Conceptions of the Social that Stand Behind Artificial Intelligence Decision Making

AI proponents possessed a seemingly odd predilection to tell stories about times in which no stories are or will be told. Their stories cover a range of time that exceeds that of human experience, beginning with a kind of creation myth about competing songs that are parasitic on the behavior of apes to trajectories of progress in which Man is finally superseded by Machine. AI researchers, funders, and enthusiasts attempt to redefine fundamental social and political concepts of intelligence, meaning, and agency. Their redefinitions emphasize a calculating, controlling, one-dimensional form of rationality, serving to legitimize and extend the power of an already powerful elite. AI theorists ignore the social ground of intelligence, the connection between their computers and the world, and most importantly, the connection between society and their own work. If we accept their claims as true, then their definitions re-order and restructure the social spaces we inhabit. Introduction When the 1980s began, computers were not part of the fabric of everyday life for most educated Americans, instead they were understood to be large, expensive mainframe machines requiring specialized facilities and the care of experts. By the end of the decade, personal computers, owned by millions of Americans became a familiar part of the cultural landscape, from Hollywood movies to New Yorker cartoons. During this time period artificial intelligence (AI) had matured as an academic discipline. The promises made about the possibility of computer-based intelligence that had been made for decades attracted government funding and media attention, but these promises were unfulfilled as the decade ended. This critical time period offered a chance for reflection about the place of science and technology in the world, in particular a focus on core aspects of intelligence. To a great extent, the opportunity for reflection about intelligence was lost. This opportunity was foreclosed because the stories that explained and justified the artificial intelligence project were carefully constructed by proponents so that the chaos, uncertainty, and social and environmental complexity built into the deepest core of AI was left out of their stories. AI proponents possessed a seemingly odd predilection to tell stories about times in which no stories are or will be told. Their stories cover a range of time that exceeds that of human experience, beginning with a kind of creation myth about competing songs that are parasitic on the behavior of apes to trajectories of progress in which Man is finally superseded by Machine (Feigenbaum and McCorduck 1983). Upon careful reading of these stories, a common theme emerges. Through their stories, AI researchers, funders, and enthusiasts attempt to redefine fundamental social and political concepts of intelligence, meaning, and agency. Their redefinitions emphasize a calculating, controlling, one-dimensional form of rationality, serving to legitimize and extend the power of an already powerful elite (Hoffman 1990). I begin by briefly describing the context in which the AI efforts originated and expanded. The second part of this article explores the social aspects of intelligence and meaning making, aspects which set fundamental limits for any asocial, disembodied AI project. The final section examines the rhetoric of two AI partisans. I critique Marvin Minsky’s connectionist form of a Society of the Mind and the Cyc mega-expert system project because they are prominent accounts of the major strands of the AI enterprise. Ideas arise in a culture and they are shaped by that culture. These ideas in turn, can function to generate political capital, furthering the interests of their proponents. Support can accrue in direct forms, for example, increased levels of funding for specific projects. More importantly, support can be garnered in indirect forms by generating increased legitimacy for a certain type of political order. Ideas expressed as narratives that make sense of, and offer definitions of, the world consequently ought to be considered of central importance. The power of narrative to set the public agenda has been a frequent topic of inquiry in a general political sense (Lasswell 1977; Edelman 1967; Edelman, 1988; Feldman 1989), as well as in a more particular sense for science (Dickson 1988; Nelkin 1987; T h e J o u rn a l o f Te c h n o lo g y S tu d ie s Wuthnow 1987; Ezrahi 1990). The formation of a potential common-sense understanding of the world is of prime cultural and political importance because the process of meaning construction is hidden, and people take as “how the world simply is” what may be only in the interest of a narrow elite (Geertz 1983). The creation of persuasive ideologies and systems of meaning grants political power, whether these beliefs spread through the mass media or diffuse through face-to-face interactions. Such power reduces political conflict, encourages the acquiescence of a majority of the population, reduces the space available for critical reflection, and functions as normalizing discourse (Adorno 1990; Hardt 1992; Thompson 1990). In limiting the scope of social imagination, such narratives set the framework for all decisions made about the funding levels, goals, priorities, and expectations for AI technologies. The narratives surrounding AI are important because the computer is such a powerful metaphor in our society. Computers are a defining technology as we think about human capabilities, agency, and our place in the world. When rights and responsibilities are framed in terms of the computer, these conceptions have direct political repercussions. The popular literature burgeons with examples like the account in Scientific American that begins by stating bluntly, “The brain is a remarkable computer” (Hinton, 1992). We are redefined as information processors in a world that is held to be an environment of information to be processed. “Thus, human beings and computers are two members of a larger class defined as information processors, a class that includes many other information-processing systems – economic, political, planetary – and, in its generality, a class that threatens to embrace the universe” (McCorduck, 1988, p.74). This threatening embrace may turn out to be not merely metaphorical when information systems mediate global decision making in fields as consequential as military force projection, flows of financial investments, and environmental monitoring and modeling. The AI literature continues the long tradition of epistemological certainty and self-righteousness exemplified by Descartes, Hume, Bertrand Russell and the logical positivists. A pointed aggressiveness appears time and time again in the rhetoric of AI practitioners. All previous modes of knowledge that cannot be readily assimilable to AI forms are no longer valid. They simply are no longer worth knowing. If the position of the most vigorous AI proponents is taken seriously as a model for human agency, some fear we may fall into a rationalized, closed system in which Weber’s iron cage of bureaucracy reaches full fruition and from which there might be no escape; The increase of computer use in society and in all scientific disciplines could lead to an unforeseen consequence: the impossibility of thinking outside the dominant paradigm. The paradigm of computer culture would become part of the culture, if not all. A troublesome techno-culture of calculus, where policy has no meaning anymore since it is supported by so-called clarified criteria; where alternatives are also ranked by supposedly less enigmatic and erratic procedures; because computing has become ‘laws of thought.’ (Berleur 1990, p. 415) The AI community constitutes one branch of a broader worldview. This worldview understands technology as a new type of cultural system that restructures the entire social world as an object of social control. This worldview has in turn provoked a rich tradition of social analytical critique. In the perspective of these critics, technology, either inherently or as a tool of elite control, generates domination in the social and natural worlds (Ellul 1964; Merchant 1980; Habermas 1987). Analysts have explored the alienating and repressive role of technology in the workplace (Braverman 1974; Weizenbaum 1976; Noble 1984; Feenberg 1991). A growing literature examines the potential or actual uses of information technology in particular, to effect a more stringent degree of control in the workplace (Clement 1988 1990; Roszak 1986). Sophisticated, capital-intensive technologies are not developed in a social vacuum, but are developed to meet the needs and further the goals of the groups that fund them. Support for the AI community has come primarily from military, and to a lesser extent, corporate sources. Justification for this largely public funding has been framed in terms of military force projection and multiplication, and corporate productivity and competitiveness (especially after the establishment of Japan’s much-ballyhooed Fifth Generation Project). The Defense Department’s Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) has been a 16