Mark Coeckelbergh

The rapid development of digital technologies, including AI, is having a significant impact on the social, economic, and political life. Yet, while presented as milestones in innovation and progress, these technological transformations have also introduced mechanisms of control, forms of organization, and ideological patterns that bear striking resemblances to historical fascist phenomena. Moreover, in parallel and increasingly intersecting with this development is a broader political context of fascist ideologies and strategies, populism, authoritarianism, and (other forms of) illiberalism in the West. Drawing from the classic philosophical and political theory literature on fascism, authoritarianism, and totalitarianism, this paper argues that and how features of contemporary digital technologies, their governance, and their political context mirror features of fascism. It concludes with a call to resist these new, anti-democratic forms of governance and domination, and make more systemic changes to both the development of technologies and the governance of tech and society.

Controversy arose when a humanoid robot named “Sophia” was given citizenship and did performances all over the world. Why should some robots gain citizenship? Going beyond recent discussions in robot ethics and human–robot interaction, and drawing on phenomenological approaches to political philosophy, actor-network theory, and performance-oriented philosophy of technology, we propose to interpret and discuss the world tour of Sophia as a political choreography: we argue that the media performances of the Sophia robot were politically choreographed to advance economic interests. Using a phenomenological approach and attending to the performance and movement of robots and illustrating our discussion with media material of the Sophia performance, we explore the mechanisms through which the media spectacle and robotic performance advanced the economic interests of technology industries and their governmental promotors.

How can liberal thinking deal with identity and recognition matters in politics? This long-standing question in political philosophy has gained new relevance and urgency in the face of issues concerning offense and censorship in digital social media, especially in the light of the use of AI. Typically, there are two competing views on this issue: a classical liberal one, according to which identity has no place in politics and free speech is paramount, and the more recent view that personal and group identity and recognition should be important, if not central, in liberal politics (for example when it comes to issues of justice) and that free speech should be regulated accordingly, for instance to avoid offense and create safe online spaces. The latter view has become increasingly popular among left liberals, but also stretches or, according to some, transgresses, the boundaries of liberalism. Usually, a mix of both positions is used to justify current digital tech policy. This paper proposes a third position, which is not just a mix of both positions but which is conceptually more innovative: making a distinction between politics and politiquette, which in analogy to etiquette is about “soft” values and norms such as respect, moderation, openness, and tolerance as opposed to “hard” political rights and liberal political principles such as freedom and justice, it argues that identity and recognition claims have a place in politiquette (next to the private sphere) and that politiquette helps to create the conditions for politics but is not itself political. Whatever other “hard” reasons there may be to create such conditions, politiquette is one sufficient reason. In this way, the paper attempts to carve out a conceptual space for identity and recognition, while retaining a liberal position. After outlining the position, a discussion of potential objections enables further clarification and refinement of the position as well as more engagement with relevant contemporary work.

Large Language Models (LLMs), like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s LaMDA, are not only the most disruptive and controversial technologies of our time, but also offer an unprecedented opportunity to examine human cognition and philosophically question the very nature of language, communication, and intelligence. What is consciousness? What is language? Are LLMs authors? Are LLMs the end of writing as we know it? In _Communicative AI_, Mark Coeckelbergh and David J. Gunkel offer a critical introduction to LLMs, investigating the philosophical significance of this technology and its practical ramifications. Mobilizing resources from contemporary philosophy, history of ideas, linguistics, and communication theory, the book invites us to re-think some long-standing philosophical issues concerning language, consciousness, truth, authorship, and writing. Through a blend of theoretical analysis, accessible explanations, and practical examples, the book provides readers with a comprehensive overview of the role that this powerful new technology is already playing in our lives. This is a must-read for students and scholars across the humanities and the social sciences, as well as for anyone intrigued by the intersection of technology, language, and human thought.

Faced with the crisis related to climate change and sustainability, we need to reflect on its relation with technology. This chapter discusses the nexus of environment and technology in two ways: it links to questions regarding modernity and the Anthropocene (ecomodernism vs. less modern thinking) and it discusses some practical examples of ambiguous relations between technology, sustainability, and climate change: geoengineering as a way to deal with climate change, environmental robots for sustainability, and AI for climate. The latter topic is elaborated with a practical example of how to manage software development (sustainability budgets) and with the case of energy use of training large language models. The discussion regarding technology in the Anthropocene and in the context of modernity is further developed with the case of geoengineering of volcanos.

This chapter discusses the ethics of biotechnologies. It starts by discussing biomedical ethics, its origins, and the influential principlism approach, which prescribes the four major principles of beneficence, non-maleficence, autonomy, and justice. It also discusses how emerging technologies create new challenges in bioethics, as they affect our genetic identities, reproductive capacities, and also the wider environment. Following this, the chapter discusses the central theme of human enhancement, and different important arguments to distinguish between enhancement and medical therapies. Two major lines of thought linked to human enhancement, of transhumanism and posthumanism, are discussed. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of influential standards and regulations applicable to biotechnologies.

