Tocqueville and AI
Tocqueville argued that democratic peoples, having lost the poetry of heroes and gods, would find poetry in technology. Does AI justify this? TikTokers joke about tailoring their content to “ the algorithm ,” or, more cheekily, “ algorithm daddy. ” They title videos “ Censoring X so the algorithm will let me tell you Y ” and “ The algorithm doesn’t want you to know this. ” These influencers, laymen, use “the algorithm” to mean the self-supervised learning methods - the AI - that control their platform and shows their content to viewers. The AI we use today, including “the algorithm,” is not sentient and has no will of its own, as most people know. However, in making these jokes, influencers attribute will to AI, partly because personification is linguistically convenient, but also as a shorthand for more shadowy powers, perhaps governments or corporations. “The algorithm” offers these influencers a way to flirt with conspiracy, the idea of machinations from above, without going all ou...
