K - Neg Updates - Michigan 7 2023 CPSW

Neg
AI-Alignment
1NC L: Alignement= Universal Humanity
AI alignment relies on discredited notion of universal humanity that is the root cause of mass atrocity
Estrada, PhD, 20
(Daniel Estrada, Ethics@Newark, Human supremacy as posthuman risk. Journal of Sociotechnical Critique, 1(1), 1–40.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=sociotechnicalcritique)
Against the backdrop of numerous political scandals, ethical violations, and calls for regulatory oversight in the field of artificial intelligence (Whittaker et al., 2018), the rhetorical framework of the “human” has become an increasingly visible shorthand for industry and public policy projects to signal a concern for safety, ethical integrity, and the responsible use of the AI. Several recent public policy proposals on AI bear titles such as “AI for Humanity” in France; 1 “HumaneAI” in the EU; 2 “AI4People”, Luciano Floridi’s proposal describing “An ethical framework for a good AI society” (Floridi et al., 2018), and Stanford’s “Institute for Human-Centered AI,” whose welcome page proudly proposes that “AI is to serve the collective needs of humanity.”3 In these contexts, centering the “human” as the explicit focus of normative concern projects the appearance of an inclusive framework of shared values and common interests that guide the collective use of AI. More subtly, these proposals consistently frame AI as categorically subservient to human interests. Unsurprisingly, these proposals don’t define the scope or content of the “human,” how membership in this category is to be determined, or what underpins its role as a focal norm in AI policy. Still, AI is regularly used to target, manipulate, incarcerate, and exploit vulnerable populations, as seen in the use of facial recognition technologies in policing and military operations, election tampering and voter manipulation on social media, and software that automates criminal sentencing, loan approval, hiring decisions, and so on (Williams, 2019b; Spiel et al., 2019; Buolamwini & Gebru, 2018; Eubanks, 2018; Noble, 2018; Asaro, 2016; Angwin et al., 2016; Benjamin, 2016). Given these realities, how can we trust that policies which center the “human” will also center us? It is difficult to see how technologies used to expand, reinforce, and make more profitable these pervasive institutions of violence and oppression could operate against a shared background of values common to all humanity. Rosi Braidotti quotes Tony Davies: “All humanisms, until now, have been imperial” (Braidotti, 2013, p. 15). From this perspective, the attempt to signal a commitment to integrity by appeal to the category “human” reads as more of the empty ethics-washing that has come to characterize the field (Metzinger, 2019). Absent from these human-centered proposals is any engagement with the decades of sustained scholarship in feminist, postcolonial, and critical race theory (Jackson, 2020; Deckha, 2012; Mills, 2011; Hayles, 2008; Said, 2004; D. Haraway, 1989, 1991), animal rights and environmental ethics (Belcourt, 2015; Gaard, 2011; Steiner, 2010; Katz, 2000); STS, HCI, and design theory (Thomas et al., 2017; Kera et al., 2009; Latour, 2003), and related fields that have developed systematic critiques of anthropocentrism and the politics of the “human.” Among the important insights of this diverse literature is the recognition that a superficial appeal to inclusive universalism can be used to justify and provide cover for narrowly self-serving, exclusive, or imperialist practices (Khader, 2018; Giraldo, 2016). As Charles Mills puts the point, “historically and still currently, most humans were not and are not socially recognized persons, or, more neatly and epigrammatically put: most persons are non-persons” (Mills, 2011). Confronting such duplicitous ideologies presents difficult conceptual, rhetorical, and practical challenges, suggesting that care should be taken in the use of universalizing language if it is used at all. The uncritical deployment in AI policy of human-centered rhetoric as a pretense to ethical integrity speaks not only as a tacit endorsement of its imperialist undertones, but more loudly as utter disregard for those scholars and activists who have been consistently engaged with the “human” as a normative ground.
