Popular science material by Viktoriia Smakota, Candidate of Sociological Sciences: “Artificial intelligence in our lives: Ukraine and the world”

The website of the Institute of Sociology of the NAS of Ukraine has published a popular science material by Viktoriia Smakota, Candidate of Sociological Sciences, "Artificial intelligence in our lives: Ukraine and the world"

Technical progress is a key factor in rising labour productivity, and any innovation in the economic order — even one that public opinion at first met with suspicion or outright hostility (recall the Luddite revolt against the introduction of machines into production) — was eventually built into society's economic system.

The influence of some technologies, moreover, could have a long-term effect not only on the economy but on society as a whole, that is, on every sphere of human social life: work, leisure, communication, education and so on (just imagine how much the human way of life changed thanks to the use of electricity or of air travel).

But in today's world the rapid development of new digital technologies and of artificial intelligence (AI) is not only global and capable of changing the world around us at great speed: it can also change the human being as a socio-biological creature. And the point is not only that AI is able to replace people in an ever greater number of economic and social spheres (and it is becoming ever more obvious that it is mastering the world of art, medical diagnostics, the function of social interaction and much else — that is, it can teach, treat, converse and even direct human behaviour towards particular actions). And whereas before this innovation appeared it was thought that thinking is one of the species-specific features of human beings, it is now beginning to seem that the human being is not such an intelligent creature after all… So, while acknowledging the undoubted influence of various digital technologies on humanity in the 21st century, we must recognise that it is AI that receives the most ambivalent assessments.

The full material is here