Abstract
The rapid rise of artificial intelligence (AI) is posing a significant threat to democracy, challenging its fundamental principles and values. AI’s pervasive surveillance and infringement on privacy compromise the essence of democracy and diminish negative freedom. Furthermore, AI’s biased assessment of socially disadvantaged individuals exacerbates inequality and limits their opportunities for self-realization and political participation. In this context, the need for a new form of democracy suitable for the postdigital age becomes paramount. Adorno’s philosophy, as demonstrated in his work Dialectic of Enlightenment, offers valuable insights for understanding the domination of mythical AI and provides a fresh perspective for individuals influenced by the advancements of science and technology. Adorno’s negative moral philosophy serves as a guide for identifying the areas in which democracy needs to be reconstructed amidst the postdigital era. He argues that a new democracy must be forged at the intersection of AI, human surplus, and pain, where democracy is most vulnerable. Embracing Adorno’s philosophy becomes imperative to shape the postdigital society where humans and non-human entities coexist in harmony, upholding democratic principles and safeguarding human rights.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Acemoglu, D., & Restrepo, P. (2019). Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and Work. In A. Agrawal, J. Gans, & A. Goldfarb (Eds.), The Economics of Artificial Intelligence: An Agenda (pp. 197-236). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Adorno, T. W. (1971). The Culture Industry. Cinéaste, 5(1), 8–11.
Adorno, T. W. (1973). Negative Dialectics. New York: Seabury.
Adorno, T. W. (1975). Culture Industry Reconsidered. New German Critique, 6(1), 12-19. https://doi.org/10.2307/487650.
Adorno, T. W. (2000). Problems of Moral Philosophy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Adorno, T. W. (2020). Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life. London: Verso.
Allen, A. (2017). Adorno, Foucault, and the End of Progress. In P. Deutscher & C. Lafont (Eds.), Critical Theory in Critical Times: Transforming the Global Political and Economic Order (pp. 183-206). New York: Columbia University Press. https://doi.org/10.7312/deut18150-011.
Anderson, C. (2008). The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete. Wired. https://www.wired.com/2008/06/pb-theory/. Accessed 16 August 2023.
Ball, J., & Savin-Baden, M. (2022). Postdigital Learning for a Changing Higher Education. Postdigital Science and Education, 4(3), 753–771. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00307-2.
Berlin, I. (1958). Two Concepts of Liberty. Lincoln: Clarendon Press.
Brantlinger, P. (1983). Bread and Circuses: Theories of Mass Culture as Social Decay. New York: Cornell University Press.
Brunkhorst, H. (2004). The Enlightenment of Rationality: Remarks on Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment. In D. Rasmussen & J. Swindal (Eds.), Critical Theory Vol. II (pp. 65-72). London: SAGE Publications.
Carr, P. R. (2020). Shooting Yourself First in the Foot, then in the Head: Normative Democracy Is Suffocating, and then the Coronavirus Came to Light. Postdigital Science and Education, 2(3), 722–740. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00142-3.
Coeckelbergh, M. (2022). The Political Philosophy of AI. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Domaratzki, M., & Kidane, B. (2022). Deus ex machina? Demystifying rather than deifying machine learning. The Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, 163(3), 1131-1137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtcvs.2021.02.095.
Engelke, P. (2020). AI, Society, and Governance: An Introduction. Washington: Atlantic Council.
Foucault, M. (1995). Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage Books.
Gourlay, L. (2022). Surveillance and Datafication in Higher Education: Documentation of the Human. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00352-x.
Guidotti, R., Monreale, A., & Pedreschi, D. (2019). The AI Black Box Explanation Problem. ERCIM News, 116, 12-13. https://ercim-news.ercim.eu/images/stories/EN116/EN116-web.pdf#page=12. Accessed 16 August 2023.
Harari, Y. N. (2017). Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. London: Vintage.
Helbing, D., Frey, B. S., Gigerenzer, G., Hafen, E., Hagner, M., Hofstetter, Y., van den Hoven, J., Zicari, R. V., & Zwitter, A. (2019). Will Democracy Survive Big Data and Artificial Intelligence? In D. Helbing (Ed.), Towards Digital Enlightenment: Essays on the Dark and Light Sides of the Digital Revolution (pp. 73-98). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90869-4.
Honneth, A. (1986). Foucault and Adorno: Two forms of the critique of modernity. Thesis Eleven, 15(1), 48-59. https://doi.org/10.1177/072551368601500104.
