The Social Process of AI-Fueled Digitalization: A Philosophical View

Digitalization as a social process refers to digitally enabled transformations of social contexts, for example, of public communication and democracy and of changes in the world of labor. This chapter deals with the possibility of gradual disruptions during these transformations at the societal level. The term disruption refers to the sudden breakup of well-known constellations with formerly long-term stability. Expectations of stability, assumptions of continuity, and planning security are shattered, casting the prospects for the future in an uncertain light. The notion of gradual disruption refers to upheavals with considerable or even dramatic damage potential that do not occur unexpectedly and suddenly like a global pandemic or a war of aggression, but rather build up gradually until they finally lead to the disruption of formerly stable constellations. Examples are increasing but unnoticed standardization of human action due to software needs, silent loss of freedom and individuality, increasing dependence on the smooth functioning of digital infrastructures, loss of the future as an open space, or the loss of reflection and learning opportunities due to unlimited acceleration. Detecting and reflecting such developments needs philosophical activity, e.g. in epistemology and ethics of those possible disruptions.