Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Wijsbegeerte - Volume 116, Issue 4, 2024

When is AI environmentally just?

In recent years, increasing attention has been drawn to the environmental impact of AI. Particularly, the development and training of AI systems require significant amounts of energy, water, and raw materials. This raises new ethical questions, such as: when is it (un)justifiable to develop an AI system, considering its environmental impact? This question has been scarcely addressed in the academic literature. To tackle this question, this article draws from the literature on environmental and energy justice. In that field, three categories of justice are distinguished, referring to three elements that can be unjust: the distribution of benefits and burdens (distributive justice), decision-making procedures (procedural justice), and institutionalized social norms (justice as recognition). Based on these distinctions, we outline the criteria for determining the ethical admissibility of AI, given its ecological impact.

Algorithmic Justice

Algorithmic bias can lead to harmful forms of algorithmic discrimination. In this article, I argue that technology does not exist in a vacuum and is always part of power relations. I therefore criticize technological fixes that reduce social problems to a technical solution. Dominant solutions like ‘debiasing’, while important, avoid questions about deep-rooted injustices. They ‘accept’ and work with and within the frames of existing social (power) structures. Justice requires considering the structural dimensions of inequality. I draw attention to Langdon Winner’s call to ask whether a technology is ‘just’ rather than approaching the issue of algorithmic discrimination from a solutionist angle of optimization and functionality. I propose that we draw inspiration from the work of philosophers who approach justice from a structural or systemic perspective. This results in a philosophical approach that stretches the concept of ‘discrimination’ and exposes the relationships between inequalities. Moreover, it questions the structures and boundaries in which the technology is embedded. Finally, I criticize the current hype around AI that distracts us from the fact that we have had existential problems with AI for a long time and that these problems are deeply intertwined with (the history of) our social power relations.

Coping with death in the classroom. A trajectory for beginning primary school teachers

To support beginning teachers in primary education to deal with death in the classroom, a community of practice developed a trajectory for a pedagogy of death. Negative pedagogy, a movement within humanities pedagogy, was chosen for the theoretical foundation of this trajectory. Negative pedagogy is about the beginning of formative processes and their development. Gadamer’s hermeneutics is an important source of inspiration. Buck adopts from Gadamer that negative experiences are at the beginning of formative processes and that the course of these processes has a circular structure. Koller criticizes Gadamer and Buck, because they assume that there is continuity between the old and the new horizon. This makes it impossible to learn something completely new. To solve that problem, Koller follows Waldenfels who developed a phenomenology of the radical strange. When confronted with the radical strange, the old horizon is set aside and a new horizon emerges. According to Koller, this involves crisis situations, including the loss of a significant other. Furthermore, Buck and Koller adopt Gadamer’s idea that the humanities are about historical knowledge. That means, we cannot give recipes for the pedagogical action because each child is unique and each situation is different. However, we can practice judgment by reflecting with teachers on cases.. In this way, we offer them an action orientation for future situations in the classroom.

Are philosophers neglecting human prehistory? A reaction

In a recent issue of the ANTW, Corijn van Mazijk regrets philosophers’ complete (sic) lack of interest in human prehistory. He proposes a new (sub-) discipline: philosophy of prehistory. However, much research along these lines has already been conducted, not least from the phenomenological perspective Van Mazijk recommends, both by philosophers and archaeologists. This research can stimulate a philosophy of early hominin lifeworlds, intentionality and agency, which thus does not have to start from scratch.