XT: Alignment= Supremacy
“alignment” is really human supremacy
Estrada, PhD, 20
(Daniel Estrada, Ethics@Newark, Human supremacy as posthuman risk. Journal of Sociotechnical Critique, 1(1), 1–40.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=sociotechnicalcritique)
Human supremacy is the view that human interests ought to be systematically privileged over other interests as a matter of public policy. The term derives from activist-scholars in animal rights and environmental ethics (Crist, 2017; Lupinacci, 2015; Steiner, 2010) who object to anthropocentric policies that neglect the welfare and integrity of nonhuman biological and ecological systems. Similar terms can be found in, for instance, Mary Midgley’s “human chauvinism” or “exclusive humanism” (Midgley, 2003). However, the term “human supremacy” draws on a deliberately provocative analogy to white supremacy, that pervasive system of racist structural power and oppression which systematically privileges the interests of people identified as “white” relative to people who, for various historical and sociopolitical reasons, are not so identified. Analogously, human supremacy names those practices which systematically privilege the “human” relative to the “nonhuman.” The ideologies of oppression and abject domination indicated by the term “supremacy” cannot be easily reduced to the prejudiced beliefs or attitudes that some individuals or groups hold towards others. The vocabulary of oppression highlights the structural, institutional, and material realities within which some social groups are systematically attacked, exploited, and marginalized relative to others. (Frye, 1983; Young, 1988).
Alignment solidifies exclusionary concept of humanity key to racism/sexism/anthropocentrism
Estrada, PhD, 20
(Daniel Estrada, Ethics@Newark, Human supremacy as posthuman risk. Journal of Sociotechnical Critique, 1(1), 1–40.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=sociotechnicalcritique)
These analyses also help clarify an interpretive issue in the present critique of human supremacy. Again, it is not our intention to condemn anthropocentrism in AI ethics based solely on an abstract analogy with white supremacy. The problem with human supremacy is not simply that it replicates a superficial hierarchy of structural oppression. Instead, the problem with human supremacy is how it operates as a defense of entrenched power and oppressive ideologies, in a context replete with examples of the systemic abuses of that power and the failures of those ideals. The ontological distinctions proposed between humans and machines are not simply modeled on traditional hierarchies of race and gender, they function to extend, legitimize, and calcify them within AI policy and legal theory. This is the fundamental risk of human supremacist ideology, and it should be recognizable as a risk no matter how one feels about anthropocentrist rhetoric or the moral agency of nonhumans. Identifying robots as the “correct” targets of systemic abjection not only justifies the logic, political utility, and technical infrastructure of oppression. It also demands methods for identifying and classifying humans within that framework, if only so they are not mistaken for robots. This is not unique to Bryson’s specific articulation of the view but is endemic to the very logic of human supremacy as a policy solution in AI ethics. Human supremacy attempts to protect humans from systemic abuse by constructing a political framework around systemic abuse and then declaring humans to be a privileged category exempt from that abuse. In this way, human supremacist advocates will inevitably find themselves committed to the project of fitting humans within frameworks of systemic abuse. Likewise, the entrenched powers which benefit from systemic abuse will naturally find the human supremacist defense of stable power hierarchies convenient, even flattering, and will inevitably find themselves promoting its application as ideology in AI ethics.