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002). Dialectic of Enlightenment. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.
Jandrić, P., Knox, J., Besley, T., Ryberg, T., Suoranta, J., & Hayes, S. (2018). Postdigital science and education, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 50(10), 893-899. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2018.1454000.
Leslie, D., Burr, C., Aitken, M., Cowls, J., Katell, M. & Briggs, M. (2021). Artificial intelligence, human rights, democracy, and the rule of law: a primer, Brussels: The Council of Europe. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4639743
MacCallum, G. C. (1967). Negative and Positive Freedom. The Philosophical Review, 76(3), 312–334. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183622.
Mariotti, S. L. (2014). Adorno on the Radio: Democratic Leadership as Democratic Pedagogy. Political Theory, 42(4), 415–442. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591713505093.
McLaren, P. (2019). Reclaiming the Present or a Return to the Ash Heap of the Future? Postdigital Science and Education, 1(1), 10–13. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-018-0015-6.
Nemorin, S.. Vlachidis, A., Ayerakwa, K. M., & Andriotis, P. (2023). AI hyped? A horizon scan of discourse on artificial intelligence in education (AIED) and development. Learning, Media, and Technology, 48(1), 38-51. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2022.2095568.
Norberg, J. (2011). Adorno’s Advice: Minima Moralia and the Critique of Liberalism. PMLA, 126(2), 398–411. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2011.126.2.398.
O’Neil, C. (2017). Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. New York: Crown.
Örtegren, A. (2022). Digital Citizenship and Professional Digital Competence: Swedish Subject Teacher Education in a Postdigital Era. Postdigital Science and Education, 4(2), 467–493. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-022-00291-7.
Peters, M. A., & Besley, T. (2019). Critical Philosophy of the Postdigital. Postdigital Science Education, 1(1), 29–42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-018-0004-9.
Prunkl, C. (2022). Human autonomy in the age of artificial intelligence. Nature Machine Intelligence, 4, 99–101. https://doi.org/10.1038/s42256-022-00449-9.
Putterman, T. L. (2006). Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty: A Reassessment and Revision. Polity, 38(3), 416–446. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.polity.2300038.
Reader, J., Jandrić, P., Peters, M.A., Barnett, R., Garbowski, M., Lipińska, V., Rider, S., Bhatt, I., Clarke, A., Hashemi, M., Bevan, A., Trozzo, E., Mackenzie, A., Aldern, J.J., Matias, C.E., Stewart, G.T., Mika, C., McLaren, P., Fawns, T., Knox, J., Savin-Baden, M., Jackson, L., Hood, N., Tesar, M., Fuller, S., & Baker, C. (2020). Enchantment - Disenchantment - Re-Enchantment: Postdigital Relationships Between Science, Philosophy, and Religion. Postdigital Science and Education, 3(3), 934-965. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00133-4.
Risse, M. (2023). Political Theory of the Digital Age. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Sahlgren, O., & Laitinen, A. (2020). Algorithmic Fairness and its Limits in Group-Formation. Conference Paper. In Conference on Technology Ethics 2020. https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2737/FP_3.pdf. Accessed 16 August 2023.
Shermer, M. (2017). More than Human. The American Scholar, 86(2), 113-115. https://theamericanscholar.org/more-than-human/. Accessed 16 August 2023.
Simons, J. (2023). Algorithms for the People: Democracy in the Age of AI. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Solon, O. (2017). Deus ex machina: former Google engineer is developing an AI god. The Guardian, 28 September. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/28/artificial-intelligence-god-anthony-levandowski. Accessed 16 August 2023.
Stallabrass, J., & Paglen, T. (2011). Negative Dialectics in the Google Era: A Conversation with Trevor Paglen. October, 138, 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1162/OCTO_a_00063.
Turkel, G. (1990). Michel Foucault: Law, Power, and Knowledge. Journal of Law and Society, 17(2), 170–193. https://doi.org/10.2307/1410084.
Waelen, R. (2022). Why AI Ethics Is a Critical Theory. Philosophy & Technology, 35(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13347-022-00507-5.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Ethics Approval
This paper does not include research involving human subjects.
Competing Interests
The author declares no competing interests.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Park, S. Theodor W. Adorno, Artificial Intelligence, and Democracy in the Postdigital Era. Postdigit Sci Educ (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-023-00424-6
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-023-00424-6