A Very Short Story: āA Green Brave New Worldā, or āThe Green Panopticonā
For the first time in 20 years, he could see the city again. The warm but mild spring sun and light breeze felt pleasant on his face and he could hear the birds singing. But not just a few. A lot. There were even butterflies again. Many had beautiful colors. He could not even recognize all the species of animals he saw. And so much green everywhere! Trees, plants, actually it hardly looked like a city at all. Not the city he knew. Not the city the green movement has been complaining about since the 1960s. This spring was not silent but noisy and exuberant, full of life and energy. It soon dawned on him that this was no longer the world he knew. Not the civilization he rebelled against. Not the society he wanted to change. This was looking much like the new, better world that he and his ecoterrorist group fought for 20 years ago when they managed to blow up an oil tanker. It seemed that eventually the rebels won. Climate change was controlled. Mass extinction of species was prevented. Life has won. The ecosystems of the planet recovered and even improved. A slow, hopeful smile appeared. As he briefly closed his eyes and breathed in the clean air deeply, he felt the joy of a long-awaited success. Everything had not been in vain. There was a future now. A bright future and a green future. Not only a future for him, leaving the prison after such a long time and devouring the new nature as much as enjoying his newly gained freedom, but a future for humankind. For many species. For the planet. He wanted to scream.
But not all is well that ends well. Soon he would find out the price that had to be paid. Not only the prison sentence. Not only 20 years of his young life. Not only the death of one of his fellow rebels. The biggest price had to be paid now and had to be paid by everyone: the loss of human freedom. It would soon turn out that the electronic device implanted under his skin was not just there to track him and control his behavior in the prison, something he expected they would take out when he left. The device was compulsory for everyone. With the help of electronic technologies, the entire city was transformed into something like a giant prison. A prison without physical walls, but a prison nevertheless. It had been argued that, since most humans were too stupid and lazy to self-regulate, the only solution to stop environmental degradation, climate disaster, and mass extinction was to directly control, manipulate, and coordinate human behavior. People, so it had been argued, need to be forced to do the right thing since they failed to change their lifestyles, threatening their own survival. People need to be saved from themselves. And since human leadership had proven itself to be highly unreliable and toxic (as became all too clear in times of crisis such as the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020) and was utterly unable to deal with complex climate problems given the enormous amount of data and the complexity of the system, it had been decided to have artificial intelligence (AI) take over control of the planet and make decisions instead of humans. Policy decisions, but also many individual decisions, were now delegated to machines. The soft female voice that regulated his use of water, his food choices, and his use of transportation would also accompany him outside the prison. The system would nudge him if possible, but enforce if necessary, and in any case always track and monitor. Very much like the prison from which he was just released. An electronic panopticon was created, building upon earlier achievements by the private sector via social media. But, so it had been decided, this was the only solution for dealing with global risks and vulnerabilities. Humans could no longer be trusted. After the green revolution, AI was given absolute power. In the interest of the planet and in the interest of humanity.
Yet this was difficult to accept for our prisoner. When he realized that the AI that monitored him in the prison and took care of his well-being would never leave him, and when he found out about the new situation in which humanity got itself, he was no longer hopeful or triumphant. Is this what he and his group wanted when they risked their lives in their protests and in their terrorist activities in order to save the planet? Does this justify the bloodshed of the uprising? Is this the ideal his friend died for? She was so young, and such a wonderful person. His mood sunk low when he thought about her. In the train on the way to his new life, he started questioning everything. He tried to remember the old world. He tried to get his head around the problem that peopleās freedom had been traded for a green utopia, a Brave New World that turned out to be a new prison. Suddenly he felt the weight of the 20 years again, and when he looked out of the window the image of a burdened, pale middle-aged man stared back at him. The smile was gone.
Soon his train of thoughts and worries would be interrupted by a friendly voice that appeared to be concerned with his mental health and well-being, and that would be his guide and guardian for the rest of his life. He would always remain a prisoner.
Introduction: Two Hot Topics Combined, the Question Concerning Freedom, and the Aim of the Book
AI and climate change are both hot political topics, and how they relate and what kind of political challenges that relation raises needs more thought and discussion than it has received so far.
On the one hand, there is much excitement and fear about the new possibilities of AI. The availability of a large amount of data (big data), enhanced processing power, and advances in machine learning and natural language processing have led to smarter software and more autonomous systems, with applications in many areas such as medical diagnosis, translation, and autonomous transportation. The use of machine learning algorithms seems especially promising. As AI gets better and leads to spectacular successes, some dream of general AI that is human-like. Some stress the potential benefits; others fear that AI will take over and that human beings will be the slaves of AI ā perhaps merely their raw materials. Suddenly, or so it seems, technology becomes a political question: Who is in control? And what is AI and related technology already doing to us, for example, when we use internet-based services? Are users exploited for their data? Are we increasingly becoming the slaves of our devices and the companies that create the apps we use? Are we slowly but surely moving toward a surveillance society? Is AI threatening democracy? So-called ādigital authoritarianismā seems on the rise, as a report from NGO Freedom House suggests (Shahbaz 2018). It is mass surveillance led by the state: Big data and credit scoring help to nudge the behavior of citizens and other actors. China is already doing this with its infamous Social Credit System, a reputation system that keeps records of individuals to track and evaluate their trustworthiness, which is linked to other surveillance systems that use facial recognition and analysis of big data by AI. Is this also the future of Western democracies? And have we already traded some of our freedom for convenience and security, for example, when we mindlessly discharge our data to social media companies and uncritically accept extensive security control at airports?