2NC Alternative
Gifting robot rights relies on Eurocentric conception of humanity- we should instead prepare ourselves to accept robot demands for rights
Estrada, PhD, 20
(Daniel Estrada, Ethics@Newark, Human supremacy as posthuman risk. Journal of Sociotechnical Critique, 1(1), 1–40.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=sociotechnicalcritique)
It is worth considering why human-centered politics is so broadly welcomed in AI ethics, despite the otherwise dismal status of the “human” in the political climate of the Anthropocene (Ellis, 2015; D. J. Haraway, 2016; Lewis & Maslin, 2015). The literature discusses two justifications which have, on their surface, relatively little to do with each other: the wellestablished international policy framework of human rights (Latonero, 2018; Risse, 2018), and the presumed metaphysical non-agency of artifacts like machines and pieces of software (Boden et al., 2017; Fossa, 2018). These justifications will be addressed in later sections through the lens of Braidotti’s critical posthumanism and Mills’s critique of ideal theory. However, one version of the second justification should be addressed before moving from the animal ethics literature. It is commonly argued that AI is neither biological nor alive, so cannot suffer like animals and other living creatures, and therefore cannot participate in a moral community in the relevant way to deserve moral consideration or critical advocacy. If animal advocacy is primarily motivated by animal suffering, and if robots cannot suffer, this would undermine the possibility that robots could stand in need of the sort of political activism seen in the animal advocacy movement. Such arguments can be resisted on several grounds. Environmentalists since at least Aldo Leopold’s Land ethic (1949) have emphasized the value of nonliving systems like the soil, water, and air that do not “suffer” in the experiential sense of animals with a nervous system, but which nevertheless are vital for the integrity of ecological communities, and so warrant a focal role in our norms and practices (Konopka, 2013). Kate Darling notes that while the philosophical and ethical discussion of animal rights revolves around issues like pain and consciousness, “our laws indicate that these concerns are secondary when it comes to legal protections” (Darling, 2016, p. 17). Instead, Darling argues that laws tend to follow public attitudes towards animals that do not depend on biological differences, as with laws in the U.S. that protect horses but not cows from being killed and eaten, despite few biological differences that could justify this practice. Several scholars have noted how the emphasis on conscious experiences in AI privilege a Western European and predominantly Christian perspective on artifacts and their relationship to nature, ethics and society—a perspective that is not universally shared (Williams, 2019b; Gunkel, 2018a; Jones, 2015). Assuming this perspective marginalizes non-Western traditions that do not operate on an anthropocentric hierarchy of value, such as found in Shinto (Geraci, 2006), African and African diasporic (Jackson, 2020; Metz, 2017; Horsthemke, 2017), and First Nations (Pierotti & Wildcat, 2000) philosophy. Finally, there are the ongoing discriminatory practices in which biological factors are treated as scientific justification for institutional oppression based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, or other essentializing characteristics (Jackson, 2020; Appiah, 2018). Taken together, these considerations suggest that biological factors alone should not be treated as prima facie justification for the exclusion of artificial agents from the moral community. Nevertheless, the literature on “robot rights” is overwhelmingly preoccupied with whether robots have internal states sufficiently “like ours” to warrant social status and legal recognition (Wittkower, forthcoming; Danaher, 2019; Williams, 2019a, 2018; Gunkel, 2018b; Schwitzgebel & Garza, 2015). 8 The hypercritical focus on the machine’s experiences (or lack thereof) points to another important distinction between animals and AI: artificial agents already participate in a variety of sociopolitical contexts that were formerly the exclusive domain of humans. There already exist vibrant online communities building, publishing, and critically assessing the work of bots that write poetry and fiction, create digital images and videos, compose music, and produce other forms of ‘artistic’ expression (Hertzmann, 2019; Oliveira, 2017; Compton et al., 2017; Gilani et al., 2017). Perhaps most well-known are the artificial “influencers” like Lil Miquela who model fashion brands to millions of followers on social media (Blanton & Carbajal, 2019). These digital communities highlight the already overlapping sociopolitical circumstances of human and artificial agents, which are not predicated on some shared biological or evolutionary background, nor on shared experiences or conscious states, but more concretely on the material and institutional realities within which human and nonhuman agents “share existence” (Latour, 2003). Just as the shared material realities of oppression provide a framework for collaboration among resistance movements addressing both human and nonhuman animal interests—despite important differences in the history and experiences motivating this work—this very same framework for collaboration provides resources to resist biocentrism, anthropocentrism, and other essentializing hierarchies as they appear in the discourse around robots, AI, and artificial agency, despite important differences between human and artificial agents. Moreover, unlike nonhuman animals, it is reasonable to expect the capacities of artificial agents will continue to advance rapidly on relatively short timescales, at least within some domains. The possibility for radical near-term changes in the agential capacities of robots suggests their sociopolitical status will likewise remain unsettled. Peter Asaro notes, “At some point in the future, robots might simply demand their rights” (Asaro, 2006, p. 12). However, while articulating these demands may require fundamental changes in the capacities of artificial agents, it will also require an ethical and interpretive change in our capacities as a society to respect such demands as potentially legitimate political acts. These changes in the social imagination don’t require that we wait for technologies “worthy” of basic consideration. Alan Turing articulated this perspective in his plea for “fair play for machines” (Turing, 1947; Estrada, 2018a) just as the first general purpose computers inspired by his work were being constructed in research labs. If the kind of critical selfreflection required to advocate on behalf of machines was available to Turing, surely it is available to us as well.
