6 Questions We Should Ask Before Adopting a New Technology

I stumbled across this message on mastodon, that directed me to 6 questions what one should ask before adopting a new technology. These questions where posed by Neil Postman, a writer and academic quite some time ago. A reply in that same thread add a link to a 1988 talk where he expands one them.

• What is the problem that this new technology addresses?
• Who’s problem is it?
• What problems do we create by solving this problem?
• Which people and which institutions might be harmed by a technological solution?
• What changes in language occur as the result of technological change?
• Which people and which institutions will acquire economic and political power when this technology is adopted?

These questions and the whole talk are acutely relevant today, in the light of generative artificial intelligence, and how it is imposed on everyone.

Whenever I hear about about advantages or usages of generative AI, I always think about the problem they supposedly address, and whether they actually really solve it rather than the symptoms, and what would be needed to actually solve the problem. And unsurprisingly, generative AI hardly ever solves any real problem when it comes to research or education. The latter is also addressed in Neil Postman’s talk above.

Here are two books that are on my reading list, that are relevant to the talk and topic:

• The AI Con - How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want, by Alex Hanna and Emily M. Bender

• The Mechanic and the Luddite - A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism, by Jathan Sadowski.