AI & SOCIETY (2022) 37:815–818

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-022-01484-1

EDITORIAL

Transformational AI: seeing through the lens of digital heritage

Accepted: 2 May 2022 / Published online: 2 June 2022

In AI&Society, we see an emerging AI narrative that encom- Although it has sprung from within the Silican Valley cul-
passes transformational contexts of local–global cultures and ture of the academic body, its impact has spread globally like
global concerns. This narrative enriches the academic narra- a Tsunami, so much so that, as Nowotny (2021) puts it, even
tive on AI that has focused on social challenges of govern- public institutions all over the world are engaged in align-
ance, ethics, accountability, and intervention. For example, ing governance with algorithmic predictions in the guise
what we learn from COVID-19 is that the transformation of of the umbrella term, ‘objectivity’, thereby promoting the
this virus does not respect geographical or cultural bounds, use of predictive analytics as tools of management of new
it is both local and global at the same time. Moreover, uncertainties of the digital world, promising objectivity and
this global Tsunami of virus cannot be controlled without efficiency in the delivery of public and private services, for
human engagement and without social, cultural, ethical example, in the decisions made by courts, and the police, by
and moral constraints and interventions both at global and insurance companies and in healthcare systems. A question
local levels. The pandemic has highlighted global govern- arises, how do we avoid becoming a part of this story of the
ance challenges ranging from erosion of privacy to mass Prediction Paradigm that inhabits new normal of automation
surveillance, increasing digital exclusion, and a transfer of and replaces human intervention and human judgments? But
power and control over infrastructure from governments to what is on offer? On offer is High-Tech Utopia; Surveillance
private corporations. COVID-19 pandemic has also shown Society, the Prediction architecture. But can we afford this
the gaps between the limit of dependency on technocratic utopia? In other words: can we afford the externalization of
control and global inter-dependency between health and the life to technological solutions? In contrast to the virus of
economy and their vulnerabilities in diverse cultural con- the prediction paradigm, we have witnessed human, medical
texts. The challenge is how in such a situation of uncertainty, and organisational interventions to mitigate and control the
the transformative narrative can transcend the techno-centric COVID-19 virus through social interventions such as face
narrative of progress and predictive analytics to encompass mask and social distances, medical interventions of new vac-
human diverse social and cultural perspectives to cope with cinations and diagnostic treatments and organisational inter-
long-term consequences of the pandemic both at the local ventions public funding and institutional rules and regulation
or the global levels. to cope with the virus and its variants. We wonder whether
What we have learnt so far from public narratives of similar harnessing of human, social, cultural and organi-
COVID-19 is that it has sprung from a local lab or a local sational inventions would have similar impact on limiting
wet market in China and has spread all over the world. Fur- the increasing alignment of governance with the predica-
ther local social, cultural and health factors have impacted tion paradigm, or Big-Tech would have us live with this AI
its transformation into various variants, and these variants virus just as we are asked to make a cultural shift and live
again have spread from local to global levels, and these in with new variants of COVID-19 virus. While the COVID-19
turn are transforming themselves into yet more local vari- virus may be seen as another natural environmental disaster
ants. Over the recent past, we have seen similar transforma- and we need to learn to live with it, we cannot say the same
tion of another virus, the virus of the prediction paradigm. for the prediction virus as it has emerged from the dedicated
academic body that should have been alert to its social and
ethical responsibilities. It is hoped that those, who control
* Karamjit S. Gill
editoraisoc@yahoo.co.uk and conduct the soothing discourse on cultural transfor-
mation in order to accommodate the predictive paradigm
1
University of Brighton, Brighton, UK