This chapter shows that much of our thinking around the ethics of emerging technologies started from very concrete technical practices, in medicine, engineering, and computer science. It follows the stories of three famous practitioners in the history of science and engineering, Hippocrates, Oppenheimer, and Wiener, to explain how ethics emerged in their thinking as a response to the dilemmas they faced in practice. Out of these endeavors, to which countless practitioners have in fact contributed, important ethical frameworks and tools emerged: ethical oaths, regulatory limits to innovation, and ethical impact assessment.

This chapter presents several leading philosophical and sociological perspectives that help us to make sense of the relation between technology and the human condition. It focuses on six central themes. With Marx, it discusses the issue of alienation; with Feenberg and other critical scholars it explores the dominating force of instrumental reason; with Heidegger it discusses the way modern technology ‘enframes’ existence; with Foucault it explores how technologies may discipline and control the self; with Arendt it discusses how technologies may be involved in totalitarian modes of governance; and with Haraway it argues how technology can both sustain and go beyond sexism and discrimination in society.

This chapter discusses the impact of emerging technologies on citizenship and politics. It starts from the idea that for long, technologies have been developed to govern people through data gathering and quantitative analysis. This development is then looked at through the lens of citizenship, one of the core concepts in political philosophy, paying specific attention to the way status, identity, and participation are affected by emerging technologies. Following this, the chapter introduces the concept of civic virtue as both an ethical and a political concept that helps us evaluate the normative impacts of technologies on citizenship. Through a discussion of different theories of civic virtue, the chapter shows how technologies may both support and undermine civic virtue.

This chapter provides an introduction of the most influential theories of normative ethics: virtue ethics, duty ethics, and utilitarian ethics. It does so by following three prominent philosophers, Aristotle, Kant, and Bentham, while also stressing that the ideas discussed are not limited to their works or confined to Western philosophy. The approaches depart from different perspectives, namely from the good person, the righteous person, and the useful person. They have also been developed in particular sociotechnical contexts, in which medical skill, mechanical clockworks, and factories and prisons co-shaped our ethical thinking. The chapter concludes by showing how the ethical theories may be applied to evaluate the impacts of emerging technologies.

Historically, emerging technologies have often been hailed as a way to increase welfare and reduce social and economic inequalities. This chapter, however, will show how emerging technologies may be the source of increasing global inequalities. First, it discusses how new use contexts afforded by technologies may increase inequality, for instance by disrupting labor markets. Second, it shows how emerging technologies generate new conditions of production, which may lead to the degradation of work and exploitation of workers. Third, it explains how emerging technologies affect the distribution of power in the workplace, both leading to a process of deskilling and, paradoxically, requiring more skilled work while people have to manage increasingly complex systems.

This chapter discusses the emerging field of data ethics and ethics of AI. It starts with the notion of Big Data and the non-neutrality of data practices. It then turns to artificial intelligence, discussing its history and functioning and questions of agency and responsibility. Following this, the chapter delves into three core principles in AI and data ethics: privacy, fairness, and accountability. It concludes with discussing some important standards and regulations for AI and data ethics, like the GDPR.

This chapter explains the concept of responsible innovation and shows how it may be applied to concrete innovation practices. It starts by discussing the notion of responsibility and its different meanings, including forward-looking and backward-looking responsibility. It then follows a fictional startup, ‘Chatter,’ in its attempts to apply responsible innovation practices. It shows how Chatter uses scenario exercises to anticipate ethical impacts, how it uses value sensitive design approaches to embed values in design, and how it uses ethical checklists to evaluate ethical impacts of the products it launched.

This chapter introduces the theme of the book and tells the reader what to expect. It explains that the aim of the book is not to make you a great philosopher, but to make you sensitive to the importance and very interesting nature of questions around the ethics of emerging technologies. It tells you what ethics is, and what we may understand with ‘emerging technologies,’ and explains what is at stake in the chapters that are to follow by discussing some concrete technologies, from ultrasound, via cryptocurrencies, to the Cambridge Analytica scandal.

This chapter departs from the idea that technologies can have political and ethical values. It then offers three important approaches that try to grapple with this idea. The first is actor network theory, which departs from the idea of symmetry between human and non-human ‘actants.’ The second are theories or technological mediation, which offer us ways to understand different ‘human-technology-world’ relations. The third is value sensitive design, an approach developed by engineers to translate values into concrete design requirements. The chapter shows how each of these approaches can be applied to discuss concrete cases of technologies having values.

