The Inequality of Technology
The Danger of a Subconscious Existence…
Perry C. Douglas
Sociologist, Dr Alondra Nelson points out that one of the real blind spots in the fight against racial inequality or the pursuit of racial equity, is a lack of cognitive awareness and knowledge of the surrounding reality, relative to the impact technology has on the lives of Black people. Nelson says, “I think that if we want to understand anything about science and technology, we need to begin with the people who have been the most damaged, the most subjugated by it….” Black people have always been users of technology and its mediums, but not developers and owners of it.
The intersection of technology, and social inequalities is undeniable. Dr Nelson’s work explores science, technology, and medicine, in the context of what drives social inequality. Nelson has contributed to national policy discussions in the United States, on inequality, and the social implications of new technologies including artificial intelligence, big data, and human gene-editing. What is becoming increasingly clear for Black people is that we have failed to see or recognize what role technology, more particularly, data science plays in furthering inequality. So, when engaging data science in business and social environments, it often reinforces the existing structures of power and inequality that already exist. Therefore, if you’re not thinking in awareness you are living a subconscious existence; accordingly, critical thinking is important because most of the challenges we face are oftentimes opportunities in disguise. And we seldom come at it with a critical and intellectual eye, letting emotion dominate our thinking instead. Therefore, it is up to you to think clearly and quantitatively, to first understand the systemic environment and how to think through it.
Once you learn how to leave emotion and fear at the door, begin to think more mathematically, and take responsibility for your own life, you begin to see the silver lining in the challenges you face.
Another brilliant Black woman and thinker, Dr Timnit Gebru, researcher and Co-Founder of Black-in-AI, have also raised concerns about technology and inequality. Gebru is famously known for miring Google in scandal after she was “dismissed” as head of Google’s Responsible A.I. and Ethics research program after she criticized Google language models as discriminatory against Black people. And more recently, the New York Times wrote a story titled, Google Sidelines Engineer Who Claims Its A.I. Is Sentient; the main accusation being that “Google and its technology engaged in religious discrimination.”
Dr Gebru is one of the most high-profile people in her field, and a powerful voice in the new field of ethical AI, which seeks to identify issues around bias, fairness, equality, and social responsibility. Dr Gebru points out that AI is increasingly influencing our lives to a greater degree than we know, and without diversity in our set of researchers, programmers, executives, policymakers, and most importantly, entrepreneurs, others will continue to control and suppress our socioeconomic trajectory.
Therefore, to counter, we need to apply more robust quantitative thinking and intelligent framing of problems to our conscious decisioning ecosystem. Most importantly, we must fully recognize, as Dr Gebru points out, that if we don’t seek to play a meaningful part in building the technologies in the world, our relevance and existence in it as a species, will begin to fade more rabidly; relative to technology acceleration. We’ll have an inverse relationship to global growth and prosperity that other groups will enjoy in the new economy. The Black species will diminish greatly, marginalized and relegated to the non-prosperous bottom rungs of the universe — a place of powerlessness, irrelevancy, and despair.
So it is critical for those in leadership, including the wokeness industry — nonprofit organizations that claim to be about the economic advancement of Black people. To step into reality and execute in the real world, and stop the emotional delusions of trying to advance Black lives by attempting to change the hearts and minds of the oppressor. When are you going to realize that it doesn’t work and that economics is not a morality play, it’s a power play? Furthermore, if these organizations don’t even understand the reality of the universe, how can they be helpful to others about reality? So you are relegated to being stuck in illusion.
The push for Black folks must be aligned with truth, with the reality of one’s time and place in the universe, you can’t live in the past nor in the future, only the present, and present actions will design your future outcomes. The push must be strategic towards data science to be more diversified in business, social, and institutional environments because who controls the technology control the future of prosperity. And so, in addressing the Plenary Session at the World Economic Forum, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also expressed that whoever controls data will have control over the world in the future. Highlighting the importance of technology in present times, he said that data is real wealth. The global flow of data is creating big opportunities as well as challenges, he added. So if you are not aware of the reality of wealth creation, then wealth will be elusive to you, only existing in an obscure state of controlled hallucination as neuroscientist Anil Seth terms it.
Data science is a man-made extension of our natural environment, an extension of our consciousness. After all, technology didn’t come with nature, it is a human creation derived and aligned with adaptation for self-preservation. So, as in real life, power flows from those who have it, those who dominate systems. Technology then, as an artificial extension of nature just reinforces the inequality that already exists in the world. Don’t be delusional about technology, that it somehow levels the playing field or ushers in, equality.
Therefore, having well-rounded and diverse backgrounds of those involved in the technology infrastructures and environments is essential for having a balanced and more equitable society.
Accordingly, Black people need to think long-term because change won’t happen overnight, change must be invested in and requires a cultural mind shift to reality. Change begins at home, by pushing our children and culture into the 21st century; pushing more to math and science-based education, pushing the entrepreneurship mindset, creativity, innovation, and leadership. Not adherence to the status quo, the “safe” professions, which are no longer even safe in the digital era. Moreover, it is important to recognize that the education system, particularly our universities, is 20-years behind the new economy curve. So, playing it safe, staying in your comfort zone, and staying subconsciously harnessed to the past will only serve to keep you in the past, way behind the curve.
