In the past few days of my trip to Tokyo, I happened to meet Professor Feng Liu, an old friend from the University of Tokyo who majored in computer science. When it comes to scientist Alan Mathison Turing (June 23, 1912 – June 7, 1954), the conversation expands to a lot of interesting content.
Scientist Alan Matheson TuringTuring is a famous British mathematician and logician, known as the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, and the founder of computer logic, who proposed important concepts such as "Turing machine" and "Turing test".
He assisted the British to crack Germany's famous cryptographic system "Enigma" and helped the Allies win World War II. The Turing Award was established to commemorate his outstanding contributions in the field of computing. Turing was also one of the famous gay men, but unfortunately because of his sexual orientation, he was killed by the British *** at the time. On December 24, 2013, Queen Elizabeth II announced the pardon of Turing.
In 1950, Alan Turing, the father of AI, was the first to propose that computer machines would emulate human thoughts. His ideas have aroused controversy and criticism in theological, mathematical and philosophical circles. Among them, theologians have proposed that God has endowed humans with immortal souls, giving them the ability to think that non-human species do not have. Because computer machines don't have souls, they can't think like humans. Turing, on the other hand, believed that whether or not creation would be endowed with souls was purely a decision of the creator God himself, and that human beings were only stewards appointed by God to govern all creation in the world.
First of all, it was proposed that computer machines would emulate the human mind, because in recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been regarded as the "Industrial Revolution 4."0", AI and its derived technologies, including "neural network" and "superintelligence", are considered to have the ability to plan, make value judgments, self-learn, self-repair and improve, and execute actions. As a result, AI is believed to have the ability and potential to even surpass human intelligence. AI, robots, automated systems, and driverless devices can be conceptualized as "nonhuman actors."
Artificial intelligence (AI) is seen as "Industrial Revolution 4."0".The topic is that machines, as creatures, may have the ability to think and act like humans, and even have the potential to surpass human intelligence. Therefore, it is appropriate to conceptualize AI as a "non-human actor".
In order to better understand the significance of non-human actors in the social sciences, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of the traditional social science concept of "human agency". In 1852, Marx proposed a far-reaching definition of "human actor". In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, he wrote: "Men have made their own history, but it is not done at will; They do not make history in an environment of self-selection, but in an environment that exists, determined and transmitted by the past. ”
To borrow from Marx, human actors are born with an innate ability to think, judge, plan and decide what actions to take. Although this subjective initiative is bound by objective historical factors and structural limitations, the actions decided and taken by the actors are also guided and promoted by the values, beliefs, ideals and commitments of the actors. In other words, everyone is born with the desire to be the true master of his or her own life, to reshape his or her personal destiny and even his collective history, but the outcome is not up to the actor to decide.
Since then, the "agency" and the "structure" have formed a dialectical relationship of binary opposition. Structures of a lasting nature (including institutions, laws, rules, systems, linguistic grammar, cultural customs, etc.) also limit the will of the actors, determine the options and courses of action, but also allow the actors to use and achieve their own goals through the structure. The structure has a "duality" that can contain and assist actors at the same time.
Since then, the "agency" and the "structure" have formed a dialectical relationship of binary opposition. Since not all actors have the same conditions, abilities and freedom to use or structure to achieve their goals, some are better able to reshape their own destiny than others. For this reason, the development of sociology, political science, and international relations theory can be roughly divided into two major schools.
The first is a theory that focuses more on actors: it includes the schools of symbolic interaction, constructivism, liberalism, and some Marxist schools that value "collective actors". This group favours the ability of actors to change the structure of decision-making.
The second school is more structure-oriented theories, including structural functionalism, Marxist dialectical historical materialism, and political realism. This school of thought tends to focus on the analysis of structural constraints that determine actors and structural changes.
Because the original intention of the above two theories is to explain the actions of individuals and organizations; Non-human actors are not their concern. Taking AI as an example, it is difficult to propose that AI, as a non-human actor, has the potential to reshape the structure and change the fate of the machine itself and change history, but we cannot rule out these potential possibilities. Therefore, although the subjectivity theory of human actors and non-human actors is not the same, the core definitions and the relationship between the two and their structures are mutually referential, and even potentially common.
So someone will be more able to reshape their own destiny than othersIn recent years, the study of war has also shifted to focus on non-human actors. One of the main concerns of war studies has been the evolution of indirect warfare. War is a continuation of politics. In order to achieve political goals at the lowest cost, human warfare has gone through five generations of development.
