AI Youth and Future Generations

In Scroll 18 of Homer’s Iliad, Thetis the Sea Goddess arrives at the house of Hephaistos the God of Blacksmiths and Craftsmen. She finds Hephaistos busy with his bellows, hard at work, “making twenty tripods which were to stand by the wall of his strong-founded dwelling. And he had set golden wheels at the base of each so that of their own motion they could wheel into the immortal gatherings, and return again – marvels indeed to see.”

Information organisms or “inforgs” flourish by experiencing reality as “onlife” – (online and offline, analogue and digital). In the infosphere, the AI Tripods go off on their own on wheels of gold. Marvels that travel to the “inforgs” everywhere, and even more marvellous are the craftsmen and blacksmiths who build and train the AI Tripods using digital gold.

These AI Tripods automate routine monotonous tasks, make conclusions from big data quickly, and grasp and extract relevant data needed for analysis. But the Tripods also hallucinate and create digital clones, deep fakes for humiliation rooms, and misinformation for mass dissemination.

Many things were swept beneath the banana trees with a narrative that dwells on tangible accoutrements of day-to-day life in the West Indies by Derek Walcott in Omeros. The theme of Omeros is not a parallel, putting the Iliad or the Odyssey as an overlay over rustic fishing villages like San Souci and Parlatuvier. It is not a referential this-equals-that. It delves deep into the anxieties of history.

In a stage version of the Odyssey, Walcott keeps the shape of the Cyclops episode and its structural role, but refines what a modern audience might plausibly find “monstrous.” He brings us face-to-face with modern lifestyles that alter the form and the face of the Cyclops. The Cyclops of the e-Age may become the pieceworkers and gig workers who labour below the interfaces.

The quest for non-biological intelligence does not give priority to the natural. It treats all forms of existence, and gesture as authentic, including ICT-mediated interactions with biological agents, and synthetic engineered artefacts. Through the interplay of agency and socio-political structure, humans will develop a habitus typical of their location in the infosphere. This will then reproduce new forms of domination and hierarchy. Classes will distinguish themselves through hybrid and artificial life.

The economic and political geography of AI assemblages will foster opulence in the “Flat World” and a “Fourth World” of social exclusion in other places. The AI Tripods on wheels of digital gold may deepen polarization in societies between the few over the machines, and the countless below the interfaces.

At the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York, in September 2024, world leaders adopted a “Pact for the Future.”  The Accord includes a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations. It covers a broad range of themes including digital cooperation, human rights, and youth and future generations. The Compact is moored in the anchorage of international human rights law. All human rights, including civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, and fundamental liberties must be valued, protected and promoted online and offline.

The Accord recommends a host of national digital inclusion surveys with data disaggregated by income, identity, ethnicity, migration status, age, race, disability, geographical location, and other features relevant to national contexts. The Pact recognizes that digital public goods, including open-source software, open data, open AI models, open standards, and open content that adhere to privacy and other applicable international laws, standards, and best practices can empower societies to direct digital technologies to their development needs. This in turn attracts cross-border digital cooperation and investment.

The need to invest in resilient Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) that is safe and inclusive is highlighted in the Accord. Interoperable digital public infrastructure has the power to deliver citizen-facing services at scale and increase social and economic opportunities. Multiple models of digital public infrastructure allow each society to develop bespoke digital systems that highlight specific developmental priorities and needs. Such digital public infrastructure must be safe and display user-centred safeguards to nurture public trust in e-identities and the use of citizen-facing digital public services.

The Accord also recommends investing in and deploying resilient digital infrastructure, including satellites and local network initiatives, that provide network coverage to all communities, including rural, remote and “hard-to-reach” areas, and promote equitable access to satellite orbits.  The Treaty recommends connecting all schools and hospitals to the Internet, building on the Giga initiative of the ITU and the United Nations Children’s Fund, to enhance telemedicine services and capabilities. This will certainly ignite the slow fuse of the “One Patient One Record” agenda.

The Compact is development-oriented and grounded in the 2030 Agenda. The hope is that cooperation will harness technologies and AI Tripods to fast-track progress, eradicate poverty, and leave no one behind. These initiatives require targeted struggles to address the needs of developing countries, the least developed states, landlocked developing nations, and Small Island Developing States, as well as the specific challenges facing middle-income countries. In this vein, Pat Bishop reminds the world that “Until all have crossed, none have crossed, and we still have some to carry.”