Mark_Kumleben

Heidegger is against it, yes, but he's also clear that we're stuck within technology as a historical destining of Being. We can't just escape technology by thinking differently about it, but must wait heedfully for the historical development of Being (as he lays out in The Turning, just after QCT). In fact, the fulfilment of technology's own reductionism is a necessary step, as only the full concealment of Being in technology allows us to recognize that oblivion for what it is and thus to overcome it. As such, I think it's a reasonable argument to make that AI taking away the work of ordering for humans may help us escape the incomplete agency of ordering the standing-reserve so that we're no longer forced to merely see the world as standing-reserve.

By the way, I saw your comment about Heidegger and Asian religious philosophy below - are you familiar with the Kyoto school? I've signed up for the Halkyon Guild's upcoming course on Nishitani Keiji, and am vaguely hoping his theory of the self-overcoming of nihilism can be brought to bear on the questions Heidegger raises about technology.

For sure! Of course, the official website has it paywalled, so here's a Google Docs link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WL1F-sEazLeo8uFjNpPyFLak...

The Heidegger stuff is in the fourth section, 'Artificial Intelligence In Technological Society', but a rough summary: Heidegger argues that the essence of technology involves a command to human beings to order the world as standing-reserves of resources. Our specific place in this schema is as the being who can do the work of ordering, of revealing the world as orderable standing-reserve and then actually putting it into a particular order (e.g. of a supply chain). However, modern AI, with its emphasis on pattern-recognition, search, optimizing for a goal, etc., is also working towards that function. This has two implications. First, it suggests why AI research heads in this direction, because it's the way human intelligence manifests in the technological framework (and, thus, suggests that AI research could potentially benefit from trying to replicate other aspects of the human mind). Secondly, it means that modern AI might affect a Heideggerian theory of technology by making it possible for humans to delegate the work of ordering to AI, which wouldn't have appeared a possibility in Heidegger's day. If we can in fact hand off the task of ordering to AI, how should we do that and what effects might it have on human culture? While it appears a loss of agency, it may even have a liberating effect in the same way other technologies have liberated us from previous forms of labour.

Very interesting to see this on HN - Heidegger's theory of technology was ground-breaking then and has only become more timely.

If anybody has questions about this article, Mark Blitz was my advisor in grad school and I wrote an MA thesis applying Heidegger's theory to modern AI research. Happy to clarify any of the issues raised here since, even with Blitz's explanation, Heidegger can be a tough nut to crack.