#5 Society and Technology Bulletin

^{Society and Technology (KÜME Foundation)}

In recent days, Howard University President Ben Vinson, speaking at MIT, in a lecture, drew attention to the need to preserve human dignity during the integration of artificial intelligence into our social life. Although Vinson is not an AI expert, this warning, which may initially appear as an abstract ethical sensitivity, lies at the heart of a concrete historical and political debate: What does human dignity mean, and how can it be preserved in this modern world where dignity cannot be discussed without reference to technology? Answers and perspectives vary.

One of the first areas where technology intersects with human dignity concerns the expansion of the individual’s concrete and physical capacities. For instance, technological tools that provide mobility, communication, or cognitive support to people with disabilities carry not only functional value but also an existential dimension. According to Amartya Sen’s theory of freedom, human dignity is tied to a person’s capacity to sustain a life they value. Thus, technologies that expand avenues for learning, communication, or participation in social life enhance the opportunity for self-realization. Such technologies are directly linked to dignity insofar as they enable individuals to realize their potential.

Yet technology is not always empowering. Sometimes it is controlling and exclusionary. One example is the proliferation of surveillance and surveillance technologies. Non-consensual surveillance threatens individual privacy and subjectivity. Foucault’s analyses of disciplinary power are illuminating here: Modern forms of power render individuals visible in order to discipline them, but this visibility also reduces them to objects. A person kept under constant surveillance begins to define their own existence through the gaze of others; this gives rise to a diminished existence based on internalized obedience.

Constraints on access to technological capabilities produce not only material deprivation but also symbolic exclusion. Martha Nussbaum’s capability approach argues that dignity requires not merely survival but a life in which human capacities can be fully realized. From this perspective, inequality in access to technology becomes both an injustice and a form of structural violence that stunts human potential. The individual excluded from society is impoverished not only economically but ontologically as well.

The impact of automation on labor carries a similar dimension. Work is no longer merely a source of livelihood for modern humans; it is one of the fundamental elements of identity formation. It is among the first things people cite when introducing themselves. As automation narrows this domain, it threatens not only income but also the ways individuals understand themselves. Marx’s concept of alienation retains its relevance here: When a person loses control over their labor, they become estranged not only from the production process but from their own humanity. When algorithmic processes replace meaningful work, individuals become not only economically but existentially displaced.

Perhaps the most alarming development is the increasing delegation of decisions shaping human life to algorithmic systems. When artificial intelligence replaces human judgment in areas such as healthcare, hiring, or law, it renders decision-making processes opaque and unaccountable, eroding individual subjectivity. Hannah Arendt’s warning about bureaucratic reason crippling human judgment must be recalled here. According to Arendt, humans can only reveal themselves in the world through speech and action. Yet decisions determined and explained by algorithms eliminate the human capacity to appear on the public stage. The individual reduced to a decision object loses the right to speak about their own life.

These examples reveal the relationship between technology and human dignity as a multidimensional and tension-filled domain. Technology can be an instrument of empowerment, but it can also become a mechanism of passivity.

Human dignity can be preserved in harmony with technology. But this is not an automatic process. Rather, every technological advance must be thought through alongside the political, ethical, and cultural questions it entails. Otherwise, what remains may be a more functional but dimmer, hollower form of humanity.

The human desire to delegate its own labor has taken various forms throughout history through automation systems. These systems, which repeat specific tasks, alleviate workload while leaving the decision of what to do in human hands. Today, however, this balance is being disrupted by artificial intelligence. We now face systems that not only carry out assigned tasks but also make decisions about what needs to be done. This transformation suggests that artificial intelligence, initially appearing as a sophisticated form of automation, is in fact something far more. So how different is artificial intelligence from automation, and in what ways is it more?

When we examine the history of automated machines, we are often inclined to view them as modern inventions shaped in the shadow of the Industrial Revolution. Yet the roots of automation, woven into the fabric of human history, extend much deeper. From automated water clocks conceived in the 4th millennium BCE to highly complex factory robots performing intricate functions, we have long been intertwined with automation systems across many aspects of life. Moreover, this relationship has not remained confined to a technical framework; it has found resonance in a broad intellectual terrain spanning from mythology to philosophy.

In Aristotle’s Politics, Hephaestus’s self-propelled three-legged cauldrons and machines capable of weaving without the hand of a craftsman have long occupied a place in the human imagination.

From the mechanical systems used by medieval miners to steam engines, from automation in automobile production to sophisticated robots capable of surgical intervention, today’s artificial intelligence emerges as the latest link in this long chain of automation systems. The practical functionality offered by artificial intelligence often leads us to perceive it as an advanced form of automation. Yet the reality is somewhat different.

Although they have intersected in certain historical domains, automation and artificial intelligence fundamentally address different problems. Traditional automation refers to the execution of a specific process or task according to pre-defined rules, in a repetitive and human-intervention-free manner. For example, an automatic door opens when its sensor is triggered and closes after a set period. Here, there is no talk of “intelligence”; only a programmed mechanism is operating. In contrast, artificial intelligence aims to transform machines from rule-bound systems into entities capable of learning from experience, recognizing patterns, and making complex decisions. Technically speaking, artificial intelligence systems can learn from data, adapt to their environment, and improve their performance over time.

This distinction leads machines equipped with artificial intelligence to become not merely functional but also decision-making agents. For instance, an elevator control software can flawlessly perform thousands of identical operations daily; yet when faced with an unexpected malfunction, it simply reports an error and halts. An ideal artificial intelligence system, however, can generate alternative solutions and demonstrate the ability to adapt to changing conditions.

Traditional automation systems mostly operate in the background and do not establish direct relationships with users. In contrast, artificial intelligence examples—from voice assistants and chatbots to humanoid robots and recommendation systems—interact directly with humans, endowing them with a social dimension. People may respond emotionally to machines exhibiting human-like behavior, assign them names, or even attribute personalities to them. This causes the relationship with artificial intelligence to carry not only functional but also ethical, political, social, and cultural dimensions.

Ultimately, automation is the product of humanity’s effort to delegate its physical abilities to machines, while artificial intelligence reflects the desire to transfer the workings of the human mind into the technological realm. One assumes human physical strength; the other is poised to share human cognitive capacity. Although both aim to improve quality of life, the question of what these goals should be remains unresolved.

🎧 The third episode of KÜME’s Society and Technology podcast series is now live!

In this episode, we examine the Türkiye Wide Survey Study (TWSS), one of Türkiye’s most comprehensive social research projects. We spoke with Zübeyir Nişancı and Tahir Kılavuz from the TWSS team about how such a large-scale data study is planned, what questions it seeks to answer, and what its findings reveal to us.

In this conversation focused on understanding society’s relationship with technology, we touch on numerous topics, from the impact of artificial intelligence on survey processes and public social media usage to perceptions of technology in Türkiye and the social implications of digitalization.

The technical capabilities and tools emerging in the age of artificial intelligence are reshaping our sense of self. As our relationship with the world changes, how do we continue to care for ourselves?

M. Burak Bakır’s article “Entering Trust in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” which explores artificial intelligence, modes of knowing, and the self, has been published!