Between Hope and Fear

Ibn Maghreb

The reality is that no one at the beginning of the printing press had any real idea of the changes it would bring.  No one at the beginning of the fossil fuel era had much of an idea of the changes it would bring.  No one is good at predicting the longer-term or even medium-term outcomes of these radical technological changes (we can do the short-term, albeit imperfectly).  No one.  Not you, not Eliezer, not Sam Altman, and not your next-door neighbour.

From Existential risk, AI, and the inevitable turn in human history - Marginal REVOLUTION at 30-03-2023.

That's a wonderful realisation I think by the author who sifts through the implications of recent advances in AI. I like to think that this type of epistemic agnosticism is part of the virtue of humility that Islamic scripture is abundantly saturated with, although curiously I think modern Sunni Islam is one of those religious movements particularly in its latest iteration in diaspora communities in the West which prides itself on the importance it places on Reason. Islamic apologetics are replete with references to reason, and logic and how it is a different type of theism compared to say Christianity which is mired and bogged down in the mystery of the Trinity.

However, I do think Islam has a strong fideistic bent to it. Perhaps it is something the ulema feel is unwise to dwell on too much in an age where scepticism is rife and the admission of Reason's frailty is tantamount to an admission of doubt. Perhaps there is wisdom in this.

Agnostic to fear and hope

The heart in its journey towards Allah is like a bird whose head is love, and hope and fear are its two wings. When the head and the two wings are sound and healthy, the flight of the bird is good, but when the head is cut off from love, the bird immediately dies, and when either or both wings are deficient, the bird cannot properly fly and it may become victim of any hunter or predator.,

From Translations from Madarij Al-Salikin (Steps of the Seekers) by Imam Ibn Al-Qayyim | The Station of Fear - AlJumuah Magazine

That is a poignant passage written by one of the great scholastic masters of Sunni Islam and although he was speaking about the spiritual journey one makes to gain proximity to the One, I cannot help but think such an attitude and moral outlook serves one in every facet of life.

Notwithstanding the virtues of epistemic humility, one should also not forget the experience and common sense. The initial shockwaves of the original Internet revolution, particularly post-Facebook, have still not been processed. What started originally as children of the counter-culture producing a binary sequence of 1s and 0s, individuals who prided themselves on their outsider status have become the guardians of the most entrenched and sophisticated mass surveillance system in the history of mankind. It is an apparatus that is entirely at the beck and call of vast sprawling intelligence networks locked in a game of cloak and dagger fractured along geopolitical fault lines where (despite the naysayers) America is still king. This Panopticon, once the stuff of fiction, has become enmeshed and part of the culture itself—an algorithmic culture. In the West, it is not as blatant and tasteless as the structures in China, but it is part and parcel of the political structure. It is now impossible to imagine modern governance as we know it in the West without the apparatus and paraphernalia of surveillance capitalism. In this crown of surveillance capitalism are the crown jewels of Microsoft and Google, who have made a fortune on the back of harvesting and monopolizing our data and identities for the production of fairly lacklustre services.

Seismic political events have occurred due to the deployment of these capabilities – lest we forget Wikileaks and Cambridge Analytica. Then there is the devastating cognitive fallout of the unregulated and unrestrained release of social media apps – initially with Tumblr – the harbinger of most modern socio-political pathologies and gradually escalating into a frenzy with Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat etc. The track record of the digital revolution is jaundiced. No doubt great strides have been made – I reflect personally on how online communities of scholars have emerged making it possible to access knowledge previously unavailable due to geographical barriers. Despite the memes and cynicism, I think platforms like Wikipedia were tremendous and provided an alpha-iteration of how knowledge can be accumulated and distributed with new emergent technologies.

We cannot truthfully speculate with any degree of certainty how these magical technologies will impact us all. We have a complicated and jaundiced track record to mull over. However, that alone is not appropriate given the monumental paradigmatic shift that is occurring right in front of us. The promises of the first digital revolution lie in utter tatters - we are more divided, more suspicious, more intolerant, more stupid and angrier as a species towards each other. Technology is not the panacea for perennial and stubborn human frailties and of course how can they be? More than "anti-AI" side it is the "pro-AI" side that should be more circumspect, more cautious, more willing to submit their designs of grand utopia to public scrutiny given what has transpired thus far.

As for the calls for the six-month moratorium - some of which have involved using the organs of the state to exact extra-judicial violence against perceived guilty parties - well that is hardly surprising because it is not unprecedented. Using drones to take out the 'bad guys' has been going on for most of the 21st century in the "peripheries" of the Empire - the outposts of Pakistan and Afghanistan for instance. I don't think this spat between "pro-AI" and "anti-AI actors" represents a conflict between "outsiders" and the "Establishment". The conflict at present is an intra-Establishment fitna and civil war - Western elites are arguing back and forth about the way forward. Within these elites there are financial and political motives - a six-month moratorium gives Elon and his friends a chance to catch up with OpenAI - altruism (except in the case of saints and Elon is not one of the awliyah) is often an unconvincing explanation.

Privacy Matters

If we are to suspend pessimism then surely it is right to ask for the same restraint when it comes to unbridled and naive optimism - an optimism that trusts the stewardship of humanity into a new age under the opaque techno-bureaucracies of GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft). Why on earth should we place our trust, our data, and our faith in entrenched cyber-monopolies that wield more Schmittian sovereignty than most countries? "Democratic governance" which Altman and the pro-AI crowd are naively chanting as a ''safeguard'' has been found utterly wanting when it has come to keeping GAFAM in check. Indeed where was "democratic governance" when the modern surveillance state was rolled out in the ashes of the Twin Towers after 9/11? It was the technological apparatus of GAFAM that enabled a huge erosion of civil liberties and restraints on state power. Something which is only set to escalate with the Promethean powers of AI. The pressing priority and need beyond the drama unfolding is what are the safeguards in place for our privacy. Privacy is a deeply Islamic consideration - spying is an egregious sin that stains the heart and the Islamic tradition has always been somewhat 'libertarian' (bad approximation but it's the closest one I could think of) in this regard.

Tread the line between fear and hope

And God knows best