The Dangers of a Single Story—Part IV
Belonging and Generative AI in an Age of Separation
*Title inspired by this TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Storytelling through Dance: Local flavour: Key dancers for 'Life in the Jungle' in their colourful Sarawak-themed costumes.
“Narrative is one of the ways in which knowledge is organized.” ~Toni Morrison
I am commencing with two examples: one on belonging in the workplace and one on chatGPT (generative AI). They may appear to be completely unrelated but actually are not. They are closely tied together because of the underlying meta-narrative that they originate from.
My friend and co-facilitator of Community Campfire, Garry Turner recently wrote an article on Medium called Connection causes Change. In the post, he makes a very insightful observation: “I am as curious currently around how disconnection reinforces the status quo.” I’ll come back to this line in my next article. Garry’s post led me to an HBR article replete with data around the importance of belonging titled, The Value of Belonging at Work.
I was intrigued because, in my experience, belonging is as crucial as breathing. The article says, U.S. businesses spend nearly $8 billion each year on diversity and inclusion (D&I) trainings that miss the mark because they neglect our need to feel included, and makes a valid distinction between diversity and inclusion. The article also quotes a study conducted by BetterUp on belonging in the workplace. And the first reason to foster a sense of belonging, says the research, is because belonging is good for business. This is where I almost gasped, and felt an acute sense of dissonance. Belonging seems to have become another business matrix rather than a fundamental human need. To quote Brené Brown:
Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.
The fact that there had to be research done on belonging is telling. If we pause and step back, it is evident that this most basic of human needs has become a victim of the homogenous narrative of Separation running the show today. This takes me back to my theme of the dangers of having a monomyth imposed on en essentially pluriversal planet. In this hegemonic and Euro-patriarchal socio-economic-political system, the individual has been reduced to a resource and an object. Since this narrative is deeply rooted in the notion of separation—from nature, from each other, and from Self, it can easily turn human emotions and desires into another ‘product’ that can be boosted by evidence-based interventions with measurable results, like ‘a whopping 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop in turnover risk, and a 75% reduction in sick days.’ ~The Value of Belonging at Work. All very good for business no doubt.
“The fact that the regime of separation appears to be reaching new heights, the fact that the whole globe is falling into the grip of the monetization of life and the commodification of relationship, the fact that the numbering, labeling, and controlling of the world and everything in it is approaching unprecedented extremes, does not mean that prospects for a more beautiful world are receding into the distance.” ~Charles Eisenstein
When organizations speak of belonging from a place of innate ‘separation,’ ‘competition,’ and ‘commodification,’ it becomes self-contradictory. Driven by the three fundamentals of profit, productivity, and power, organizations struggle to create genuine belonging. Belonging then becomes another goal post, another feel-good matrix, another training program. The entire HBR piece replete with research, evidence, and data excruciatingly lacked in empathy and, I would go further and say, humanity. This is an article that a generative AI like chatGPT could easily churn out based on available data. A narrative entrenched in separation cannot foster true belonging; and workplaces today are filled with isolated, vulnerable individuals who can rely neither on their colleagues nor on their organizations. The latest spate of tech layoffs with Google heading the story is exactly the kind of nightmare that workers fear.
Now let’s examine what generative AI like chatGPT could be doing. Its current claim to fame rests on its ability to churn out information with perfect syntax and semantics, even emulating the styles of different authors based on the cues given. These apparently flawless content generation can have far-reaching impact—from creating business plans to churning out bullshit. Noam Chomsky calls this “high-tech plagiarism” where AI is using existing data irrespective of copyright or infringement of privacy. Gary Marcus calls chatGPT ‘the king of pastiche.’ Given the deep disconnection and separation rooted in the current narrative, how do the AI-human relationship pan out?
chatGPT does not and cannot encapsulate the living, breathing, spirit of creation. It is currently feted for its speed and seeming efficiency. This almost pathological need for speed fostered by a narrative that glorifies ever-increasing production and consumption has brought our civilization to the brink of disaster. Generative AI is another symptom of the malaise. I am not against generative AI per se but the way it is being feted as a machine of efficiency capable of reducing to seconds what takes humans hours puts Time front and center. With the Industrial Era and scientific management, time became a commodity up for sale, and speed and efficiency were fetishized. Nothing wrong with ‘speed’ per se except that today we are heading at breakneck speed in the wrong direction.
Connection and meaning are integral and intrinsic to creating a sense of true belonging. And creativity is closely related to meaning-making. Human beings are inveterate creators—right from the cave paintings to the Sistine chapel, from the Egyptian pyramids to the Ajanta and Ellora Caves. When technology invades the space of creation, we run very real risks of further dissociation, fragmentation, and loss of belonging. Moreover, when the said tech is generating content—articles, business plans, codes, art forms, short stories, etc.—basically a mashup of existing data, it destroys the poignancy and pain behind creation. Creativity is an act of fearlessness, defiance, communication, and connection. When knowledge generation becomes devoid of these qualities, what we get is mechanistic manipulation of data but not an act of creation.
I feel like the creative work that people make all over the world is a sort of unending fabric that we’re all weaving into throughout time. Regardless of how much notice the work may get, we reflect and document our global history together through adding our voices. ~Laura Berger
Human creativity is born from pain, through the existential angst of living, and reflection. Technology, designed for efficiency, domination, and homogenization are currently structured around control. This is the foundational principle of the growth economy, and AI currently is feeding into it. Can it become a facilitator of the deep transformation the world needs? I believe yes, but the available data that AI is trained on is so skewed towards the present power structure, that it will merely intensify the marginalization and polarization. We will end up entrenched ever deeper into a mechanistic growth machine controlled by the present-day manipulators of technology, wealth, and power where everything and everyone are a commodity.
