Logo: to the web site of Uppsala University

This treatise considers how interaction with existing and future forms of algorithmic technologies could affect the expression of human agency and autonomy and how this, in turn, might affect the way in which humans make sense of themselves in the world. The risks arising from human–AI interaction that are taken into consideration are tied to changes in the expression of human agency and autonomy and to changes in the content-structure of worldviews. The opportunities and risks that are most pressing to consider on this view are not those that result from what present and future forms of AIs might do to us, but those that are rooted in what we might do or fail to do, or in what we might become or fail to become, as a consequence of interacting with algorithm-intense environments. 

In the treatise, artificial intelligence is put into a wider context that includes earlier forms of industrial technologies and procedures. A comprehensive understanding of the relationship between human agents and technologies is developed, one that considers the conditions necessary for technologies to function properly, the social implications of technical macro-structures, the role of concrete technologies in everyday life, and new possibilities and temptations that arise as a consequence of new technologies. The concept of affordances is used to tie the human environment to worldviews. Humans confronted by and interacting with algorithmic technologies – with new affordance landscapes – are invited to test new practices. It is argued that, as new habits are formed, worldviews, in the medium and long term, tend to adapt to match new habits, and that rapidly evolving algorithm-intense conditions – ongoing engineering projects – are likely to undermine the viability of dominant – that is, modern – worldviews. Possible adaptive measures in response to this new condition are proposed and discussed, including the adaptation of worldviews, of the physical human agent, and of the speed with which societies re-engineer their environments.