6 Questions We Should Ask Before Adopting a New Technology

I stumbled across this message on mastodon, that directed me to 6 questions what one should ask before adopting a new technology. These questions where posed by Neil Postman, a writer and academic quite some time ago. A reply in that same thread add a link to a 1988 talk where he expands one them.

• What is the problem that this new technology addresses?
• Who’s problem is it?
• What problems do we create by solving this problem?
• Which people and which institutions might be harmed by a technological solution?
• What changes in language occur as the result of technological change?
• Which people and which institutions will acquire economic and political power when this technology is adopted?

These questions and the whole talk are acutely relevant today, in the light of generative artificial intelligence, and how it is imposed on everyone.

Whenever I hear about about advantages or usages of generative AI, I always think about the problem they supposedly address, and whether they actually really solve it rather than the symptoms, and what would be needed to actually solve the problem. And unsurprisingly, generative AI hardly ever solves any real problem when it comes to research or education. The latter is also addressed in Neil Postman’s talk above.

Here are two books that are on my reading list, that are relevant to the talk and topic:

• The AI Con - How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, by Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender

• The Mechanic and the Luddite - A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism, by Jathan Sadowski.

Here is another set of questions, specifically about AI/LLMs, that are proposed by Dr Gwen Varley in her Ethics of ChatGPT and AI video. The question come towards the end the video (31:18), but I suggest you listen to the whole thing.

Whenever we face a new technology, especially when branded as new and inevitable by those that sell it, we should ask ourselves:

• Is it actually new? In what way, specifically?
  • If it’s not new, who is trying to present it as novel, and why? What is the narrative? *Whose** technology are they attempting to rebrand, and why?
• Who (if anyone) was asking for this technology?
  • Is it a hammer in search of nails?
    • Does it have a discernible business model?
• Who benefits from it? How do they benefit?
  • (Profits? Political power? Shifts in social norms?)
• What are the costs of the technology? Who bears those costs?
  • Includes economic bit also environmental and social costs.
• What resources (including labour - whose?) are powering this technology? Are any of these resources being stolen or gained through exploitation/
• How is the introduction of this technology similar to (or different from) historical examples of past technologies? What can we learn from this?
  • Does the technology claim to be ‘neutral’ or ‘unbiaised’?
    • Technology is a mirror (of the values their creator)