Friends or Foes? AI Techno-Sphere and Impact on Humanity

Prelude: Skepticism and Optimism in Artificial Intelligence and Humanity

“Artificial intelligence (AI) is at the cutting edge of technological development and has the potential to profoundly and incomparably influence humankind's future” (Rawas, 2024, p. 1). In this issue, there are three exciting articles published around the theme “Rethinking Humanities in the Era of Digital and Artificial Intelligence.” First of all, Professor Françoise Paquienseguy, a senior French scholar and 2023 Lyon IAMCR Conference host, presents the featuring article entitled “Digital: The Promise of the Unlimited?” (Paquienseguy, 2024) followed by two other articles responding to the questions and issues discussed in Paquienseguy's work. The first of these two articles is “The ‘Boundary’ of Technology, Culture and Digitalization” written by Shilian Shan (Shan, 2024). Shan's argument basically echoes Paquienseguy's thesis by extending the discussions on different aspects of humanity—including human, non-human, and inhuman. Both articles provide suspicious and critical attitudes toward “the digital regime.” Risks and threats coming from the “alien” forces of technocratic supremacy are addressed.

There has been a debate regarding how to deal with the rising tensions between natural humans and smart machines. Some project the future outcomes to be more optimistic, and “other thinkers advocate for quite skeptic and even alarmist and pessimistic approach” (Silichev et al., 2019, p. 699). Scholars such as Paquienseguy and Shan suggest that a new moral standard needs to be established to regulate AI development. On the other hand, limits and boundaries of the “AI sphere” also need to be set to maintain the autonomy of existing humanity. However, some optimistic thinkers try to find ways to coexist with AI and to treat AI as a new companion to humanity. For example, a few scholars (Sterledev et al., 2022, p. 819) treat artificial intelligence as “the possible third front of humanity” arguing that possible strategic and tactical options could resolve the conflicts between the interests of humanity and the “interests” of AI.

The second responding article in this issue entitled “Technology: Limited or Infinite?” (Jai & Shih, 2024) is co-written by Benray Jai and Meng-Fen Shih. In this article, the perspective is completely different from Paquienseguy and Shan. Jai and Shih's main argument is much more optimistic about the development of digital and artificial intelligence in the future. They postulate that the speed of the techno-info revolution, the power of calculability and algorithms, and the strengths of artificial intelligence will make the digital world a new hope, solve many currently existing problems, and become a helpful new companion to human beings.

The Coming of a New Technique: Digital Regime and Hypermodernity

By referring to thinkers of the French tradition for interpreting “the technique lineage” in human communications, Paquienseguy adopted concepts such as “functional synergy” and “concretization” provided by Simondon; “the socialization of technique” and the distinction between “intellectual capital and technical capital” from Leroi-Gourhan; “the technicization of time” from François Ascher; “hypermodernity” from Gilles Lipovetsky; and “the plural men” from Lahire. This effort to incorporate French thoughts in the field of techno-development research has helped many scholars in English-speaking academia to broaden their perspectives from less familiar literature. Paquienseguy sheds a light particularly on the issue of “limits” and “boundaries” in the dynamic transformation of “the technical” and “the human” alongside the rapid development of digital technologies.

What are the limits and boundaries of both human capacity and digital power? Paquienseguy recognizes that humans have body weakness and other physical limits that cannot compete with technical-empowered machines. However, humans will always tend to create new capacities for machines and try to enable them to serve human needs. Can humans control the digital world created by them? Can the human mind and spirits make functional uses of machines and technology without harms to humans? After examining these issues, Paquienseguy urges that humans need to search for “new techno-societal relationships” with a proper ethical outline in light of the omnipresence of ICTs and digital technologies.

The various theoretical questions posited by Paquienseguy in this article include: How do humans interact with techniques historically? What are their impacts on the transformations of communication and society at large? How humanity has adapted to these transformations and what new relationships will they become? Finally, Paquienseguy examines the notions of speed, time, and space in humans’ future development of social life and explores how human beings could survive this coming “digital regime” in the advent of “hypermodernity.” Paquienseguy (2024) mentions that “the sciences of the artificial” are predominant and manifest in an excessive way of life, an imperative of enjoyment, the law of desire, overconsumption, immediate satisfaction and impatience, sensations over the search for meaning, as well as a quest for extreme self and performance … In a word, “hypermodernity” can best describe human aspects of life in the digital regime—amplification, acceleration, and augmentation. Paquienseguy argues that humans need to find new ways to face challenges confronted in this new hegemonic technique—digital technologies. It is essential, in her words, “to establish ethical standards and accountability mechanisms to guide the responsible use of digital” (Paquienseguy, 2024).

Humanity Revisited: Boundary Needed Between Natural Humans and Artificial Humans

In Shan's responding article “The ‘Boundary’ of Technology, Culture and Digitalization,” the nature and essence of being human, inhuman, and non-human are analyzed. Shan poses the following questions: How humanity is threatened by the emerging digitalization and artificial intelligence? What are the problems arising from the advent of AI and robots in post-modern societies? How to maintain the boundaries between humans and robots? How to institute a properly defined ethical norm in facing the emerging technological environment of AI? Shan examines scholars of both the West and the East. Many thoughts and various perspectives of both classic and modern social theorists are postulated to explain the issue of humanity.