The first generation of warfare is a typical direct combat between man and man on the battlefield, such as direct physical conflict and direct warfare with cold weapons.
The Second Generation of Wars arose in the Peace of Westphalia (a series of peace treaties that marked the end of the Thirty Years' War in Europe, a major international war that broke out in Europe from 1618 to 1648). and before the English Civil War, and extended to World War II. The development of smoothbore guns has made it possible to use more accurate indirect combat media, such as bullets and artillery shells, to engage in indirect warfare both on and off the battlefield,** including rifles, mortars, rockets, torpedoes, and missiles.
The third generation of warfare has always existed. This includes espionage and counter-plotting tactics, which were particularly useful during the Cold War. The use of infiltration and compromise tactics allows the war to be fought outside the battlefield for most of the time, with the aim of first disintegrating the enemy's army from the inside and even collapsing, so as to achieve the effect of "surrendering without a fight".
Including espionage and counter-tactics, which were particularly useful during the Cold War **War emerged during the Cold War to blur the lines between politics and warfare with the aim of turning civilians into warriors off the battlefield. Combined with information warfare, cyber warfare, religious extremism, identity politics, socio-economic class struggle, and mass movements, it has become a kind of hybrid tactic. **War also includes "cerebral cortex warfare": the continuous transmission of information to the brain of the target population to stimulate emotions (such as anger and pain) and stimulate the masses to participate in demonstrations and other activities.
The fifth generation of warfare emerged after the Cold War. Hybrid warfare tends to be more indirect and immediate, and is conducted through "non-human-kinetic" military operations, that is, "non-human war agencies" such as robotic fighters supported by AI and automated systems, automated cyber attacks, drone swarms, and unmanned control installations.
This process of change also reflects the possibility that human actors can be "constituted" by other human actors and non-human actors, probably since the beginning of the war. For example, the use of AI-controlled information warfare, through social ** to carry out cerebral cortex warfare and launch automated cyber attacks, to achieve the effect of indirect warfare with a volatile regime.
The possibility that human actors can be "constituted" by other human and non-human actorsIn the 80s of the 20th century, the revival of new economic sociology in the United States directly challenged the core fields of economics, "firms" and "markets", focusing on the social construction of economic behavior, and establishing the hegemony of the "network analysis paradigm".
However, mainstream scholars have focused only on human actors in the network and ignored non-human actions in the network. Unlike mainstream scholars, the "actor network theory" of the narrative school that has emerged in France in recent years defines "actors" in a broad sense, including both human and non-human beings. The two are unified in a "complex network of heterogeneity". But how do non-human actors connect and interact with each other without agency? The "actor network theory" realizes the agency of non-human actors through the identity of human actors as "escapees", that is, human actors constantly transform non-human actors into their own thinking patterns and languages, and when human actors translate the roles of non-human actors, human actors and non-human actors are intertwined with each other, constructing a dynamic, evolving, and inseparable network of actors.
Therefore, the market is not the result of independent human monistic actors, but the result of a joint construction of human and non-human multiple actors. Therefore, the "new new economic sociology" focusing on human actors and non-human actors has quietly emerged in the West in recent years, and it may become a new round of research in the field of economic sociology in the future.
Rather, it is the result of a co-construction of multiple human and non-human actorsIn recent years, unexplained phenomena such as extraterrestrial beings have also added another layer of significance to non-human actors, namely the study of the wisdom, decision-making, thinking, judgment and action of "extraterrestrial nonhuman actors".
In sum, the impact of non-human actors on future societies transcends anthropocentrism and geocentrism assumptions of modernity and the tenets of the Age of Enlightenment. Human actors are only one unit of socio-political reality, not only limited or facilitated by structures, but also develop social, economic, political and structural relationships with non-human actors.
Unexplained phenomena such as extraterrestrial civilizations and creatures that are gaining increasing attention"Ten Miscellaneous Feelings: Rhymed with the Wild Sand Shore, the Clear Sky, the High Autumn Moon", Song Lu You
Lu fished the Weishui waterfront and said to build Fu Yanye.
Although it is said that in ancient times, there were few Deshigai.
The heavens will start to control the chaos, and the talents will have to give up.
To the non-ten thousand bull power, which one is the building?