Tomer Shadmy (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) has posted AI Conceptual Disruption: How AI Suppresses Modern Ideals and What to Do About It on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems enforce and disseminate new conditions for human activities, interactions, and thought at great speed and scale, often without adequate public participation or awareness. This article examines the societal impact of AI beyond human extinction, focusing on its potential to disrupt foundational modern ideals. The article introduces the “AI Conceptual Disruptions” (AICD) framework to evaluate AI’s deep societal impact, addressing broader structural transformations often overlooked in current legislative initiatives. The article defines disruption as a mismatch between contemporary AI features and established modern ideals, distinguishing disruption from mere harm or risk. Through an integrated analysis of AI’s technology, political economy, and social modes of use, the article demonstrates how contemporary AI features can undermine key social assumptions that have enabled modern democratic societies to function and flourish. Such ideals include human agency, responsibility, imagination, political participation, change, equality, and a shared sense of reality. Such organizing principles are not factual descriptions of the present or of a golden age in the past; they are ideals. Ideals have societal roles, even without their entire or partial realization. A contradiction between these organizing principles and the conditions that AI socio-technical characteristics create can indicate that the principles cannot continue to serve their past social role. When old principles have lost their possibilities of realization, disruptions emerge. Current legislative proposals focusing primarily on individual risks neglect these deeper societal shifts. The AICD framework offers a more comprehensive approach, considering the epistemic and normative ambiguities introduced by AI. Addressing these challenges requires developing context-specific visions for a desirable AI-integrated future with broad stakeholder participation. The article proposes a range of interventions beyond traditional regulatory approaches, including redesigning institutions and creating new technological infrastructures. By shifting the emphasis from a hypothetical human extinction to the extinction of modern ideals, this article aims to redirect legal and policy discussions toward preserving and reinventing democratic values and human agency for the age of AI.
Recommended.