13
Vol.:(0123456789)
816 AI & SOCIETY (2022) 37:815–818

should be mindful that replacing human-in-the-loop engage- before. Although ours is a digital age of increasing anxiety,
ment with algorithmic automation leads to weakening and anger, distrust, resentment and fear, analysts and experts are
ultimately destroying the social and cultural traditions of so busy with data and metrics as if emotional life can be
empathetic care, effective judgement, tacit engagement and measured and clustered under statistical models. Her asser-
socially and culturally responsive decision making. Moreo- tion is that techno-centric dualists preach certainty, but we
ver, the rhetoric of impartiality and neutrality of automated know that life has plenty of magic and plenty of ambiguity.
predictions rings hollow when we see an increasing exter- She notes that we are losing multiplicity, both within our
nalisation of practices of prejudice, inequity and unfairness societies and within ourselves, and makes a case for pay-
in the name of objectivity, for example, of surveillance to ing more attention to emotional and cognitive gaps world-
reinforce existing social, cultural and racial prejudices, ste- wide and how to bridge these gaps. However, Shafa (ibid.)
reotyping, social exclusion and discrimination. It may be recognises the limit and threshold of emotions and makes
entertained that the high-tech nudging of aligning human us aware that not only individuals, but perhaps nations, too,
affairs with prediction algorithms only leads to creating have their own tipping points. We should thus take notice
alternative reality among certain sections of society. Such that even alignment of governance with prediction analytics
a narrow horizon of alignment side steps long-term side may reach their own limits, where people may feel they are
effects of dismantling social and cultural structures which losing control of their social, cultural and economic destinies
act as catalysts of social cohesion and cultural valorization. and may thus be obliged to remedy back to human–machine
However, the high-tech assurances of objectivity are unlikely symbiotic alignment.
to rescue us from the long-term social cultural damage of We learn from Zuboff (2019) that high tech, not content
this alignment. As Jeremey Seabrook (2022) says, “Cultures with automation of human experiences into behavioural sur-
are not clothes, but living membranes that bind together plus, has misappropriated affective computing architecture
individual psychology and human society”. Perhaps, aca- with the aim of automation of human emotion, the creation
demic research culture could give a thought on Seabrook’s of an emotion chip, the creation of emotion AI. The impli-
reflections on culture as a social glue of human progress cations of automating ‘us’ is to instil an awe of ‘inevitabil-
when promoting automated alignment of human values to ity of technology’ and the culture of ‘economic and market
the machine determinants or human ethics to machine ethics. dependency’ and a sense of helplessness in the face of when
Our concern here is that while the academic research culture the computer says “NO”. We wonder whether the creators
has been pursuing its well-wishing techno-centric dream of of the computational paradigm in 1956 would have imag-
machine learning and machine ethics within diverse social ined that one day their dream of functional rationality would
and cultural contexts, the high-tech world has been engaged be misappropriated by high-tech companies in the 2020s to
in automation of human behaviour without meaningful cul- automate not just problem- solving processes but to venture
tural bounds, not only through the propagation of the pre- into automating human behaviour in the pursuit of automat-
diction paradigm, but also through social media as a tool to ing the human itself. Not content with automating the human
instill automated alignment of cultural transformation with behaviour, the next frontier of High-Tech is the creation of
the machine. Just as the talk about “live with the virus” dis- the Emotion Chip: or “Emotion AI”. What does automation
tracts us from the seriousness of the virus pandemic, feeding of the emotion mean? It means automation of the inner being
into the narrative of denial and inaction to protect people of the human self, making the body itself as redundant. In
from its variants, the talk of alignment of human action with other words, having automated the outer of the self, the
the prediction paradigm leads to the narrative of denial of human behavior, and then having automated the inner being,
automating the diversity and richness of social and cultural the emotion, the body is then seen as just an object of profit
discourse. calculation. The COVID-19 pandemic has also shown us
We already see the role and impact of social networks and that just as profit-centred economy is a very narrow cultural
social media in exploiting automation of human behaviour way of organising life and deciding who is important and
by propagating alternative realities about not only COVID- who is not, so is making the prediction-centred digital future
19 virus but also about race, religion and identity politics. as our global home a narrow technological way of thinking
The danger is that it would lead to a new normal in which about what can be, what should be, and what ought to be
new anxieties are created about the ‘otherness’, thereby cre- done for the benefit of diverse cultures in a global society
ating a new normal of cultural polarization, surveillance, (Gill 2022, Zuboff ibid.).
prejudice and injustice. Elif Shafa (2017) illustrates an In this volume, authors of the special issue on ‘Born Digi-
impact of alternative reality when she argues that we have tal’ reflect on the transformation of a techno-centric focus
entered a new stage in world history in which collective sen- of academic culture to an inter-disciplinary and humanistic
timents, amplified and polarized by social media and social perspective of digital heritage. And authors of the special
networking, guide and misguide politics more than ever issue on ‘Cybernetic in Latin America’ provide an historical

