humans retain veto power of algorithmic systems. We also have humans-off-the-loop systems wherein the system operates without the input or oversight of humans. It is the former algorithms that raise the acute question of human autonomy. In fact, the algorithmic systems do four import processes: sensing ( collecting of data), processing ( setting up data into useful chunks) , acting ( implementing its action plan), learning ( learning from what it has done in the past).
Society that employs the fully automated algorithmic systems is a society of algorithms. Society of algorithm use both biopower as well as psychopolitics. It means society of Algorithms use disciplinary power of over the mind and body to produce docile citizens or work force . We have the Social Credit System of China which blacklists and makes public those citizens who misbehaved while appreciates those that behaved well as starred citizens.
The social credit system can actually decrease the trust decimals in the society. It is slightly better than the human driven social media or whatsapp-centric misinformation that can produce distrust and hate of communities. Being human and enjoying human freedom and dignity seem to have become a challenge in an age of algocracy. Hence, it is important for education to teach resistance to a society that is fast becoming a society of algorithms.
The society of algorithms is a society of control of Gilles Deleuze. Governments , Corporates can track human behaviour through a convergence of technologies like AI, Internet of Things , Big Data Analytics, Predictive Analytics. Hence, education practices have the challenge to become transgressive practices. The algorithmic regimes mechanize or even animalize humans ( render instinctual) .
We are re-engineered to act mindlessly. We are to be simply act by stimulus-response. This is undermining rational intelligibility of our decision making. We seems to be programmed to act to suit governments and big business. We have to reclaim our autonomy by saying no to the manipulative alluring of the algorithms.
Education has an important task to de-Oedpalize to the hyper-nudging of algorithmic systems. Education, therefore, has to become teaching to transgress that enables us to opt-out rather than opt-into the world organized by algorithms. Not just communities are dominated by algorithmic architecture, we also have algo-cratic micro domination. Such domination controls the micro lives of individuals
Power in an society of algorithms becomes necropower that concentrates power in a hands of an elite who then can make human life disposable. We will life and how he/ she will live will be decided by the power elite in the power of necropolitics. Politics in societies of algorithms becomes necropolitics.
Education systems will embrace algorithmic systems. It will increase surveillance of the students, exacerbation of existing iniquities and automation of student-faculty relation. In all this something beautiful will die. Hence, what we need is a critically discerned us of algorithmic systems in our education practices as well as we have the challenge to teach resistance and transgression to algocracies that dominate and rob human freedom and dignity. Doing this we will lead our students to human-focussed future. To move to this human-focused future, we have to bring our students to grow in algorithmic literacy which will enable them to resist domination of algorithms and reclaim their freedom and authority.