To imbue knowledge with spirit is thus to view the arts, dance, proverbs, ritual texts, epic poems, musical traditions, creation myths… all things you could say have to do with spirit—as sources of insight. ~Sensuous Knowledge by Minna Salami
When the spirit is gone from knowledge, it never succeeds in becoming wisdom. We need an approach that measures progress not only by gross domestic product (GDP) but also by how ethically we develop our societies. It is only through the interweaving of the calculable and the incalculable, the categorizable and the limitless, the imaginative and rational, of nature and technology, the passion of poetry with the impassivity of data that draws from a range of traditions, ideologies, epistemologies, and cosmologies can we forge narratives capable of birthing a different world—a world that is invigorating, enlivening, harmonious. A world that contains multitudes; a world that is pluriversal.
Epistemicide, genocide, and ecocide went hand-in-hand as an act of colonization. And today, the socio-economic-political system serve to perpetuate this in different forms through an economy based on extraction, exploitation, and expropriation. The vulnerable tribes displaced and rendered homeless because their land is being taken over for mining (in the name of development, of course) lose not only their homes but their ways of being, relating, and knowing. So deeply rooted is this homogenous narrative in The Story of Separation that every aspect of life boils down to GDP. All of our technologies have worked to deepen the dominance of this monomyth—from the printing press to artificial intelligence. This has led to irreparable loss of knowledge, wisdom, and ways of being further exacerbating rootlessness, marginalization, and delegitimization.
What is important to me are the hidden narratives, the marginalized ones. These are neither new nor alternative perspectives. They have existed for centuries till displaced by the Eurocentric narrative imposed on the rest of the planet as an imperial project, rendering invisible other ways of being, sensing, learning, relating, and doing. It is this veil of invisibility that I wish to remove. It is my intent to disrupt—however slightly—the one-dimensional thinking that leads us to fetishize technology and measure ‘belonging’ through quantitative matrices. This lens of the world has become so toxic that it is imperative to develop paradigms of thought that are enlivening.
Thus far, the Euro-patriarchal worldview has labelled every other form of knowledge names that diminish—primitive, tribal, heathen, third-world—for too long. However, this article is not about opposing the Eurocentric epistemology but about not centering it any further. It has its place as another form of knowledge, another lens—to be valued certainly—but not as the ultimate arbiter of truth.
If nothing changes in our relationship to knowledge, then technological displacement of humans driven by corporations is our destiny. No matter where we are in the world, we have grown up with English as the dominant language of the information sphere. Built into that language is a sensibility, a culture and logic of power that gave rise to the systems we live in today - for both good and bad. … More specifically, the international public sphere is shaped by the English of men, because men designed the global public sphere where information resides. The institutions, bureaucracy, science, economics, politics - all are designed with these structures of language in control.
~Alternative Editorial: AI is a game-changer for good or bad
We speak of data and knowledge as though they were neutral terms. But it is evident that they are not. What data is used? Who generates the knowledge that passes as normative? What forms the literary canon? Who defines the benchmarks? Where do the standards originate from? What is deemed valid? Who validates?
All of these questions have deep roots and significance in the way knowledge is generated, formalized, and disseminated. And as is evident, currently these are the norms laid down by white European men; everything else is seen in relation to this norm. Hence, Euro-patriarchal knowledge has been imposed as universal, neutral, unbiased which is of course blatantly untrue. Digging deeper shows us the hidden values of quantification, standardization, cognitive dominance and control, linearity, reductionism, dualism, and a disregard and delegitimization of all other forms of knowing.
Knowledge is seen as something to be acquired, amassed, assessed thus losing its aliveness, flow, inter-relatedness.
The narrative through which we view knowledge is both the seed and the fruit of the culture it produces. To produce nourishing fruit, we need to plant sublime seeds. ~Sensuous Knowledge by Minna Salami
Technology may invest us with god-like power, but where will the wisdom come from? Will deep tech be used to further exacerbate the existing conditions of profound inequity, worsen societal divisions and polarizations, and create another fault-line of power and privilege? I believe that without shifting the underlying narrative from one of separation to one of deep interconnectedness, it will be impossible to re-imagine a civilizational transition.
Addendum:
I have been writing about the dangers of being entrapped and blinded by a single Eurocentric homogenous narrative for some time. You can read the Part I, Part II, and Part III. This article was triggered in response the post on belonging from Garry Turner, my conversations with Trina Casey and Garry, and insights from several others, namely Lana Kristine Jelenjev, and by chatGPT. The more I researched this darling of tech, I saw facile churning out and mindless manufacture. I came across a particularly thoughtful piece by Tim Leberecht called ChatGPT Makes Us Human, and I am going to quote here:
Thinking is hard, critical thinking even harder, and ChatGPT isn’t good at either. It just rehashes what has already been said; it regurgitates; it is one big recycling machine. And ChatGPT doesn’t alter one fundamental truth underlying any AI and the future-of-work discussion: the only two bullet-proof professions of the future are philosopher and artist.
The article further quotes the poet and lyricist, Nick Cave in the most pertinent observation of generative AI that I have read thus far:
“Songs arise out of suffering, by which I mean they are predicated upon the complex, internal human struggle of creation and, well, as far as I know, algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer. ChatGPT has no inner being, it has been nowhere, it has endured nothing, it has not had the audacity to reach beyond its limitations, and hence it doesn’t have the capacity for a shared transcendent experience, as it has no limitations from which to transcend.”
This article is neither a denial of the uses of generative AI or a Luddite’s vision of a tech-free world. I am just trying to see the patterns across different spaces—businesses, big data, generative AI, and more—and what leaps to the senses is a pervasive sense of disconnection and dislocation. All the systems and institutions currently running the show have been designed for this. It is time to reimagine the civilizational narrative(s).