Lecture 2:Three Damaging Ideas and AI in the Anthropocene

Vocabulary flashcards covering the critique of anthropocentrism, property-rights regimes, enclosure movements, and the environmental impacts of the economic growth imperative in the era of artificial intelligence.

Anthropocentrism (Platonic View)

• The world of change around us is an illusion

• true reality resides in a perfect unchanging realm of forms that helps shape our world but is separate from it

  • we can access this world through reason

    • this reason must master and direct human passions

Human Exceptionalism (Aristotelian View)

non-human animals live by appearances and memories, but humanity is distinguished and elevated by living also by art and reasoning

Utilitarianism (Enlightenment Thought)

• ethical theory that determines whether an action is right or wrong based on its outcomes (reason)

• human beings are self-interested maximizers guided by science and reason rather than myth and religion

Anthropocentric/ Human-Centerd AI Ethics Standards

• non-human entities have at most extrinsic moral value to humans

  • this creates justifications for the animal disturbance, ecosystem instability, landscape alteration, and massive energy consumption done by humans

    • the harms AI does to the environment is okay because AI helps humans and humans and the advancement of our knowledge and capabilities are more important than the environment and nonhumans

  • humans view AI as a solver of all of our problems (even envr ones) so who cares if we hurt the envr with AI bc then AI can just solve those problems (take away human accountability for harming the envr)

• A framework in AI governance identified by Rigley

Non-Anthropocentric Environmental Ethics in AI systems

• extends moral concern and protections directly to the wider nonhuman world, to mitigate the ecological harm of AI systems

  • by doing this AI can overcome certain limitations

• An ethical design paradigm advocated by Rigley

Private Property Regime

• A property regime where ownership is held by an individual

• individuals possess rights to socially acceptable uses and asset control (own / have rights to what is legally okay to own - under human laws which can change) (ex: animals)

  • also avoid socially unacceptable uses (dont own what is not okay to own under humans laws) (ex: slavery)

Common Property Regime

• A property regime where ownership is collective

• gives members the right to exclude non-owners alongside

  • members have duties of maintaining the assets and limiting the rate of use

State Property Regime

• A property regime where ownership rests with the state

• the state retains the right to determine rules

  • also has the duty to maintain social objectives (balance, protect, pursue non-financial goals that benefit society)

Open Access Regime

• A resource regime characterized by no designated owner

• rights: to capture resources (free for all regime in which everyones objective is to just get as many resources for themselves as possible)

• no owner duties

the tragedy of the commons

• actually an open access regime not a commons regime

• ppl think that he called it the commons as propaganda against common and to push ppl towards privatization

"Property is robbery!"

• The slogan articulated by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (founder of anarchism) in his 1840 work 'What is Property?'

• defines property as an exploitative source of unearned income without work

• ex: buying property and then continuing to profit off of it without doing any work is theft (private property is theft)

Property is an exploitative source of unearned income without work

What is property as Proudhon defines it?

Computing infrastructure is private property

What is computing infrastructure considered (the algorithm / AI infrastructure)?

Property in Possession

• the right of small users to possess and control the products of land they cultivate themselves

• legitimate

Primitive Accumulation

• the violent separation of producers from the means of production, laying the foundation for capitalist expansion

• we as consumers do not see/ do the production of the goods we consume so we do not value them as much and this leads to overconsumption and the idea of limitless expansion under capitalism

• defined by Karl Marx

AI is an amplifier that will make our society the most efficient it can be and in turn consume the most it possibly can

• AI makes the use of fossil fuels more efficient

• with every increase in efficiency there is an increase in the consumption of the resources

• increase in efficiency often reduces the cost and increases the consumption

AI is not increasing our economic growth in a good way, only increasing our consumption

• AI will add duel to the fire (it will not help us advance, it will increase our consumption rates as well as use up more water and energy used to power AI)

AI economic growth =/ human economic growth

• relying completely on machines for a lot of things takes away jobs from working ppl, while the top 1% benefit (increases the income gap)

• consumer becomes less prioritized and corporations becomes more prioritized by the economy