Praxis, or the Yugoslav Search for Man: Thinking and Human Self-Realization in the Age of Generative AI
Abstract: In this talk I will propose praxis as an essential concept for the study of human-centered Artificial Intelligence. The importance of this concept, outlined by the Yugoslav Praxis school of philosophy in the 1960s and ‘70s, is particularly evident in the analysis of the impact of generative Artificial Intelligences (GenAI) such as ChatGPT on human self-realization, thinking, and creativity. For the Yugoslav philosophers, emancipated from Stalinist thought and ideological censorship already in the 1940s, the central concern of Marx’s thought was man as a being of praxis, i.e., “as a being capable of free creative activity by which he transforms the world, realizes his specific potential faculties, and satisfies the needs of other human individuals” (Mihailo Marković). Unlike “practice,” usually understood in opposition to theory, praxis stands for human potentiality which, in certain adverse situations, may be impeded. Does GenAI present such an impediment? Debates about ChatGPT’s potential in the tech industry, business, and Anglophone universities have centered on its creative or destructive capabilities. However, what this technology makes clear above all is that the mastery over writing and form is not exclusive to humans and should not be the primary focus in the cultivation of the mind. The real issue at stake is, again, our ability to think, as Hannah Arendt wrote around the same time that the Yugoslav philosophers were developing their critical Marxist Humanism. With these propositions in mind, I ask: how does ChatGPT impede or, conversely, facilitate human self-realization? What happens when thinking, or the “soundless dialogue (eme emautô) between me and myself, the two-in-one” (Arendt) is externalized and relegated to an AI? I conclude by making specific proposals about what a New Praxis school of philosophy can contribute to the understanding of thinking as the essential feature of human self-realization in the age of GenAI.
Author bio: Ana Ilievska holds a Ph.D. degree in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago (2020), and a BA and MA in Romanistik and Comparative Literature from the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (2011, 2013). Prior to joining Stanford, she was Humanities Teaching Fellow in the College and the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago (2020-2021) and Adjunct Lecturer at the Università degli Studi di Catania in Sicily (2020) where she was also a Fulbright doctoral scholar. Currently, she is Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center as well as board member and membership secretary of the Pirandello Society of America.
Recorded Presentation | 26 April 2023
#GenerativeAI #Culture #Yugoslavia #EuropeanSouth
