Artificial Intelligence and Pandemic Control
Digital biopolitics and the end of the humanistic era
Abstract — In the era of the 4th industrial revolution or of the industry 4.0, the use of artificial intelligence has become irreplaceable and with nochance of regression. We left the carbon era and entered the silicon era, we left the written language and entered the cyberoral language, with an increase in the intensity of technical interconnections of all species, with the danger of the loss of the social autopoiesis, and, therefore, of the substitution of beings humans by machines and robots, much more efficient and faster.
We live in an information driven society. With so much information and little to none actual communication, we observe the notoriety of fake news even in public affairs. We believe in technical imagery that loses grasp from reality, not noticing how we are drifting apart. We place some distance between ourselves, as if in a labyrinth in a collision course, drifting above the ground searching for the ethereal, seeking boundless freedom but with no idea of how to get back to earth, as we are stuck in post-history doing time in virtual and digital cells.
The most recent use of artificial intelligence is gaining prominence during these times of the coronavirus pandemic, focusing on population control in measuring the effectiveness of quarantines, monitoring the outbreak and speeding along medication testing. There are many companies and computer scientists that work in global disease surveyance, like Northeastern University, that does this through their HEALTHMAP platform.
On 03.31.2019 Canadian based Blue-Dot used AI to scour public and social media and detected the outbreak of a very uncommon disease coming out of the Wuhan province in China, doing so way before the UN and the WHO first addressed the issue. This virus, known as SARS 2 — Severe Acute Respíratory Syndrom — was no news to anyone since another earlier strand called SARS 1 came about in 2003. Countries back then failed to seize the opportunity to further study this unknown virus and take preemptive measures and promote much needed reforms, such as environmental protection, the reduction of global warming and conservation of the Amazon rainforest, an increase in basic needs for more vulnerable populations, restructuring of mass consumption and the global economy regardless of market mechanisms.
Many countries such as China, South Korea and the USA can foresee possible areas of contamination using AI (Privet KIT app). This uses smartphone locations to assess if people are following government guidelines established for quarantine and social isolation. An algorithm developed by Alibaba can diagnose in 20 seconds and with 96% accuracy if a patient is infected or not using computer scans, as well as foresee where new potentially infected people would be based no purchased air ticket data. South Korea based Seegene created a testing kit to identify contamination of this new virus using artificial intelligence. Such control is easier in countries like China where facial recognition is already used as a payment method in many services and financial transactions. They call it smile to pay, since it only takes a smile for the machine to recognize your face and link it to your digital identity and wallet.
Europe foresees using Pan-European proximity and privacy preservation tracking (PEPP=PT) through smartphones to track how the virus spreads and how quarantine orders are being upheld.
In Brazil, USP created the digital platform “Coronabr”, whereby a virtual nurse helps identify if a person needs to seek a medical center or not. Some startups use artificial intelligence, such as using robots to gather people with suspected covid’s body temperatures, with a higher precision than a person could do so, and without the risk of even greater infection.
The government of São Paulo announced that they would use cell phone data to control the adherence to quarantine using a smart monitoring system called “SIMI-SP”. This was done in partnership with national cellphone companies Vivo, Claro, Oi and Tim and was done so without any consent or permission by users. This system allows them to send alert messages to regions with higher incidence of COVID-19. With SIMI-SP the government was able to access information regarding the geo-reference of urban mobility in real time, and informed the population that to ensure privacy, they would only monitor gatherings of over 30 thousand people. According to the strategic analysis made public on 04.08.2020, the statewide indicator was only of 49% and with 51% in the state capital, much lower than other countries who entered quarantine with 70% to 80% rates.
“Tribots”, which is a movement in search of conversation solutions, created a chatbot to help clarify doubts regarding this new pandemic.
AI would assist even in the choice of which cases would be deemed priority or not in the use of respiratory ventilators. The methodology is questionable to choose which human will live and which will die, since the capacity is limited, as was notorious in Italy where doctors were serving younger patients, discarding the elderly. In other words, a young person is worth more than an elderly, even though both have the same fundamental rights and the same human dignity.
The health crisis involves connection with the ecological crisis and cannot be overcome in the long term without such an interface, being inseparable from the discussion of eminently ethical issues, especially with regard to screening and the appropriate time for the suspension of social confinement.
In the article Strands of time. We must act with the explicit knowledge that we know nothing (published in the Atelie of humanities and in the Le monde on the 04.11.2020 edition), Habermas discusses the problem that arises when a doctor has the tragic choice between one life and the other, where the temptation comes to violate the principle of equality when it comes to treatment, favoring the young in detriment of the elders, stating that we cannot save ourselves from utilitarian fundaments and calculating logic. He states however that the restriction of a great number of important human rights can never last over an extended period of time, meaning it should last a very short time.
The principle of greater efficiency is not always the best approach when it comes to human and fundamental rights, and in humanitarian terms, since in a Democratic State of Law, an economic interest can never surpass human lives.