13
AI & SOCIETY (2022) 37:815–818 817

insight into the transformation of cybernetics from Europe the entity’s functioning and its own operations also brought
to Latin America through the USA, leading to the concept of together contributions from a diverse number of episte-
‘cybersyn’. In their special issue on ‘Born Digital’, Stapleton mologies interested not only in computation, information,
and Jaillant (this volume) broaden the academic narrative of control, and feedback, but also in art, culture, management,
AI into transforming AI, shedding light on how custodians philosophy, psychology, medicine, anthropology, among
of cultural heritage (artists and musicians for example) and others. They further note that Macy Conferences brought
curators of cultural materials and information architects now the transfer of ideas from biology to physics and the disso-
inhabit a shared online space, and co-create cultural artefacts lution of discipline-specific dominance. It is noted that the
using data as the new raw material. At the same time, they process of linguistic accommodation transformed the early
recognise that digital may also hide cultural materials in an French reflection on the word ‘cybernetic’ on governance
impenetrable archaeology of technological obsolescence or into an independent corpus of reflection on technology that
in inaccessible vaults created by the Internet, thereby rec- in many ways is closer to a systematic turn of its definition,
ognising the dangers of losing early internet content to the classification, and clarification. The expansion of cybernet-
darkness of technical obsolescence. They note that whilst ics on living systems argues for this corpus of variety for a
Banerjee (2007) offered a vision of AI as both ethical and system to regulate itself and maintain stability between its
liberating, he saw the need for a deeper understanding of boundary and its environment.
the ethical and aesthetic implications of contemporary Larrain and Mariategui also reflect on contribution of
machine intelligence in its relation to human society and Stafford Beer, Humberto Maturana, von Foerster, Francisco
culture. They argue that at a time of ongoing social change Varela and Ricardo Uribe in influencing further transforma-
and upheaval, digital solutions perhaps can also aid in our tion of cybernetics into a science of control and communi-
journey towards more inclusive research practices, laying a cation, a highly cooperative, self-organizing systems, such
strong foundation for the future of archives as repositories as brain, where the brain is not perceived as an information
of our shared history and a basis for deeper, mutual under- processing device, but rather a machine that creates and
standing and respect. maintains correlations between sensor and motor activities
In their special issue on Cybernetics in Latin America, in a world that is unknowable in its essence to any observer.
Larrain and Mariategui (this volume) provide an insight into They argue that if the distinction between regulation and
the transformational journey of cybernetics from Europe and self-organization was made in the first-order cybernetics, in
the US to Latin America. In this journey we learn about the second one the focus is on cognition and self-reference.
Alfred Korzybski’s theory of ‘general semantics,’ with a Both theories, they posit, agree that there is a circular pro-
focus on human evaluations and orientations of neurologi- cess that establishes the difference with the classical Newto-
cal mechanisms that are present in all humans; Rapoport nian science where causes are followed by effects, in a sim-
and Shimbel’s insights into understanding the events in the ple linear sequence. Second order cybernetics more closely
nervous system and analogous systems as determined by applies to quantum mechanics, because it is interested in
their structure (which) is fundamental for the understand- processes where an effect feeds back into its very cause;
ing of abstraction, evaluation, and communication. Wiener, the observer and the observed cannot be separated, and the
they note, devoted himself to researching on automatic firing result of observations will depend on their interaction. The
devices for anti-aircraft guns, and that Shannon’s theory of observer is, in a cybernetic system, trying to construct a
communication gives us our modern notions of ‘informa- model of another cybernetic system. In other words, the
tion’ and ‘noise,’ ‘made possible due to the statistical struc- observed agent of a social system interacts with the observer
ture of the original message and due to the nature of the final agent through self-application and self-organization to open
destination’. and close looping feedback cycles.
They note the contribution of Macy Conferences in 1950s In their reflections on the transformation of cybernetics
to the evolution of the modern ‘cybernetic’ term, principally, from Europe and US to Latin America, Larrain and Mariat-
in the United States. Since the 1950s, cybernetics stopped egui note that towards the end of the 1960s, Latin America
being criticized as an American reductionist concept based saw the emergence of an interdisciplinary and experimental
on mechanical models. It then became possible to counter art forum which explored the relationship between art, sci-
previous ideological criticisms and redeem it in the pub- ence and social studies. It led to the exploration of creative
lic domain. Encouraged by this new policy vision, Markov possibilities of an exhibition featuring computers, featur-
developed his idea of probabilistic causal networks, which ing artistic explorations associated with representation and
defined cybernetics as the effort to address the synthesis of control mechanisms through the organization and manage-
causal systems, i.e. the construction based on given elements ment of personal information. The notion of cybernetics
of causal systems which respond in a fixed manner to exter- stimulated many Latin American artists, poets, designers,
nal influences. This focus on causality that could modify architects in their experiments and works through theoretical