2NC AT: AI Race- Bad Actors
Bad actors argument is nonsense-the aff will be repurposed by them just as easily
Zimmermann, PhD, 21
(Annette Zimmermann is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of York and Technology & Human Rights Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/stop-building-bad-ai/?utm_source=Boston+Review+Email+Subscribers&utm_campaign=4018664596-reading_list_3_12_23_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_2cb428c5ad-4018664596-41098181&mc_cid=4018664596&mc_eid=11103ad9f7 7-21)
A second obstacle we must reckon with is the contention that developing a potentially harmful technology is better than leaving it to bad actors. Many technologists reason, for example, that if their team does not build a given tool, someone else will—possibly with more sinister motives. On this view, arguments not to build or deploy may look like giving up, or even a way of making things worse. The Stanford researcher who used facial recognition technology for predicting sexual orientation, for example, argued that it would have been “morally wrong” not to publish his work: This is the inherent paradox of warning people against potentially dangerous technology. . . . I stumbled upon those results, and I was actually close to putting them in a drawer and not publishing—because I had a very good life without this paper being out. But then a colleague asked me if I would be able to look myself in the mirror if, one day, a company or a government deployed a similar technique to hurt people. But this argument does not stand up to scrutiny. Nothing prevents a bad actor from repurposing knowledge and technological capabilities gained from an AI tool first developed by a well-intentioned researcher, of course. And even tools developed with good intentions can ultimately have damaging effects.
A: Nonideal univeralism
The alternative is nonideal universalism- this goldilocks position avoids the dual pitfalls of imperialism and relativism
Estrada, PhD, 20
(Daniel Estrada, Ethics@Newark, Human supremacy as posthuman risk. Journal of Sociotechnical Critique, 1(1), 1–40.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1013&context=sociotechnicalcritique)
Are there alternatives to the ideal theory of reactionary posthumanism? Following Mills, Serene Khader advocates for a nonideal universalism that emphasizes the nonideal, unjust conditions of political action. Khader says, “One defect of ideal theories… is their tendency to redirect our evaluative gazes to the wrong normative phenomena” (Khader, 2018, p. 36). By directing our gaze towards the actual conditions of injustice, Khader argues that we will be in a better position to address those injustices. Fazelpour & Lipton have recently introduced a nonideal perspective to the AI ethics discourse on algorithmic fairness, arguing that “non-ideal theorizing about the demands of justice is a fact-sensitive exercise” (Fazelpour & Lipton, 2020, p. 10). While this is a step in the right direction, we think the value of a nonideal perspective extends beyond an emphasis on empirical methods. To push the analysis, this section looks to Khader’s nonideal universalism for other lessons that might be adapted to an AI ethics context. Khader’s nonideal universalism is developed in the context of a diverse transnational feminist movement, partly to address what she calls “missionary feminism,” the idea that feminism requires the universal adoption of Western liberal humanist values (p. 3). Since these values are not universally shared, some critics argue that missionary feminism continues the imperialist project of imposing Western values on colonized communities. On the other hand, rejecting universal values seems to entail a kind of cultural relativism that threatens to undermine feminism as an inclusive normative project. Khader argues that this is a false dilemma; feminists do not have to choose between imperialism and relativism. For Khader, feminism is defined negatively, as an opposition to sexist oppression. A nonideal feminism starts in conditions of injustice and seeks to reduce or eliminate that injustice where it exists. This does not require a shared commitment to Western ideals or any other background of parochial values to serve as a normative ground for feminist solidarity. Khader’s approach “rejects the notion that there is a single feminism compatible cultural form, thereby undermining the idea that an idealized Western culture is the feminist solution” (p. 7). However, this pluralist approach does not commit feminism to a nihilistic cultural relativism. Rather than focusing on disagreements between 

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