Foucault as a Critic of Transhumanist Regime of Truth: Language Modeling
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Transhumanists maintain an optimistic outlook on the future, contending that the pursuit of human enhancement holds significant promise for the salvation of humanity. The transhumanist philosophy of history is ascendant, thus fundamentally at odds with the pessimistic perspectives espoused by Foucault. To present Foucault’s critical stance towards transhumanism, it is necessary to turn to his earlier work, The Order of Things and Archaeology of Knowledge. Transhumanists share progressive teleology; trans here stands for going beyond something. However, progression, primarily technological, could reinforce the unequal power division through the immense ability of language models to distribute knowledge, especially when the social philosophy of some of the most profound transhumanists seems rather welfarist. In addition, amidst the current trajectory of increasing societal equality, the prospect of equitably distributing transhumanist modes of being appears increasingly remote. The current transhumanist discourse is relatively wide, while it shares much in common with other progressive views scattered in public discourse. I call this optimistic view on human nature as a truth regime dispersed by a political economy of truth, which it serves. Here, a substantially reworked concept of epistemic injustice will be employed in Foucauldian analysis. The proliferation of language models helps spread this truth regime by seemingly extending access to knowledge for all. These models subsume inserted information under the umbrella of a unified knowledge system by extracting and distorting formerly idiosyncratic information. Not to mention that efficient use of these models demands a correct prompt input, so those capable of that could be exponentially advantaged against those who do not have the required linguistic capabilities. This truth regime tenaciously promotes AI technologies, which are to be conceived as restrictive and epistemically unjust ideological apparatuses. |
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