In late April, a seminar titled “Science and Society Towards the Artificial Intelligence Era” was held in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province. Scholars in attendance examined the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on various societal sectors, discussed potential countermeasures, and provided insights into developing sustainable, future-oriented AI technology and its integration into society.

Humanistic reflections

Discussing the subjectivity of AI and its interactional relationship with humanity, Luo Kequan, a professor from the School of Marxism at Jilin University, noted that ChatGPT is able to realize subjectivity in the empirical sense, and to some extent, achieve self-legislation as described by Kant. Nonetheless, due to the absence of relational dimensions between individuals, and between individuals and society, it remains difficult for ChatGPT to become subjective in criticizing given rules.

Lu Qiang, a research fellow from the Sichuan Institute for Advanced Study on Culture and Education under Sichuan Normal University, shed light on emotional resonance and identification between humans and AI. He said that emotions are rooted in interpersonal relationships, so if human and AI can interact and communicate emotionally, they can ethically identify with one another.

According to Ren Manman, an associate professor from the School of Educational Sciences at Jiangsu Second Normal University, whether AI can experience and create art should be a crucial criterion for measuring its “humanness,” as current technologies are still incapable of replicating human emotions. Therefore, it is important to consider how to preserve the humanistic value and affective depth of artworks when utilizing technology.

Criticism of capitalism

With the advent of the AI era, capitalist ideology is facing new criticisms. Deng Bojun, a professor from the School of Marxism at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA), said that the consumption-first shift in contemporary capitalism has led to the dominance of imagery in all aspects of social production and life. By spawning “false demand,” imagery has dictated consumer behavior.

Based on Marx’s theory of technology, Zhang Fugong, an associate professor of philosophy from the School of Public Administration at Nanjing Normal University (NNU), stressed that the ideology behind technology as criticized by Marx still exists today, and is manifested in individual heroism in the technological domain as well as positivism and reductionism represented by platform algorithms and AI.

After scrutinizing the origins of surplus value generated by AI models, Wen Xu, an assistant research fellow from the Institute of Marxism at Fudan University, argued that AI models do not constitute live digital labor. Instead, they participate in smart creation by converting direct digital labor into indirect digital labor, operating covertly through indirect methods, that genuinely generates value by multiplying digital value.

Chen Liangbin, a professor from the School of Marxism at Southeast University, asserted that the inability to directly translate data between humans and machines has led to the emergence of “artificial non-intelligence.” He added that the masking of citizens’ dignity by user identity in cyber space, structural imbalance of the occupational recognition mechanism, and the obliteration of artificial non-intelligence’s tangible labor by user interfaces collectively contribute to its “ghostly” nature.

Attendees also examined and critically evaluated AI in light of technology’s developmental logic. By reviewing the relationship between humans and technical objects during different periods in history, Dong Jinping, an associate professor from the School of Marxism at NUAA, discovered that in the age of intelligence, humans and technical objects are no longer simply active and passive, control and submission. Instead, they have become digitized and integrated into a vast algorithmic network.

The seminar was co-hosted by the Institute of Digitalization and Humanities at NNU, the editorial office of the Journal of Taiyuan University of Technology (Social Science Edition), and the Department of Philosophy under the School of Public Administration at NNU.