Since the introduction of ChatGPT, new discussions about artificial intelligence and human rights have been taking place in debates worldwide. One recent article via Open Rights highlights this.
According to the article, AI applications like ChatGPT promote a shift toward a probabilistic worldview in Western society. This shift emphasizes embracing uncertainty through probabilistic thinking, elevating statistics, and complex modeling as a means of knowledge. ¨
ChatGPT, for example, frames language as a system of probabilities, blurring the line between truth and plausible fiction. This mixing of truth and fiction is an inevitable side effect of the probabilistic worldview.
The rise of the probabilistic worldview is a gradual and pervasive trend that has been gaining traction over the past few decades. It builds upon the quantitative shift in the 1970s, influencing various aspects of government, academia, and everyday life. Credit or insurance scoring systems have long employed probabilistic approaches to assess individuals based on observed behaviors and shared characteristics.
Advancements in technology, such as internet-connected devices and virtual environments, have enabled increasingly granular and abstract categorizations of individuals. Traditional categories like age and sex are becoming less relevant as abstract and tailored segmentations, driven by statistical predictions, shape computer-based decisions rather than human ones.
The use of numerous discrete labels by advertisers to categorize individuals exemplifies the complexity of this probabilistic shift. Previously unavailable variables and seemingly irrelevant data are now considered in complex models that group people based on shared behaviors. Consequently, these models influence decisions regarding advertisements, jobs, or homes, affecting individuals as if they had behaved similarly to the grouped cohort.
This shift toward probabilistic thinking occurs within a broader privatization trend of knowledge and AI technologies. It challenges the certainty and causality underpinning the Western worldview and the scientific method. As a result, the pillars of our human rights system, particularly the notions of inalienability and universality, are destabilized.
The mediation of human rights through probabilistic machines undermines their inalienability. For instance, automated content moderation systems limit freedom of expression on social media platforms, treating it as a probabilistic right subject to change due to false positives. Additionally, AI's focus on group behavior and prospective harm reduction erodes the idea of individual agency and responsibility, shifting authority from understanding the individual to population-level insights. This has implications for judicial systems, with judges relying on probabilistic predictions to shape sentencing rather than personal responsibility.
While the shift to a probabilistic worldview allows for acknowledging systemic social problems, it also introduces complexities that defy human comprehension. This creates the potential for power consolidation among an unaccountable elite, who interpret the outputs of AI systems and control the outcomes that impact our online experiences, job opportunities, relationships, and even our freedom.
Reforming these technologies to serve the public interest requires governments to assert their democratic legitimacy and replace market incentives with public interest goals. Otherwise, our understanding of identity may be reshaped, and our human rights system outsourced to a secretive lottery.
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