Artificial intelligence, democracy and human dignity

The development of computer technology over the last decades has actualized questions regarding whether genuine artificial subjectivity(strong AI)is possible.Genuine artificial subjectivity has the potential of blurring the differences between human and non-human entities in important respects. Strong AI with human-like subjectivity would challenge the particularity of man in a way that calls for metaphysical scrutiny and has the potential of eroding basic assumptions in democratic theory and practice as well as in legal theory and jurisprudence. How the possibility of strong AI shall be assessed and how it can influence ethics and values in terms of the integrity of democracy and human rights are the questions to be addressed by our project. On a foundation of philosophy, political science,and jurisprudence this project will investigate the metaphysical possibility as well as the democratic and legal implications of genuine artificial subjectivity in three interlinked lines of inquiry.

Project objective

The broader value of this project lies in two particular forms of output. First and foremost, it will provide an understanding of the consequences for human dignity of the dissemination and integration into society of forms of technology that are strongly associated with the reduction, interchangeability and expend ability of individual consciousness. It will enable us to more clearly understand the ethical, legal and societal consequences of such near-ubiquitous perspectives on technology, subjectivity, humanity and nature which are discursively linked to rapidly spreading forms of technological infrastructure. Importantly, the assumption that it is actually possible to produce artificial consciousness, risks rendering expendable and reducible the unique human subjectivity that lies at the basis of most understandings of human dignity and worth. If the conscious subjectivity of a human person can be artificially replaced, its unique character is undermined, and its role as a bearer of rights and value in itself possibly called into question. In a historical context wherein autonomous networks and AI technology is rapidly expanding and advancing, we need a thorough understanding of the values transmitted and proliferated by these technologies, and we need a clear view of the potential effects upon ethics, rights, worldviews and societal institutions before the fact of their universal institutionalization, which may lie close at hand and is almost universally lauded. Secondly, the assessment of the metaphysical viability of artificial consciousness and of the implications for rights discourse and the institutions of liberal democracy will not only provide guidance for the direction of future research, and for how we ought to implement AI technology, it will also have normative repercussions for how we should view such technologies as AI, and neural networks in relation to human subjectivity, and in which ways they can best be fruitfully integrated into the social ecology.