"General intelligence" and technology criticism are important entrances to understanding AI | Journal of Social Sciences

▋INSIGHT

The true sign of the arrival of the artificial intelligence era is the emergence of general artificial intelligence (AGI). We can’t help but ask, if Marx lived today, how would he view artificial intelligence? This inquiry not only needs to return to Marx’s intellectual history context and methodological perspective, but also needs to be combined with the present to substantively promote the modernization and concretization of historical materialism.

Original text: ""General intelligence" and technological criticism are important entrances to understanding AI"

Author | Associate Professor Zhang Fugong, Department of Philosophy and Digital and Humanities Research Center, Nanjing Normal University

Pictures |Network

The emergence of ChatGPT represents the arrival of general artificial intelligence (AGI) and marks the true beginning of the artificial intelligence era. Marx once pointed out that any true philosophy is the essence of the spirit of its own time. Contemporary humanities scholars must think about and answer a major question of the times, that is, how to accurately capture the spirit of the era of intelligence in a philosophical way. Marxist philosophy, which has always been closely following the pulse of the times and continues to develop, provides us with a highly explanatory thinking path for us to deeply grasp the social and historical nature of artificial intelligence and its potential challenges. In other words, we can’t help but ask, if Marx lived today, how would he view artificial intelligence? This inquiry not only needs to return to Marx’s intellectual history context and methodological perspective, but also needs to be combined with the current realistic content to substantively promote the modernization and concretization of historical materialism. In this regard, Marx’s concept of “general intelligence” and his critique of craftsmanship provide us with an important entry point.

Criticism of Capital Logic and the Social and Historical Nature of AI

The core of the methodology of historical materialism is to deeply understand social relations and its reverse materialization process through the appearance of things. This is just as Professor Zhang Yibing said. Therefore, the understanding of the social and historical nature of artificial intelligence models such as ChatGPT cannot just stay at the level of technical representation, but should realize that it is essentially the objectification-materialization of general intelligence under the rule of capital relations. product. In other words, what we usually call artificial intelligence is only at the technical level, and its social and historical essence lies in general intelligence, that is, social intelligence based on specific social relationships. To be more precise, general intelligence is social intelligence constructed by the historical development of capitalist socialized production and its inherent contradictions. Therefore, it appears as an invisible but objectively existing realistic abstraction.

From a historical perspective, the starting point of the historical logic of most intelligence is the "labor in general" based on the division of labor in the era of factory handicrafts. On the one hand, the realistic basis for the establishment of the category of "labor in general" lies in the fact that real labor developed into a very developed concrete totality (i.e., social labor) at a specific historical stage and became an "invisible part" in the field of material production that transcends individuality and particularity. "Hand" and "Realistic Abstraction 1.0"; on the other hand, this kind of social labor itself is shaped by capital's substantive absorption and exploitation of labor, so the productivity of social labor is fundamentally the productivity of capital.

The commonly referred to historical process of intelligence is based on the "general intelligence" as social intelligence in the age of machine industry. In Marx's view, general intelligence is not only a historical product of the continuous accumulation of social knowledge in the process of socialized production, but also marks a historical change in the relationship between mental labor and physical labor, humans (living labor) and machines (science and technology). On the one hand, science and technology have completely gotten rid of empirical individual knowledge forms, developed into systematic and theoretical social intelligence/social mind (gesellschaftlichen Hirn), and are objectified into the dominant social productive forces in real production practice. General intelligence manifests itself as "implicit intelligence" and "reality abstraction 2.0" in the field of material production. On the other hand, the separation of science from labor and the service to capital are fundamentally determined by capital relations, that is, overcoming the narrow technical foundation and natural limitations of the division of labor in the factory industry and establishing a production mode that conforms to the nature of capital.

By following Marx’s methods and ideas, we can appropriately summarize social intelligence based on intelligent technology as “general intelligence”. On the one hand, "general intelligence" is the latest development form of general intelligence in today's intelligent era. It is a historical product of the transformation of social intelligence into social intelligence with the support of intelligent technology. The development of intelligent technology is not only a productized manifestation of social intelligence, but also increasingly profoundly changes individual intelligence and social intelligence themselves. Because the development of computer and network information technology, especially artificial intelligence and other technical paradigms, has profoundly changed the way people think in society and expanded their cognitive abilities to a large extent, thus changing the overall intelligence of society. Mechanism. In this sense, social intelligence gradually develops into its more advanced form, that is, social intelligence, with the support of intelligent technology, and as an invisible social force independent of individuals, it manifests itself as "invisible people themselves" and "realistic abstraction" 3.0".