On the other hand, there is much to do about climate change and what is increasingly known as the climate crisis. Rising greenhouse gas levels contribute to rising global average temperatures and the earthās biodiversity is decreasing rapidly. There are also other huge environmental challenges which seem related to climate change such as air pollution, ocean warming, and extreme weather events. All this has become not only a scientific but also a huge political topic. At least partly due to climate activism by, for example, the school strike movement, and Extinction Rebellion, climate change is now high on the political agenda at all levels, including the global one. Here, too, one of the political challenges concerns freedom: if our predicament is really that bad, should we leave people, corporations, states, and other actors free with regard to what they might (not) do about climate change, or should we enforce action, and, if so, in what way? Should authoritarian states such as China be the model for how to act, given that state-controlled action may be a more effective way of dealing with the climate crisis? Or should libertarian politics such as in the US be the model, largely leaving action up to individual actors themselves, thus preserving a high degree of freedom but without guarantee that there will be change ā or only change for the worse? Is there a middle way? How much freedom can we afford in times of crisis, and how much unfreedom can and should a liberal-democratic system tolerate?
How do AI and climate change relate, and what is the political dimension of this relation, especially in terms of freedom? AI may harm the environment and contribute to more global warming, for example, by increasing energy consumption of data centers and by requiring more of the earthās resources for producing smart devices. Consider, for example, the environmental impact of big data initiatives, which raises and ethical and political questions (Lucivero 2020). AI also has a material, physical dimension and this has an environmental footprint and impacts climate change. But AI and data science can also help us deal with climate change, for example, by enabling smart and clean transportation, air monitoring, and early warning systems. A report by PWC (2018) identifies a number of AI applications that may help us to deal with climate change challenges, including smart grids, optimized traffic flows, precision agriculture, and smart recycling. More generally, it is clear that AI is not just a threat but may also help to achieve more sustainability. For example, at the global level it may contribute to the UNās Sustainable Development Goals (Vinuesa et al. 2020). Yet it is not clear if such innovations will be sufficient for dealing with the climate crisis. What if companiesā insistence that they will develop AI for āthe earthā and use AI in a sustainable and climate-friendly way is just āethics washingā, a fig leaf for doing business as usual? What if they do change, but the effect is very small? What if little happens because effective political institutions for global governance of the climate (and AI) are lacking, that is, what if there is too much freedom? And what if AI-enabled measures to mitigate climate change are combined with authoritarian and freedom-threatening tendencies? Implementing the idea that AI will save the planet may well become very problematic when it comes to freedom.
Consider the following scenarios. If nothing is done in terms of regulation, corporations may use AI to analyze peopleās data, manipulate people toward more consumption, and enhance the efficiency of exploitation of the earth, thereby continue damaging the environment and the climate but also human freedom. People would then be used as mere means for corporate profit, without respect for their freedom. They would be reduced to data cattle and consumption machines. To some extent this is already happening today. As Marcuse and many post-war thinkers already taught us, so-called āfreeā democracies are not invulnerable to the rise of totalitarianism and, even if they do not become totalitarian, they may develop new forms of domination and unfreedom. If, on the other hand, the idea is to āsave the planetā and this is seen as a political priority, then radical climate activists or governments that want to implement green policies might argue that AI should nudge us into better environmental behavior, that we should heavily regulate many activities with the help of AI in order to render them more climate-friendly, or perhaps even establish a new kind of authoritarianism with AI in order to ensure the survival of humanity and other species ā for example, in the form described in the beginning of this chapter. Again, in this scenario humans would be mere means, but this time toward the end of saving the planet or humanity. In both scenarios, individual freedom is not a priority. Both scenarios use people as means and heavily threaten and damage human freedom. This is ethically and politically undesirable and dangerous, of course, especially if one cares about freedom and liberal democracy.
But what is the alternative, given that there seems to be an urgent need to deal with the climate crisis and other global risks and vulnerabilities, for example, crises caused by deadly viruses and potentially AI itself? How much and what kind of freedom can we have and should have under these circumstances? The leading questions in this book focus on the problem of freedom in the light of climate change and AI: Given the possibilities of AI and given the climate crisis, how much freedom can we afford, what kind of freedom do we want to have, and what are the conditions for freedom? Using resources from the history of political philosophy, such as ideas from Hobbes, Rousseau, Dewey, Marx, and MacIntyre, and connecting to contemporary debates about nudging, the Anthropocene, and posthumanism, this book discusses the question of freedom in the age of AI and climate change. In the course of the chapters, it explores, develops, and argues for a positive and relational conception of freedom and reflects on what this means for our political, technological, and environmental future.