The article argues that human subjectivity needs to be protected in light of the increasingly penetrating forces of the digital revolution. In the digital world, a newborn reality consisting of signs, simulacra, and hyperreality in daily life abounds. The consequences are the absence of “truth” due to the vanishing “nature” that humans use to rely on in our society. Post-truths begin to dominate our mentality.

There are also great threats to human existence due to the creation of mass-produced “artificial humans” such as electronic humans, robots, intelligent humans, and genetic humans. Although these non-human objects may contribute to social development in certain domains, they may also jeopardize the continuation of “natural humans.” The author writes: “If human nature resists digitalization, humans will never be assimilated by technology” (Shan, 2024). The survival of human beings and the continuation of civilization require a balance among technology, digitalization, humanity, and ethics in order to secure human subjectivity over technocracy. A call for increased human efforts to preserve nature and resist technocratic control is necessary to counter the invasiveness of artificial beings around us now and in the near future. The search for ethics and morality in the digital world is therefore an important task to maintain the boundary between humans, machines/robots, and nature.

Emancipation: AI Will Be Living Inside Us, Working With Us, and Enhancing Our Capacity

Contrary significantly to both Paquienseguy and Shan's arguments, Jai and Shih (2024) adopt a more positive attitude toward the advancement of algorithms and AI technology for human society. In the responding article “Technology: Limited or Infinite?” (Jai & Shih, 2024), the authors do not think that the advancement of artificial intelligence and digital technology will definitely jeopardize humanity. Instead, they argue that the exponential growth and explosive development of modern technologies such as AI/chips will be likely to bring positive transformations to human lives and social orders. Based on Moore's law, the predictable evolution of technologies, and the power of algorithms, they agree that “the age of spiritual machines” is brought into being—machines are going to be smarter than humans and they can assist humans in tackling unsolved problems!

The artificially generated development of LLM, ChapGPT 4.0, and the recently released Sora are some examples of powerful “artificial general intelligence” (AGI). In this vein, the authors argue, that “human civilization, culture, and brain anatomy will change as a result of the introduction of new media and techniques” (Jai & Shih, 2024). By pointing out the fact that ethics and morality often occur at the forefront of technological development, the advancement of artificial intelligence and the existence of artificial beings will no longer be a moral or ethical issue in the future. For example, they explain the case of the first successful “test-tube baby” born in 1978. They explained that this invention was heavily criticized by moral and religious standards at that time; whereas today, in vitro fertilization (IVF) is a common medical practice and few view it from an ethical or moral perspective.

“When machines surpass humans, humans must learn how to connect and cooperate with machines to continue the development of civilization. Connecting the human brain with computers to enhance their functions so that they can complement each other will be the only solution” (Jai & Shih, 2024). In this sense, “natural humanity” will join “artificial humanity” to co-create the future of human/robot world! If that does happen, as illustrated by Jai & Shih, AI will become a new companion to human beings. The existing human subjectivity and sovereignty will also be shared with these new artificial beings! These threats and potentially destructive forces placed upon human autonomy are what Paquienseguy and Shan are worried about. Their stance is not to repudiate the existence of artificial beings as it is not practical and improbable. Instead, they urge to establish proper boundaries and to create new ethical guidelines for a safe coexistence between human beings and intelligent machines.

Other Articles in This Issue

Other than the above-mentioned three featuring articles on the issue related to the nature of humanities and the limits and/or infinity of digital technologies, there are several other articles. First of all, the research note “Misinformation and Literacies in the Era of Generative Artificial Intelligence: A Brief Overview and a Call for Future Research” (Chu-Ke & Dong, 2024) is written by Chu-Ke and Dong. They extensively reviewed the misinformation fueled by generative artificial intelligence and nicely discussed the evolving conceptualization of literacies from the past to the present.

Other original research articles include: “‘You’re so brave’: Unpacking Fatphobic (Micro)Aggressions with ‘Body-Positive’ Influencers and Activists” (Chen et al., 2024) presented by Chen, Kalaydjian, and Dwyer, this study examines “how #BodyPositive influencers and activists navigate anti-fat or fatphobic microaggressions in ways that impact them, their activism, and their relationships.” In the next research article “Reinventing Fashion as an Affective Apparatus by China's Youth: Bilibili, Danmaku Commentaries, and the Online Hanfu Ceremony During the COVID-19 Outbreak” (Ip & Fan, 2024), the authors illustrate that an emerging media platform “Bilibili” provided an online Hanfu ceremony for traditional Chinese costume supporters to gather and share their created videos during the lockdown. This online practice served the nation “through configuring Hanfu as an affective apparatus—a tool for constituting solidarity” (Ip & Fan, 2024).

The last research article in this issue is “Metajournalistic Discourse on TikTok” (Ai-Rawi, 2024) is written by Ai-Rawi. The author examines the discourses represented in TikTok by conducting both content analysis and in-depth interviews. Through content analyses, five major categories are developed to code selected video clips. By using thematic analysis, on the other hand, four major themes emerged from the interviews. In this research, journalism practices on TikTok are further explored in depth by studying a representative social media platform. Finally, a book review on “Douyin, TikTok and China's Online Screen Industry” (Schellewald, 2024) is presented. Two major outlines of this book authored by Chunmeizi Su are introduced including “the historical and socio-economic context of China’s online screen industry,” and “the cultural and technological factors shaping Douyin and TikTok's popularity.” Through reading this book, readers can also gain an understanding of the contextual differences in the development of Douyin in China and TikTok in overseas countries.