It is said that people’s privacy and intimacy would be safeguarded, as the data collected are anonymous and that their individualization would not be possible, however, there is no evidence in this regard. It is a shortcoming when people believe what is stated just because it is stated in that sense.
The widespread and unrestricted use of artificial intelligence to combat pandemics surely calls for analyzing the conflict it imposes on fundamental rights.
Several philosophers and thinkers point to the disproportion in the methods used so far, even in a confirmed case of a pandemic such as the coronavirus.
In Hong Kong, a graffiti announces the beginning of the end: “we can’t go back to normal, because what was normal was precisely the problem”.
The point is that what is normal or seen as normalization, as is presented by M. Foucault in his studies on normalizing, disciplinary and regulatory powers, are embodied in the rules from which we cannot escape. This is because our bodies are made and molded for labor, to generate more worth under pain of being cast aside from the social contract. The diverse, different or other is excluded and finds no voice even in countries that are deemed pseudo-democratic, seeing as the link between democracy and capitalism is ever clearer. On the other hand, we are also the embodiment of the other. The familiarly strange that inhabits within. The unfamiliar.
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More than ever we feel the presence of biopolitics, which according to Roberto Esposito, in any of its spheres is always immunological, that is, there is the establishment of a hierarchy between immune bodies and those considered to be potentially dangerous (the demuni) which will be excluded in an immunological protection act. The state of exception is the normalization of such a paradox, since W. Benjamin has already foreseen this being widespread and a rule in the West. A new form of sovereignty arises, sovereignty based on maintaining borders between countries is useless. The sovereign is now the one who holds data (Byung-Chul Han. The viral emergency and the world of tomorrow).
In the article El coronavirus es um golpe al capitalismo a la Kill Bill (coronavirus is a blow to capitalism in Kill Bill style)published in the book “Wuhan Soup” and in recent interview (published in the Diário do Centro do mundo- DCM, 04.11.2020), Slavoj Žižek is optimistic with the knowledge that the crisis emerging from the pandemic will usher in a new form or reinvention of communism, with a new sense of community and global coordination and collaboration, instead of new totalitarians, as seen the social actions put forth by more conservative governments such as the USA.
Martial arts, such as kung fu and the deadly move known by the name “the five-finger death punch that explodes the heart”, used in Quentin Tarantino’s film “Kill bill” by actress Uma Thurman, have in their Chinese origin a connection with writing and language. There are two stages, with the first, the warrior and the sword becoming one, and in the second stage, the warrior acts according to his heart. The practitioner seeks a return to simplicity.
Maybe that is what’s missing in this day and age: a return to simplicity. Going back to what was. Letting go of our ideas and alienating concepts. To search for the emptiness of though. To the sound connected to language as it should be in its origin, as is the case with Chinese. A way back to poetry, for only these forms of art will make us see and feel that which language alone won’t reach.
Although we respect Slavoj Žižek’s ideas, we must look at the opposite, in the wake of Giorgio Agamben, Jean Luc-Nancy and Byung-Chul Han (“Wuhan soup”). The use of artificial intelligence will be accompanied by a greater efficiency of financial capitalism, which will become more concentrated and more radical, excluding the larger portions of the population that do not fit into the social contract and that are useless to production, especially unemployed, sick and elderly. In the words of Chul Han: “China will now be able to sell its digital police state as a model of success against the pandemic (…) and behind the pandemic, capitalism will continue with even more vigor (…)” (Work cited, p. 110, free translation).
The normal trend is the use of artificial intelligence, technical images and virtual experiences increasingly covering different areas and sectors of our life, increasing exponentially, bringing positive implications, as we see in the case of fighting the coronavirus epidemic in countries like China and South Korea, because they act with greater speed and precision than humans. However, there are several negative consequences, which are seldom discussed or debated, which are not limited to information and statistics.
Byung-Chul Han (Today’s coronavirus and tomorrow’s world, El País) understands that Asian countries in this sense are dealing with this crisis better than the West, since they work with data and masks. Asian countries such as Japan, Korea, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore have an authoritarian mindset that makes obedience by the population easier, betting heavily on digital surveillance (big data), without almost any critical awareness of such surveillance.
In China, there is no point in social life that is not subject to observation, there is an unrestricted exchange of data between Internet and cell phone providers and the authorities, and there is almost no discussion on data protection. In that country there are 200 million cameras with facial recognition, equipped with artificial intelligence all over the streets, capturing images and measuring body temperature. Drones are also used for the purpose of surveillance and social control. Taiwan and Korea follow the same dynamics of digital biopolitics, a new form of sovereignty.
Countries like China and India have also taken more radical measures to combat non-compliance with measures such as quarantine and social isolation of the population, even though there is a disproportionality to the measures taken. In India, for example, it was reported the use of physical violence by police against people who roamed the streets of the country. In China, there were several reports on total population control with the use of cell phone operators, facial recognition and drones.
