Only Data?

Datafication, Digitisation, Artificial Intelligence, (New) Singularity … – there are different terms used, as much as there are different terms used to to grasp the character of our societies: burocratisation, red tape, administered society, alienated structures. And we find different metaphors and phenomona: the age-old gaming machine

from 1958

and the android, nearly impossible to make out as different from the human.

But …, well, there may be a but. Recently a small group of members of the European Academy of Science and Arts met with the aim of establishing a working group on Digitisation, Artificial Intelligence and Ethics, bringing colleagues from different disciplins together. I put some initial ideas together which may also be of general interst and can be found here. There is a good reason to think what it means to exist as human being.