Towards a Critique of Artificial Intelligence: Ethics, Normativity and Freedom

Technology is central to many philosophical debates that question social and political emancipatory processes and the meaning and significance of freedom. From Marx to Heidegger, to Marcuse, Adorno and Foucault, to name only few of the most famous philosophers who have reflected on technology, it seems that it plays the role of a tool, or a dispositif, to an alienating power, basing on the control and manipulation of masses and individuals. By generalizing such positions, technology seems to offer a false idea of progress to the individuals who live in capitalist societies, just as it enlarges quantitatively the basis of exploitation and at the same time it would allow a type of exploitation qualitatively deeper, that is: more and more individuals are exploited thanks to technology, that blur the awareness of being exploited just by favoring ideas and practices of autonomy provided by technological developments. Within this framework I would like to put forward a hypothesis from an immanent critical point of view, partly referring to the positions of Donna Haraway in her Cyborg Manifesto, partly to some considerations of Marx’s early texts and partly to an interpretation of the relationship between essence and freedom proposed by Hegel in the notion of “second nature”.