Herbert Marcuse is still relevant in the age of AI

Herbert Marcuse, a German-American philosopher of Frankfurt School or Critical Theory spoke about the dangers of technology that would subsume humanity encompassing elements of life and in replacing political rationality. Herbert Marcuse was born on July 19, 1898 in Berlin in to a upper middle-class Jewish family.

Marcuse left Hitler’s Nazi Germany in 1933 and joined a branch of the Institute of Social Research in Geneva. Later, Marcuse migrated to America in 1934 and started his teaching career at the Columbia University. Herbert Marcuse passed away on 28th July 1979 and continues to be relevant in the age of Artificial Intelligence (AI). He viewed technology as a social process and during this course a new rationality and new standards of individuality different to that of existing social order. It is in this backdrop that Marcuse proposed ‘technological rationality’ or ‘technical rationality’ first in 1941, which he developed it in his 1964 book One-Dimensional Man.

Herbert Marcuse views technology as a mode of production and technological progress has the potential to free humans from drudged manual labour. For him, true freedom for human beings will be the freedom from labour and this would be possible only through the introduction of technological rationality. However, this technological rationality would change its original rationality that was envisaged for its purpose. Such change would bring in totalitarian nature of the technology.

Further, it would subsume and usurp the liberty and freedom of human beings and would promote authoritarianism and would replace ‘political rationality’ of human beings. Technology in its own way is autonomous in nature, where it develops on its own terms and laws and is deterministic in nature. The contemporary world, for instance, looks at AI as unavoidable development in the journey of technology. Technology has two sides, where technology in a positive way enhances economic prosperity, social progress, freedom and democracy, while on the other hand the same technology has a negative side of instrumentalisation, domination of humans, tyranny, alienation, etc. It is at this juncture that it is important to revisit Herbert Marcuse’s ‘technological rationality’ in the context of AI. Today, humanity stands at the crossroads of AI with every debate concerning innovation in general and technology in particular is being centred around AI. We already have the likes of ‘ChatGPT’ and ‘Meta’ doing classroom assignments and stepping in to creative cognitive abilities of human beings. Marcuse through his ‘technological rationality’ initially envisaged that technology would reduce the hard labour thereby freeing human beings from labour work. The leisure time gained due to technology intervention would be used by human beings to pursue their creative abilities.

Interestingly, AI in addition to reducing obvious human labour has also the potential to step into the creative cognitive world of human beings. Such change of technological rationality in to a new rationality would only defeat the purpose of the AI. This is where Herbert Marcuse cautioned the human world about the transformation of technological rationality in to authoritarian and where in the new technology (in this case AI) would act as an instrument for control and domination.

The AI-induced mode of production would not only enhance the supply of consumer durables, but it would soon make human beings identify themselves with their commodities, which is happening already around us in the smart phone, smart watches of hi-fi set, kitchen equipment and tech-based consumer durables. Once AI is much more accessible to the general public and it steps in to every household, which is unavoidable, a balance need to be established so as to ensure that the AI does not change its rationality

into a new one. It is in understanding the philosophy of AI that Herbert Marcuse is much more relevant today compared to his times. It is in understanding AI in its totality and making an appropriate AI policy would be the perfect tribute to Herbert Marcuse, whose 126th birth anniversary and 55th death anniversary fall in this month, July.