Future need not be bleak, asserts Ruha Benjamin

The typical individual ought not to fear envisioning a dramatically different future for humanity, Ruha Benjamin contends. After all, the affluent executives of tech firms are already doing so.

The educator of African American Studies at Princeton University, who presented the Tanner Lectures on Human Values hosted by the Mahindra Humanities Center the previous week, claimed that advocates of AI-driven futures frequently represent their aspirations as benevolent even though they are fundamentally motivated by self-gain.

“There’s absolutely no justification to place confidence in tech magnates to provide any insight when it concerns diminishing human anguish,” Benjamin conveyed to the assembled crowd at Paine Hall. “Tycoons constructing bunkers to endure an AI-driven apocalypse, striving to overturn mortality via cryopreservation, scouring the globe for temporary cities and network states, are not trustworthy guardians of the common good.”

Frequently, AI advancements promoted as “effective” and “forward-thinking” merely exacerbate oppression, Benjamin remarked, referencing instances such as facial recognition technology leading to wrongful incarcerations and automated triage systems determining who receives medical attention.

Benjamin stated that AI is often celebrated as a moral (or, at the very least, morally neutral) technology for decision-making since it relies on mathematics rather than emotions. However, making societal decisions based on calculations and algorithms harms the same disadvantaged populations that suffered during the eugenics movement of the 20th century, she emphasized.

“One of the buzzwords circulating is that these systems are remarkable because they engage in ‘deep learning,’ referring to computational sophistication,” Benjamin explained. “However, I propose that computational sophistication without social and historical context is not particularly profound.”

Benjamin added that it is contradictory to regard superintelligence, Mars settlements, and subterranean apocalypse shelters as revolutionary breakthroughs while perceiving public goods like free public transit and affordable housing as impractical.

“This is a call to contemplate the various forms of knowledge necessary at the table,” Benjamin articulated. “We cannot leave it solely to those with technical expertise. Many of the challenges we face today stem from the fact that those creating technological solutions lack an understanding of society.”

Benjamin urged for a revitalized emphasis on creativity and imagination, encouraging universities to prioritize exploration through the arts and humanities.

“This is an invitation not just to critique, but to innovate. To question ourselves, ‘What comes next?’” she urged. “Rather than striving to make the world marginally less damaging and these systems slightly less harmful, what if we envisioned entirely new paradigms, considering a reality without borders, without policing, devoid of surveillance and supremacy? In doing so, I believe we must dismantle the barriers in our own minds, those mental blocks that prompt us to ‘be realistic’ when attempting to think otherwise.”