Abstract
Public discussions about new technologies seem to agree on one thing: the changes in Artificial Intelligence, robotics, personal computing and social media, among others, are transforming our societies. Furthermore, this is happening at an unprecedented rate and is raising important and urgent questions. If robots and AI continue to develop at this pace, will there be any work left for humans in the future? If our social needs can be met ‘at a distance’, will we stop spending time in each other’s physical presence? When we invest new capacities into our machines, are we creating new forms of machine consciousness? And will we ultimately have to accept a role as the ‘pets’ of our technological masters?
In this timely and thoughtful book, Bessant acknowledges and works with these questions. However, she does not fall prey to utopian or dystopian imaginings of the future. Her goal, instead, is to create a new framework for discussion based on two important foundations. First, she argues that current developments are contributing to a profound transformation not just of our societies or technologies, but of what it means to be human. Second, she calls for an end to fears that technologies will somehow overtake humanity’s capacity to control them. Such an outcome is only possible, she argues, if we forget that these are technologies we have been instrumental in creating.
The first of these foundations is the most compelling and theoretically interesting contribution of this book. Bessant draws on insights from historical sociology and cognitive science to argue that we are undergoing a shift in human consciousness. This is more than noting the necessary small, everyday adaptations to the impact of new technologies on our everyday lives. It entails instead a recognition that ‘we are literally changing our minds, the ways we think, live and relate to each other and the world, and in doing so we are changing what it means to be human’ (p. 14). She positions the present as a next step in human evolution, and as evidence of the unfolding of a new techno-Axial Age that extends the transition from mythic to theoretic consciousness in the first Axial Age of 800 to 200
Bessant notes that it is not yet clear what form this new human consciousness will take. However, understanding current transformations requires recognising that this shift is not just technological, but also biological, social and cultural. As we embrace the new capacities for exporting functions and memories to our machines, we are changing what our brains and minds – and societies – are capable of achieving within given times and places.
This leads to Bessant’s second contention: that humans must stop treating these changes as fateful and outside of the control of human agency. She draws our attention back to the first Axial Age, when the world’s current major religions were created. She contends that the assumptions that AI will surpass human intelligence is yet another ‘God move’ – an anticipation that we are in the process of creating a new being to rule over us, which we hope will turn out to be benign. Bessant asks us to recall that it is human agents who are creating this ‘God’. Moreover, it is not necessary to allocate such godly status to our technologies. We can and must embrace what we create and take responsibility for its consequences and implications for social organisation and human being.
Unfortunately, as Bessant demonstrates in analyses of past economic crises and current responses to technological change, there seems to be little appetite for frank and fearless analyses of the past or conversations about the future. Instead, there is a tendency to resort to myths and fallacies that help to sustain the status quo. As an antidote, Bessant concludes the volume with a set of ‘new social design principles’ that might be used to navigate the uncertain present and produce a future in which ‘as many people as possible have the chance to imagine, hope, and actually enjoy a good life’ (p. 205).
It is reassuring to see Bessant’s continued optimistic outlook in spite of the accounts she has compiled of persistent human failings. She has a keen sense of the capacity for human imaginations to think their way forward, even as she recognises that these same imaginations are often the source of our problems. Her call for ‘a new social imaginary’ is in keeping with this perspective and deserves thoughtful consideration.
This is a wide-ranging volume, but Bessant has left some important gaps for others to fill. For example, the role of China in this techno-Axial Age seems to require more thorough and somewhat urgent attention, especially given recent evidence of China’s use of AI to shape social and community activities. Do Bessant’s design principles apply as human universals? Or are they the culturally specific desires of particular Western subjects? There is also room here for a more complex treatment of power. It is not clear just who should be taking up the challenge of recovering human agency, or how that might be achieved within contemporary social and political structures. Perhaps this explains why humans continue to overlook our role in creating our own futures, preferring to leave it in the hands of machines that we hope have been designed to be cleverer than us.