Note on new technologies in China and on our human future

No-one who travels to China can remain indifferent to the impact of new technologies. It is much stronger here than, I think, anywhere else. Part of that impact is foreigner-specific and should be studied differently. By that I mean that foreigners, not speaking Chinese, and likewise Chinese not speaking foreign languages, are naturally driven to new technological devices to make up for the problems in mutual understanding. This does represent an improvement compared to the time before the Artificial Intelligence but a visitor might, at times, discover that the old-fashioned imitation of what one wants to see or where he wants to go, by waiving of hands, making gestures or reproducing noises, might produce a more accurate information that what the helpful locals might be able to convey from looking at their smart phones.

The second aspect which has been written extensively about in Western media is the use of new technologies for social control. To a visitor this is most obvious in inaccessibility of certain standard internet features, like Google, Yahoo or social media. For the Chinese this is much less of a problem because they use Chinese search engines and Chinese social media platforms, although I was told that Weibo (in Chinese) is not as good as Google. But that annoyance is, in my opinion, at least for several-week long stays in China minimal. I have stopped reading many of the Western MSMs several decades ago, and thus whether they are accessible or not, is a matter of indifference to me. I did miss a bit The Wall Street Journal and The Financial Times (which I read in print versions only anyway), but a number of other top Western publications like Le Figaro, La Vanguardia etc. are fully available. (I checked only the publications whose languages I speak.) So is, rather obviously, China Daily, that I read from time to time in New York, and which is fairly good in terms of simple news without commentary (with all commentaries, of course, expressing Chinese government views). Substack is available too—although it depends, seemingly, which search engine one uses. There is, I think, some randomness in the efficiency of the Great Chinese Firewall like in all human activities and AI is not an exception to that. (The situation was exactly the same 18 months ago when I was last in China.)

There are also interesting quirks as for example that Kommersant, the Russian Financial-Times-alike (whose political stance is liberal) is blocked, but other Russian media are not. Obviously, everything from Serbia, Croatia or other Balkan countries is fully free—the number of Chinese dying to read the Serbian news in the original probably being expressed in less than two digits. I suppose that the situation is the same with the media from other minor countries like the Baltics, Central America or Africa (but I have not checked).

There is a third, most important, element of new technologies that is more apparent in China since it has advanced more on that path than in (say) New York. It is in many cases total and thoughtless dependence on information provided by smart phones to the extent of ignoring any other common-sensical and rather obvious “real-world” information. One’s brain and common-sense seem to have been abandoned in favor of what the small brightly-colored screen tells us. In part, this is the product of an extraordinary segmented life-style we lead. Not once has happened to me to ask (I remember two almost hilarious scenes in London and Houston) where such and such place was and to be met with total bafflement-- when the place I was looking for was literally next door. The life that many people lead is so narrow: it involves going to one’s place of work (or even staying home for remote work), driving back home, driving to the mall, ordering goods on Amazon, and entirely ignoring everything else around. (Often, it involves driving to the restaurant, parking in the underground garage, and then driving back home: an evening of fun.) It fundamentally destroys all city life which consists precisely in knowing other people and places that are around us. Because of ubiquitousness of gadgets and because of problems of communication, that aspect has hypertrophied in Beijing. There is no intercourse (and I use this term in its generic meaning, but perhaps it may soon be used in its acquired meaning too) that does not, at the first step—and even several subsequent ones--involve consulting a third “person”: the Artificial Intelligence.

I have no doubt that there would be long-term effects of such excessive use of AI. I think that intuition which is one of key ingredients of knowledge will be substantially impaired: we often make judgments of people (“friend or foe”) or events based on intuition. If that function degenerates, one’s judgments will be much less accurate. Ability to learn would be less too. We may also expect a more generalized dumbing-down of the population. Some of that is already evident. On the other hand, contemporaries tend to exaggerate the negative impact of technological change. The fact that machines instead of people pick cotton has not made us physically weaker. We have substituted going to the gym for picking cotton. Perhaps we shall likewise replace thinking about people or about books by another intellectual activity. It is just hard for us, the contemporaries, to tell what it could be.

Erratum. Kommrsant is not blocked.

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