Reading The Technological Society to Understand the Mechanization of Values and Its Ontological Consequences

Abstract

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The Future of Research in an Artificial Intelligence-Driven World

“…LLMs resonate, therefore, with an ontological view of the world based on reckoning, or the "the calculative rationality of which present-day computers … are capable" (Smith, 2019, p. 110) by processing data through an accumulation of calculus, computation, and formal rationality (Lindebaum et al, 2020). Thus, when ChatGPT is applied to write a scientific text, or even to theorize, it likely reproduces said ontological viewpoint, a viewpoint that impoverishes theorizing due to a tendency toward ontological monism of constructs (Lindebaum, Moser, Ashraf, & Glaser, 2023), and the ontological straightjacketing of judgment into reckoning. And it does so with a click of the mouse.…”

“…This is not to say that using ChatGPT for the production of scientific 'technoscripts' may not be problematic for theorizing in the rationalist and empiricist tradition. However, exploring these angles here is outside the space available here (but seeLindebaum, Moser, & Glaser, 2023).4 Further, these models are not inclusive: "over 90% of the world's languages used by more than a billion people currently have little to no support in terms of language technology" (Emily M.Bender et al, 2021, p. 612).…”

“… 3. This is not to say that using ChatGPT for the production of scientific ‘technoscripts’ may not be problematic for theorizing in the rationalist and empiricist tradition. However, exploring these angles here is outside the space available here (but see Lindebaum et al, 2023). …”

ChatGPT Undermines Human Reflexivity, Scientific Responsibility and Responsible Management Research

“…Unlike the highprobability choices within the confines of training data that ChatGPT is based upon (Deresiewicz, 2023), we theorize reflexivity as entailing low-probability choices or thinking processes that are new, unexpected and unanticipated, either within or outside the confines of training data. One reason why we conceptualize it this way is because when human beings-with complex goals and needs-reflect using high-probability systems (such as an LLM), there is more opportunity for a misalignment to appear between their objectives and algorithmic outcomes (also see Lindebaum et al, 2022). As opposed to what the human user intended, LLMs tend to echo, for example, 'stereotypical and derogatory associations along gender, race, ethnicity, and disability status' due to biased training data (Bender et al, 2021).…”

The politics of post-human technologies: Human enhancements, artificial intelligence and virtual reality

“…Convivial technologies (Illich and Anne, 1973) are those that are responsibly limited so as to be operated by the users and for their own interests, rather than by and for expert groups or bureaucracies or economic elites, as it is the case for “industrial technologies.” A key idea behind the concept of conviviality is that users’ lives and interests are rarely as mono-dimensional as suggested by those industrial organizations that massively produce and sell, or purchase and impose, technological objects and associated systems (Ellul, 1954, see also Lindebaum et al, 2022). Rather, a technological balance must be sought between narrowly instrumental efficiency and other considerations such as environmental pollution (Klein, 2015), the flourishing of human natural potentials (MacIntyre, 1999), social isolation (Elias, 2001), extreme social polarization and specialization (Braverman, 1974), or “when cancerous acceleration enforces social change at a rate that rules out legal, cultural, and political precedents as formal guidelines to present behavior.” (Illich and Anne, 1973: 5).…”