人工智能奇点论的历史唯物主义批判——从“物种奇点论”到“社会奇点论”

A Critique of Historical Materialism on the Theory of Artificial Intelligence Singularity:From "Species Singularity" to "Social Singularity"

“奇点”是当前分析人工智能对人类社会发展前景影响的重要理论框架。它通常用来表示人工智能将以指数级的增长速度打破人类与机器之间界限的巨变情形。而在马克思的历史唯物主义视域中,尽管近现代社会中人的存在形态与从手工工具到机器再到人工智能的生产方式变化有紧密联系,并且人工智能在19世纪机器体系替代人的体力器官的基础上又进一步展现出替代人的脑力器官的演变趋势,但它在实质上难以获得人之为人的能够自我反思和自我决定的主体性意识。基于此,马克思从生产方式变革和社会形态变革之间内在勾联的角度所总结的“两个决不会”与“两个必然”的历史发展规律在人工智能时代依然具有强大的科学价值。这即是说,人工智能的技术奇点带来的并非“机器是人”的“物种奇点论”,相反是使超越资本主义的共产主义社会成为可能的“社会奇点论”。

"Singularity" is an important theoretical framework for analyzing the impact of artificial intelligence on the development prospects of human society. It is often used to represent a sea change in which artificial intelligence will break the boundaries between humans and machines at an exponential rate. From the perspective of Marx’s historical materialism, although the existence of human beings in modern society is closely related to the changes in production methods from hand tools to machines to artificial intelligence, and artificial intelligence further shows the evolution trend of replacing human mental organs on the basis of replacing human physical organs by machine systems in the 19th century. It is essentially difficult to obtain the subjectivity consciousness of self-reflection and self-determination of human beings. Based on this, the historical development law of "Two Necessities" and "Two Never" summarized by Marx from the perspective of the intrinsic linkage between the transformation of production mode and the change of social form still has strong scientific value in the era of artificial intelligence. That is to say, the technological singularity of artificial intelligence brings not the "species singularity" theory that "machines are people", but the "social singularity " that makes a communist society beyond capitalism possible.