The Human Imperative

This important new book is about power in the age of Artificial Intelligence. It looks at what the new technical powers that have accrued over the last decades mean for the freedom of people and for our democracies. AI must not be considered in isolation, but rather in a very specific context; the concentration of economic and digital-technological power that we see today. Analysis of the effects of AI requires that we take a holistic view of the business models of digital technologies, and of the power they exercise.

Technology, economic power, and political power are entering into ever closer symbiosis. Digital technologies and their corporate masters now know more than people know about themselves, or governments know about the world. These technologies accumulate more and more decision-making powers. Taken together this leads to a massive asymmetry of knowledge and power in the relationship between man and machine.

The classical models of action and decision-making in democratic societies are being gradually undermined by such developments. In a new way, the question of the control of technical power arises.

This is the first book to look in detail in a holistic way at the challenges of digital power and Artificial Intelligence to Democracy and Liberties, and to set out what can and needs to be done about these challenges in terms of engineering ethics, and democratic action of policy making and legislation.

Key audiences are scholars in media sciences, political sciences, computer sciences and engineering, law and philosophy as well as policy makers, corporate and civil society leaders and the educated public.

Adapted and updated from the original German language book "Prinzip Mensch - Macht, Freiheit und Demokratie im Zeitalter der Kunstlichen Intelligenz", published 2020 by Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachf. GmbH