Articles

Artificial Intelligence and The Human Condition
 

Roger Berkowitz
As we struggle to contemplate the impact of humanly developed but now inhumanly powerful artificially intelligent machines, we would do well to recall some of the lessons Arendt drew already from the victory of science and the modern age. Arendt wrote in the Human Condition that the “mathematization of physics, by which the absolute renunciation of the senses for the purpose of knowing was carried through, had in its last stages the unexpected and yet plausible consequences that every question man puts to nature is answered in terms of mathematical patterns to which no model can ever be adequate, since one would have to be shaped after our sense experience.” For Arendt, this separation between “thought and sense experience” means that man can create a man-made reality that defies the human capacity to understand or predict that world. In a similiar way, Slavoj Zizek approaches the present panic around the rise of artificial intelligence. He argues that what will come from artificial intelligence is not simply domination by those who control them, but surprise on the part of those who have created machines they cannot control. 

Classical Education

Against those who see classical education as “white” or privileged, Angel Adams Parham and Anika Prather argue that classical studies in K-12 education should be embraced by activists on both the left and the right. Parham will speak at our Fall Conference “Friendship and Politics.” 

Citizens' Assemblies are coming to Portugal

Mauricio Mejia writes about Lisbon joining other cities around the world to revitalize democracy through citizen assemblies. Tomorrow (Monday, April 3rd) we will host a webinar and Q&A about our Fellowship for High School teachers to bring deliberative democracy into the classroom. 

Can We Have Race Without Racism?
 

Subrena Smith and David Livingstone Smith have argued that while DEI programs are important and necessary, they are undone by a fundamental contradiction, the demand to end racism while elevating and preserving the importance of race. The problem, they see, is that race falls apart once it is divorced from its essentialist and biological understanding. For them, “Race was fashioned for nothing that was good,” and the effort to celebrate race is a dangerous game that undermines the laudable goals of DEI programs to vanquish racism.

When Power Triumphed Over Ideals

Roger Berkowitz 
On the 20th anniversary of America’s war in Iraq, there is a whole lot of taking stock. James Bennet argues that the War in Iraq helped undermine the American consensus at home and around the world. It is the cynicism that the Iraq war unleashed that opened the door for the rise of Donald Trump at home and other demagogues abroad.

ChatGPT – a catalyst for what kind of future?

Roger Berkowitz
The Hannah Arendt Center will collaborate with the Vienna Digital Humanism Initiative on ChatGPT to convene the first Digital Humanism Leadership Summit on A.I. & Democratic Sustainability in Vienna (3-5 July 2023).

The Crack Where the Light Comes In

Roger Berkowitz
Jaron Lanier is “the godfather of virtual reality.”  Always one of the most original thinkers on technology, Lanier takes on the recent obsession about Chat GPT and other “large language models” by arguing, provocatively, that AI does not exist: .”My attitude is that there is no AI. What is called AI is a mystification, behind which there is the reality of a new kind of social collaboration facilitated by computers. A new way to mash up our writing and art.”

AI Devouring Human Culture

Roger Berkowitz
Yuval Harari offers another, more dismal, take on the rise of AI. We need to learn to master AI before it masters us. Harari calls upon world leaders to rise to the challenge of AI: to master it and make it useful for us, while limiting its capabilities to destroy the humanity that gave it life. Harari sees the real danger from AI in its ability to consume our human culture. 

The Conspiratorial Mind

Democracy requires trust. Living together requires that we agree on some basic facts and beliefs about the world. For Arendt, the path to the common world is through politics, through talking with others. The institutions of politics—be they town halls, debating societies, congresses, or courts—are designed to bring a plurality of people together—each with their own ways of seeing the world—and encourage them to see something new that is common, that they share. But what about when the fundamental trust that allows such institutions to function fails? Phil Christman explores our snowballing sense that the “wrongness is pervasive.” At this moment of wrongness, we turn to conspiracy theories and paranoia that makes the exploration of a common world with others well nigh impossible. If you want to understand the conspiratorial mind of our moment, Christman is an able guide.