Byung-Chul Han highlights the disproportionate and overwhelming panic unleashed by this new pandemic, this being a social and global immune reaction to the new enemy. Another reason for panic is the push for digital means to eliminate reality, suppressing the negativity of resistance, forming an apathy towards reality.
In turn, philosopher and historian Achille Mbembe in an article called The age of humanism is ending (published on 12.22.2016 on the Mail & Guardian website) states that we are now experiencing the clash between liberal democracy and neoliberal capitalism, between the government of finance and government of the people, between humanism and nihilism. This is because the logic of liberal democracy is incompatible with the internal logic of financial capitalism. Knowledge is now defined as market knowledge, which is the main mechanism for validating the truth. As markets are increasingly transformed into algorithmic structures and technologies, the only useful knowledge will be algorithmic, highlighting the field of statistics.
Coming back to biopolitics, in the opinion of Roberto Esposito (article published by La Repubblica, 28.02.2020) this is associated with the coronavirus pandemic, involving both the issue of a double process of the medicalization of politics and the politicization of medicine. The Italian philosopher explains that the explosion of the coronavirus brought the direct relationship between biological life and political interventions to it’s apex. There is a new biopolitical regime based on an immune syndrome, when the uncontrolled circulation in a social body exposed to generalized contamination processes is more feared than the disease itself. In such situations there is a shift from democratic procedures to emergency provisions, determining a state of emergency that can easily slide into a state of exception.
The state of exception is seen in many of Italian philosopher G. Agamben’s works, most recently in the articles La invención de uma epidemia and Contagio (published on 03.11.2020 and 02.26.2020 respectively in the book “Wuhan Soup” by ASPO, 2020), associates this matter to the current coronavirus pandemic, seeing as the Italian government declared emergency acts and raising an eyebrow to the disproportionate nature of these measures, where he states that we live in an ever growing presence of a state of exception. He believes that frantic, irrational and completely unjustified emergency measures have been taken, given the mortality rate of the new epidemic. The epidemic would offer the ideal scenario for the expansion of exceptional measures beyond the limit, with emphasis on the measure that determines mandatory quarantine and with active surveillance. This creates a climate of collective panic that is coercive to the expansion of the state of exception, with serious limitations and suspension of the normal functioning of living and working conditions in entire regions. The various restrictive and suspensive measures of rights took place unchecked, and therefore, without any proportionality.
In another piece by the same author he states: “It’s dangerous to accept any limitation on freedom in the name of safety (La repubblica newspaper, 11.24.2015), which is typical behavior of states of exception. These would no longer be states of law, but increasingly states of control”. In such a state the social pact is changed and general panic in face of a permanent stress situation makes people give in their freedoms without any limitation.
Following the same train of thought, Paul B. Preciado (Learning from the virus; “Wuhan soup”) states that an epidemic allows to extend to the entire population the measures of political immunization that until then had been applied in a violent way in those considered foreigners.
We live in a new warlike state, with subjection digital mediums (AChille Mbembe. Universal right to breath, N-1 Editions), leading to an impoverishment and narrow sightedness of the world. Keeping the world at a distance will become the norm, with the imprisonment of minds by technoscience and the disintegration of resistance.
The body and subjectivity, in the digital society based on microprosthetic and media-cybernetic control mainly, are regulated by a set of biomolecular, microprosthetic, digital and information transmission technologies. New digitalized subjectivities emerge, and more and more performance driven and superficial, as empathy is lost with each generation, the written language is transformed into cybernetic orality, and the sign and meaning drift apart.
A recent resolution 1–2020 of the IACHR — Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, called “Pandemic and human rights in the Americas”, dated 04.10.2020 highlights the principle of proportionality as a way of avoiding the generalization of a state of exception in times of pandemic, excepting its time limitation and the obligation to observe the principle of proportionality in its three sub-principles, proportionality in the strict sense, adequacy and necessity (item 21). It also emphasizes that the state of exception complies with and respects human rights (item 20).
But what is seen here is a contradiction since the state of exception is known to be opposed to the state of Law, where human and fundamental rights are observed, mainly by the state. This is the opposite that happens in the state of exception, as history has proven over and over.
The important thing is to ensure that a time limit for the eventual realization of the state of emergency is set and necessary limitations are determined when there is suspension or restriction of fundamental rights. These should be based on the three subprinciples of proportionality, especially in view of the principle of proportionality in the sense strict that determines that such limitation or restriction can never occur to the point of injuring the essential nucleus of every fundamental right, namely, human dignity.
Fundamental and universal human rights to breathe are inappropriate and unquantifiable, and the population must become aware of its role as an active citizen and demand from governments and countries structural reforms in the economy, in health, and in ecological issues, without which, this crisis may be overcome, but not the next ones that will come in waves.
It is crystal clear. And that is why we don’t see it, there isn’t the proper distance from it. A virus caused us to stop and think for a moment. Stop to breathe while we can. To think of other ways of being, less aggressive, individualistic, and self-centered. Take a leap back to the original that was lost, resume the deviated route sometime after Rome, and worry about what really matters, think more about being and less about being (Heidegger).