On the other hand, general intelligence is a historical product of the contradictory movement of the capitalist mode of production, and has become the dominant form of social productivity in today's intelligent era. The post-Fordism that emerged in the 1970s made the upgrading of individual and collective cognitive abilities, social abilities, information processing abilities, and technological innovation an inherent requirement of capital logic. Since the 21st century, the new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial revolution represented by artificial intelligence and big data is the phased result and historical turning point of this trend. Its essence is that capital gives production the nature of intelligence by absorbing general intelligence. Make intelligent production a new form of contemporary capitalist production mode. Although ChatGPT has made progress in improving productivity, it is still dominated by the logic of capital and cannot be transcended.

Criticism of Technology and the Technological Fetishism Mechanism of AI

By looking back at the socio-historical nature of general intelligence, we will find that general intelligence is not only a realistic abstraction in the sense of socialized production, but also has formal abstract provisions based on its own relative independence and rational logical methods. This kind of formal abstraction originates from the abstract technical form constructed by the naturalism-objectivism-reductionism principles inherent in modern science and technology, and constitutes the logical basis for the establishment of the fetishistic nature and ideological function of modern science and technology. It is at this point that artificial intelligence represented by ChatGPT brings fundamental challenges and crises to human thinking and the scientific status of the humanities. Marx’s critique of technology provides useful inspiration for our understanding of ChatGPT’s technological fetishism mechanism.

Modern technology (Technologie) originated from the German technology scientist Johann Beckmann. Its origin and concept itself contain two dimensions: one is the political and administrative connotation derived from the tradition of German officialdom, that is, technical Development serves national interests; second, it is influenced by natural science methods and strives to separate knowledge from specific practices and construct a strict classification system to objectively describe the necessary methods of existence and production processes. The latter is exactly the self-positioning that science and technology and its theoretical forms (such as technology) actively advocate: objective knowledge based on the accuracy and objectivity of natural science, and its basic methodological principles are naturalism, objectivism and reductionism. Based on the scientific revelation of the social and historical nature of general intelligence, Marx profoundly criticized the fetishistic nature of technology: the objectivism-reductionism principle of science and technology (machine system) conceals the underlying reality behind technology in the name of scientific objectivity and truth. The process of social relations based on inequality and exploitation obscures the fact that labor is reduced to abstract labor without any possible subjectivity and intentionality under the framework of technology, and makes people involved in it believe that this is completely reasonable. process.

Italian scholar Roberto Finelli accurately pointed out that since post-Fordism, this kind of technological fetishism has developed into a new form by inverting the oppositional relationship between man and machine into the fusion relationship between man and machine: the development purpose of new technology In promoting the development and development of individual and collective creativity and subjectivity, liberating ourselves from the slavery and monotony of Fordism and creating a new era of knowledge-wisdom work. The core of this ideology is to confuse the construction of human knowledge and the establishment of meaning into the transmission and processing of information, and attempt to use the automatic program operation of symbol systems to explain and solve complex problems in social life. The greatest feature of contemporary technological fetishism is that it reduces people and the world to computable codes, parameters and information processing processes, and human intelligence is reduced to computing machines that process information. This not only covers up the more hidden unequal and exploitative relations behind the individual-collective subjectivity constructed by so-called intelligent technology, but also completely abandons the essential provisions of the humanistic spirit such as meaning, emotion, ethics and value. This is the aspect in which the humanities need to remain vigilant at all times when human disciplines inevitably encounter deep penetration of intelligent technologies such as ChatGPT. For example, if the information cocoon is still the result of big data algorithm push and information enhancement for personal preferences, then the emergence of ChatGPT forces us to face Plato’s “cave metaphor” in the intelligent age and rethink the dialectics of truth and enlightenment.

On the one hand, the underlying technical logic of ChatGPT does not truly simulate human intelligence, but is based on probability statistics and algorithm selection of large-scale corpora. The resulting knowledge and truth picture for the public is nothing but constructed by intelligent technology. "AI Cave", because the objectivity and authenticity of the knowledge and solutions provided by ChatGPT cannot be completely guaranteed, or it may contain deep biases and fallacies, just like the light and shadow in Plato's cave metaphor. On the other hand, because the algorithm design of ChatGPT is to provide high-probability feedback results based on statistical similarity, it creates mediocre common sense or consensus with quantified identity, obscuring real innovation, value, and emotion. In this regard, Professor Wu Jing accurately pointed out that excessive reliance on linear logical thinking and quantitative standards will erode people's way of thinking and values, gradually lose the ability of qualitative analysis and value judgment, and fall into the trap of systematic ignorance (Steiger Le language).

[This article is a phased result of the National Social Science Fund Youth Project "Research on Marx's 'Machine and Technology Notes' and Historical Materialism Innovation" (21CZX002)]

The article is an original product of Social Science Journal’s “Ideological Workshop” Fusion Media. It was originally published on Page 6 of Issue 1857 of Social Science Journal. Reprinting without permission is prohibited. The content in the article only represents the author’s opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper.

Editor in charge of this issue: Wang Liyao

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