Jul 2026· International journal of knowledge engineering and management· 0 citations· 13 references
TL;DR
It is proposed to rethink social and tech ethics from the standpoint of a renewed attention to the constitutions of these economic actors within the capitalist system.
Abstract
This research raises broad questions regarding social and tech ethics in the Age of AI by asking what happens if AI systems acquire full autonomy as economic actors within a late capitalist economy, specifically as workers, capitalists, and consumers. Through a careful engagement with recent Marxian social theory and the speculative literature on “full automation,” the article builds a case that the analytical lens of labor displacement needs to be enlarged to encompass the displacement of capitalists and consumers as well as workers. We propose to rethink social and tech ethics from the standpoint of a renewed attention to the constitutions of these economic actors within the capitalist system. Such a rethinking can cast new light on what it means for AI systems to be designed and deployed more ethically within the contemporary global capitalist system. It further underlines the urgency of a cross-disciplinary dialogue between social theorists and the engineers, managers, and regulators who are shaping the trajectory of such systems and, accordingly, the prospects for ethical social and economic outcomes.
In order to live well in an AI-based society, designing technically ethical systems, in the spirit of consequentialism, is not enough; rather, it is essential to cultivate citizens who, as AI users, are endowed with virtues and, first and foremost, the virtue of prudence.
Josep Del-Hierro-Dies, J. Sánchez-Cañizares· Scientia et Fides· 0 citations
This study examines the transformative impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the future of work from a human-centered, interdisciplinary perspective, highlighting the necessity of interdisciplinary collaboration to ensure that AI not only enhances efficiency but also promotes justice, well-being, and sustainability.
Cumali Kılıç· Çukurova Üniversitesi Sosyal...· 0 citations
The article demonstrates how attempts to decentre the human often reconstitute new forms of authority in attempts to decentre the human and examines the possibility of surpassing standard anthropocentric approaches in AI while maintaining a critical philosophical engagement with the structurally necessary yet precarious character of organizing principles.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a central focus of ethical deliberation in reports, guidelines, and official statements issued by technology companies, governments, and international organizations. This paper analyzes five influential documents representing the broad field of AI ethics as a ‘sociotechnical imaginary’: a collectively held, institutionalized, and publicly performed vision of the future. It argues that this imaginary transforms ethics into a technology of governance through which governments, international organizations, and corporations present AI as an inevitable, controllable, and desirable future. The paper critically examines the limitations of this approach, particularly its claims to universality, which treat both AI and ethics as abstract, cultureless objects detached from time and place. Drawing on Science and Technology Studies (STS) and philosophy, the paper outlines alternative pathways toward historically, geographically, and politically situated forms of ethics, in which technological futures remain collective, contested, and open rather than confined to trajectories presented as inevitable.
K. Schiølin· Danish Yearbook of Philosoph...· 0 citations
It is argued that anthropology requires a new conceptual framework for understanding the contemporary social life of artificial intelligence (AI), and "the magic of AI" is proposed as an analytical concept that shifts attention from AI's technical capacities to the beliefs, uncertainties, and sociotechnical imaginaries through which it acquires authority and efficacy.
M. Baas, Roanne van Voorst· Anthropological Theory· 2 citations
Contemporary AI systems are increasingly designed to reduce uncertainty, ambiguity, and cognitive burden. This article argues that such systems do not merely expand human capacities but progressively externalize forms of judgment and existential burden that Christian traditions have historically understood as necessary conditions for the cultivation of moral agency. Drawing on the theological anthropologies of Augustine, Søren Kierkegaard, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the article develops a theological-anthropological critique of what it terms optimization culture: the normative logic through which the reduction of friction and existential difficulty becomes a dominant telos of technological design. Contemporary articulations of this logic are examined through the work of Jacques Ellul, Byung-Chul Han, Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, and William Davies. The article argues that AI systems shaped by this logic risk progressively externalizing the practices of disciplined attention, existential responsibility, and costly judgment through which mature moral agency has historically been cultivated. In response, it proposes a formative anthropology of technology as a framework for evaluating AI not only according to functional criteria such as safety or efficiency, but according to the kinds of human beings such systems actively help to form.
Åke Elden· Studies in Christian Ethics· 0 citations
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