Remember entrepreneurship is the sophistication-of-self-preservation: first, we must survive before we can thrive.
We must be highly conscious about how we think, what we think about, and what we think we know. We must be highly conscious of our subconscious religion dominating cultural belief systems, and most importantly, be keenly aware of what we don’t know because most of what we do already know is wrong anyway. Rigorously seeking knowledge, a better understanding of how the world really works, and developing intelligence-based ecosystems to leverage that acquired knowledge to seek personal gain; is the name of the game!
Diversity and representation matter! So, while AI has the potential to solve an incredible spectrum of problems for humanity. Where Black people are concerned, there is a widening disconnect between the people who are introducing and deploying AI-based solutions, and those who set policies for when and how these solutions are allied. Without diversity along the entire supply chain, relative to developing algorithms and applications — entrepreneurship, the human bias and domination of the systemic environment by the majority will continue to direct the lives of Black people. There can be no doubt about that.
The racially marginalized groups will have an inverse relationship to technological advancement, and global prosperity, becoming dramatically less relevant in the future. There can be no power attained from the outside looking in — no relevance means no influence…no power. If Black people continue not to make a real effort to truly understand the laws of nature, continue to be lackadaisical, settling, non-disruptive of self, and always acquiescing to the delusional comfort of woke culture — nothing will change, the whining and complaining will only intensify.
According to Gebru:
Algorithmic bias in AI systems, in which machine learning algorithms trained on data that reflects historical discrimination replicate and even magnify it.
So wokeness won’t change a damn thing! Only methods and actions will — courage to advance your entrepreneurial involvement in technology is what leads to real wealth creation; power and privilege outcomes in the universe.
Software developers, engineers, tech entrepreneurs and innovators alike, similar to our broader society, also bring their human biases, experiences, and traumas directly to the keyboard. So it should be of no surprise about the adverse impact technology has on marginalized communities, pushing them further back into the shadows of irrelevancy and suffering — far away from wonderful opportunities in the 21st-century’s knowledge-based economy.
Often practitioners of data science say that generating a model is a way to predict the future. This is a common and dangerous misunderstanding of what a model does. Rather than predicting the future, a model projects the past into the future (Aisulu Omar, The Inequality in the Data Science Industry).
Therefore, just like everything else, algorithm development is influenced by the psyche, past experiences and stereotype influences seep into the writing of technology applications. In other words, your view of the world is not yours, it’s the technologist and the corporations, big data that are running the show, and your mind. I.e., Facebook’s cognitive algorithms influence your thinking and behaviour, setting your perspective and feelings. Black people are one of the biggest users of Facebook and the algorithms influence dramatically what they think, and post, shaping how they view issues, themselves, and the universe. So, whether they know it or not, heavy users of Facebook are more products of Facebook algorithms than themselves. The data also shows that most heavy posters are more unhappy than those who post infrequently, minimally, or not at all!
Therefore, a major effort to understand human consciousness from a cognitive and neuroscience perspective, how that translates to our surroundings, and artificial intelligence in affecting our lives is critical for the understanding of the future survival of the Black Species.
Consciousness matters, a whole lot, and all the time! It is the world, and self that fills our interior and exterior existence; so, our conscious connection to how we experience nature through technology will only increase exponentially in the future. Consequently, if we do not play a role in designing future experiences, we’ll become zombies in a world others continue to create and control.
The danger comes into play when those in control of the technology continue not to build toward a level playing field, but build extension bridges for their benefit and that of the majority group. This is very much just a part of the understanding of the sophistication of self-preservation — white supremacy culture dominance. Those in the know, the ones designing the system, look after their self-interest first, and can simply tweak the algorithms to their preferred advantages.
Immanuel Kant recognized how perception depends on the process of “judgment and inference” as we seldom have direct unfiltered access to the objective reality — to the truth. Our sensory data inputs are influenced heavily by the systems and structures around us, we are very much programmed by and dependent on the systemic environment — so nurture, not nature shapes our outputs. Our lives are dominated by intelligent technologies everywhere, influencing our subconscious existence tremendously. If we are not conscious of the power of our subconscious in influencing and directing our lives, then we will always fail to identify the asymmetries happening around us. Our existence will remain dominated by others unless we begin to adhere to reality; quickly!
Understanding the Black Swan theory is critical because it’s what we don’t know that impacts our lives most. What we don’t know, what we can’t see, and the lack of aggressively seeking access to information, technology, and knowledge-ecosystem economies hold us back exponentially. So, what we think or what we believe is of little consequence, in the end, and the only thing of consequence is what is real. What is true or not true. And the truth is the only true thing. Therefore, if, people of African descent everywhere don’t push themselves smartly into the new global economy, aligning with and participating in designing the rapidly evolving intelligent technologies, we will continue to be exploited by it. With no one other than ourselves to blame. So we must effectively leverage the digital era most cleverly, by first being aware of our surroundings. Otherwise, we’ll continue to be useful suckers for others to build their wealth, power, and privilege upon. Missed opportunities in tech entrepreneurship, for example, are missed opportunities for future prosperity, intergenerational wealth creation opportunities, and power. Wins or losses always reverberate over many generations, over many centuries, so figure things out, and fast! What do you want your legacy to be from your minuscule time on this planet? Take the necessary actions to make your life happen.
Winning or losing is up to you; always!