Introduction to Ethics of Emerging Technologies offers a set of lecture and seminar course materials for teaching ethics of emerging technologies. It covers the field in a comprehensive and accessible manner, emphasizing storytelling and examples, practical approaches and tools, and interactive assignments. The book addresses historical and current discourses, both academic and practical, related to the ethics of emerging technologies. This includes a basic introduction to normative ethics and applied ethics of technology, an accessible entry point to theories of technology and normativity, particular technological themes (engineering ethics, ethics of AI, and ethics of biotechnologies), as well as societal contexts in which emerging technologies play a pivotal role (citizenship, sustainability, and global inequality). This book is a must-read for science and engineering students who want to engage with the ethical impacts of their future work and research; for philosophy students who want to know more about emerging technologies; for researchers and educators interested in developing technology ethics curricula; and for general readers interested in the topic.

This chapter examines how developing new technologies involves reckoning with uncertainty and distinguishes between different forms of uncertainty which are relevant to ethical discussions surrounding emerging technologies. After demonstrating the extent to which such uncertainties subvert traditional approaches to ethical reasoning, we turn our attention to the concept of risk which forms a cornerstone of ethical and practical decision-making regarding emerging technologies. Here we explore how quantitative approaches to managing risk which are common in policymaking contexts face a range of ethical limitations and examine the use of precautionary principles as an alternative method of responding to the ethical challenges surrounding technological risk.

This book offers a systematic framework for thinking about the relationship between language and technology and an argument for interweaving thinking about technology with thinking about language. The main claim of philosophy of technology—that technologies are not mere tools and artefacts not mere things, but crucially and significantly shape what we perceive, do, and are—is re-thought in a way that accounts for the role of language in human technological experiences and practices. Engaging with work by Wittgenstein, Heidegger, McLuhan, Searle, Ihde, Latour, Ricoeur, and many others, the author critically responds to, and constructs a synthesis of, three "extreme", idealtype, untenable positions: (1) only humans speak and neither language nor technologies speak, (2) only language speaks and neither humans nor technologies speak, and (3) only technology speaks and neither humans nor language speak. The construction of this synthesis goes hand in hand with a narrative about subjects and objects that become entangled and constitute one another. Using Words and Things thus draws in central discussions from other subdisciplines in philosophy, such as philosophy of language, epistemology, and metaphysics, to offer an original theory of the relationship between language and (philosophy of) technology centered on use, performance, and narrative, and taking a transcendental turn.

In the ethics of artificial intelligence literature, there is increasing attention to knowledge-related issues such as explainability, bias, and epistemic bubbles. This paper investigates epistemic problems raised by AI and their normative implications through the lens of the concept of epistemic agency. How is epistemic agency impacted by AI? The paper argues that the use of artificial intelligence and data science, while offering more information, risks to influence the formation and revision of our beliefs in ways that diminish our epistemic agency. Using examples of someone who struggles to revise her beliefs, the paper discusses several intended and non-intended influences. It analyses these problems by engaging with the literature on epistemic agency and on the political epistemology of digital technologies, discussing the ethical and political consequences, and indicates some directions for technology and education policy.

While there are many public concerns about the impact of AI on truth and knowledge, especially when it comes to the widespread use of LLMs, there is not much systematic philosophical analysis of these problems and their political implications. This paper aims to assist this effort by providing an overview of some truth-related risks in which LLMs may play a role, including risks concerning hallucination and misinformation, epistemic agency and epistemic bubbles, bullshit and relativism, and epistemic anachronism and epistemic incest, and by offering arguments for why these problems are not only epistemic issues but also raise problems for democracy since they undermine its epistemic basis– especially if we assume democracy theories that go beyond minimalist views. I end with a short reflection on what can be done about these political-epistemic risks, pointing to education as one of the sites for change.

Are current digital technologies supporting democracy? Answering that question depends, among other things, on what is meant by democracy. This article mobilizes a communicative conception of democracy. While it is generally accepted that communication is important for democracy, there are directions in democracy theory that understand communication as not merely instrumental but as central to what democracy is and should be. Inspired by Dewey, Habermas, and Young, this paper articulates a conception of democracy as communication. It is then argued that this “deep-communicative” ideal of democracy, together with the usual ethical and epistemic norms of communication as sketched by O’Neill, offer a tentative normative framework for evaluating digital technologies in relation to democracy.

Across the world, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used as a tool for political manipulation and totalitarian repression. Stories about AI are often stories of polarization, discrimination, surveillance, and oppression. Is democracy in danger? And can we do anything about it? In this compelling book, Mark Coeckelbergh offers a guide to the key risks posed by AI for democracy. He argues that AI, as it is currently used and developed, not only aids totalitarian regimes but also undermines the fundamental principles on which liberal democracies are founded such as freedom and equality. How can we make democracy more resilient in the face of AI? And, more positively, what can AI do for democracy? Coeckelbergh advocates not only for more democratic technologies, but also for new political institutions and a renewal of education and culture to ensure that AI promotes, rather than hinders, the common good and helps us to revamp humanism for the 21st century. Why AI Undermines Democracy and What To Do About It is illuminating reading for anyone who is concerned about the fate of democracy.