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Cultural Agency & Digital Technologies
While there’s certainly a lot of AI doomerism as well as overhype around Artificial Intelligence, I think there’s something far more exciting and interesting afoot with regard to AI. And other digital technologies. We’re really have some very profound, deep thinking around Artificial Intelligence and what it means for society and to be human in an age of being unprecedentedly connected. This is wonderful.
What’s struck me of recent as I consider my work into how humans adopt, use and adapt technology socioculturally, is that we seem to be making some overly declarative statements about AI without much evidence.
Alright, so what does that all mean in less academic sounding terms (I am not an academic.)
In order for AI to find it’s place as a technology within human societies, it will have to be given cultural agency. The amount of cultural agency AI is afforded will be what determines how we end up using it. If it ultimately succeeds or fails.
While we are having these debates and discussions around the potential benefits and dangers of AI to humanity, they are most often framed entirely in economic terms. Our current form of capitalism. This is of course, quite understandable.
But we are increasingly having deeper, philosophical discussions, such as that posed by philosopher…