13
818 AI & SOCIETY (2022) 37:815–818

inputs in the field of information theory, aesthetics, and inspired by biological and cognitive research. This focus
semiotics. It is further noted that the ideas of social ‘ciber- contributed to new political and social models pursuing the
netic' and that ‘social homoeotasia' established a dialectical construction of national projects, opening a new path based
relation between the individual and the collective, involving on education, knowledge, culture, and scientific research. We
biological, social, political and philosophical implications learn how Latin America has struggled to take control of its
and also considering the data for demographic research. fate and eliminate its cultural and technological dependence
They posit that impacted by the struggle and discontent on the West. ‘Cybersyn’, according to them, may be seen
against authoritarianism, artists in Latin America created as the most palpable case of a multinational team devising
new art forms using video, technology and communications a new technological system bent on carrying out structural
and proposed a new way of education. They discuss how social changes, and integrating political and social values.
Stafford Beer’s publication, the Brain of the Firm (1972), Thus, a biological approach to computation could serve for
and his Viable System Model (VSM) had a huge impact in new research on possible adaptations of socio-system admin-
Latin America, as in the ‘Cybersyn’ project (a neologism istrations in Latin America. They emphasise the continua-
combining the words “cybernetics” and “synergy”) which tion of the transformational debate on the significance of
proposed a complete reorganization of the public sector cultural and artistic practices and collaborations between
economy in Chile.They note that regardless of the tragic artists and computer scientists in creating a focus on human
end of the Cybersyn project and the fall of the Allende’s computer interfaces and human-centered research.
government, a dynamic was generated from the academic In its hospitable and humanistic tradition of cultural
world in Chile that is influenced by Maturana and Varela’s diversity, AI&Society welcomes comment and contribution
concept of ‘autopoiesis’ where an autopoietic machine is a to debate on cultural transformation of AI. The debate also
machine organized as a system of processes of production needs to reflect upon as how we draw upon social knowledge
of components concatenated in such a way that they produce and cultural wisdom in transforming AI for social good.
components. Authors in this volume reflect and comment
on the ongoing debate on computational models and their
relation to cybernetics. For example, Maulen validates the
use of the autopoiesis conceptual behavior as a model for References
bio-digital architecture, Rodríguez Gómez argues for open-
ing of new ways of using ‘metaphorical devices and tools for Banerjee P (2007) Technology of culture: the roadmap of a journey
undertaken. AI & Soc 21(4):411–419
thinking’ using ‘structural coupling’ and enaction. Ongoing Gill KS (2022) Actionable ethics. AI & Soc 37:1–7. https://​doi.​org/​10.​
research on cybernetics includes the work of Roberto Man- 1007/​s00146-​022-​01387-1
cilla from the National Autonomous University of Mexico Nowotny H (2021) IN AI WE TRUST: power, illusion and control of
(UNAM) who introduces a basic model of human sociability predictive algorithms. Polity Press, Cambridge, UK
Seabrook J (2022) Culture Shock. Resurgence & Ecologist, UK.
and alternative frameworks to the idea of the state, the con- March/April 2002. Issue 331, pp 24–27
stitution, applicable to the concepts of checks and balances, Shafa E (2017) Can you taste words? Ted.com. https://​www.​ted.​com/​
the separation of powers, the public/private distinction and talks/​elif_​shafak_​the_​revol​ution​ary_​power_​of_​diver​se_​thoug​ht.
the concept of constitutionalism, proposing a theoretical Accessed 15 Apr 2022
Zuboff S (2019) The age of surveillance capitalism. Profile Books,
management system for the years to come, revealing the con- London
tinued interactive relation between different epistemologies
incorporating the notion of cybernetics. Publisher's Note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to
Larrain and Mariategui conclude that Cybernetics in jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Latin America should not be seen as a mere technical tool
but as a conceptual framework that acted as an operator

13