In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• Against Digital Worldlessness: Arendt, Narrative, and the Onto-Politics of Big Data/AI Technologies
• Ewa Płonowska Ziarek (bio)

“The best way to humanize AI is to tell our stories.”

— Elizabeth Adams

I. A New Referendum on Reality

In a February 2020 article in The Atlantic entitled “The Billion Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President,” McKay Coppins offers disturbing insights into the digital extraction of big data used to target political advertising and to modify voter behavior. Developed by Cambridge Analytica in 2016, the temporal and geopolitical implications of these techniques extend well beyond the 2020 US campaign and its aftermath.¹ Alarmed by the staggering amount of data collected on voters, Coppins argues that the damage that results from these massive and highly personalized political disinformation techniques includes not only a widely discussed political crisis of democracy in the digital age,² but also and primarily the loss of a shared reality. As he puts it, “Should it prevail in 2020, the election’s legacy will be clear – not a choice between parities or candidates or policy platforms, but a referendum on reality itself.” More and more frequently discussed by computer scientists, political theorists, and the wider public alike, the loss of reality has not only prevailed but intensified: As data and computer scientist Sinan Aral puts it briefly, we are approaching “the end of reality” (24–55).³

With the waning of techno-optimism and the ascendancy of techno-dystopianism, numerous diagnoses have been offered for this state of affairs, ranging from the widely discussed “post truth societies” and the blurring of reality and hyperreality (Floridi)⁴ to critiques of digital capitalism and the ideology of “computationalism.”⁵ However, as the formulation of a “referendum on reality” suggests, this political concern about the loss of the real also foregrounds the negative ontological effects of the digital regime of power – what I call digital worldlessness. With its global reach, the hegemony of the digital regime and artificial intelligence constitutes a new horizon not only for the economy, but also for politics and culture. Therefore, any analysis of this hegemonic framework calls for broad interdisciplinary thinking, in which humanists (and particularly political, cultural, and literary theorists) need to be centrally involved, in addition to scholars and philosophers working in technology studies.

To analyze the problem of the digital worldlessness of big data and its use in AI from the perspective of political theory, I draw on Hannah Arendt’s central claim that any loss of reality is the effect of historically specific assaults on human plurality. I develop the implications of this claim beyond the limitations of Arendt’s own work⁶ by engaging the growing interdisciplinary critiques of the harms of datafication and of the algorithmic mediation of social relations. Although best known for her work on totalitarianism, Arendt interrogates the destruction of human plurality through high and low technologies of domination, from imperialism, anti-Semitism, and racism to nuclear warfare, biopolitics, and even the influence of religious “otherworldly” communities.⁷ For a number of scholars, Arendt’s enduring legacy lies in contesting the resurgence of racism, right wing populism, and fascism in the twenty-first century;⁸ others, such as Zuboff and Weizenbaum, enlist her work to understand the unprecedented character of computational technologies of power.⁹ I propose that the ontological and political stakes of the current referendum on reality require a genealogical account of the ways in which historically specific threats to human plurality are automated and encoded anew in digital technologies of power. Writing before the digital age, Arendt offers such a genealogical account of the destruction of human plurality by anti-Semitism, imperialism, racism, and refugee crises, culminating in the emergence of the horrific novum of totalitarianism. Among interdisciplinary thinkers who directly confront the damages of digital technologies of power, contemporary critical race theorists (in particular Ruha Benjamin and Simone Browne) argue that the long history of anti-black racism both precedes and is encoded anew in the global regimes of big data and AI. Building on this interdisciplinary framework, I argue that the contemporary ontological loss of reality is augmented by the political harms of digital technologies of power to human plurality...

中文翻译：

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反对数字世界：阿伦特、叙事和​​大数据/人工智能技术的本体政治

代替摘要，这里是内容的简短摘录：

• 反对数字世界：阿伦特、叙事和​​大数据/人工智能技术的本体政治
• Ewa Płonowska Ziarek（生平）

“让 AI 人性化的最佳方式是讲述我们的故事。”

——伊丽莎白·亚当斯

一、对现实的新公投

在《大西洋月刊》2020 年 2 月的一篇题为“重新选举总统的数十亿美元虚假信息运动”的文章中，麦凯·科平斯 (McKay Coppins) 对用于针对政治广告和修改选民行为的大数据数字提取提出了令人不安的见解。这些技术由 Cambridge Analytica 于 2016 年开发，其时间和地缘政治影响远远超出了 2020 年美国竞选活动及其后果。¹ Coppins 对收集到的关于选民的惊人数据量感到震惊，他认为这些大规模和高度个性化的政治虚假信息技术造成的损害不仅包括数字时代广泛讨论的民主政治危机，²但也主要是失去了共同的现实。正如他所说，“如果它在 2020 年占上风，那么这次选举的遗产将很明确——不是在政党、候选人或政策平台之间做出选择，而是对现实本身的全民公决。” 越来越多地被计算机科学家、政治理论家和更广泛的公众所讨论，现实的丧失不仅普遍存在而且加剧：正如数据和计算机科学家 Sinan Aral 简要指出的那样，我们正在接近“现实的终结”（ 24-55）。^3个

随着技术乐观主义的消退和技术反乌托邦主义的兴起，人们对这种事态提出了许多诊断，从广泛讨论的“后真相社会”和现实与超现实的模糊 (Floridi) ⁴到对数字资本主义和“计算主义”的意识形态。^5个然而，正如“现实公投”的提法所暗示的那样，这种对真实丧失的政治担忧也凸显了数字权力体制的负面本体论影响——我称之为数字无世界。凭借其全球影响力，数字政权和人工智能的霸权不仅为经济，而且为政治和文化构成了新的视野。因此，对这一霸权框架的任何分析都需要广泛的跨学科思考，除了从事技术研究的学者和哲学家之外，人文主义者（尤其是政治、文化和文学理论家）也需要集中参与其中。

为了从政治理论的角度分析大数据的数字无世界性及其在 AI 中的应用问题，我借鉴了汉娜·阿伦特 (Hannah Arendt) 的核心主张，即现实的任何丧失都是历史上对人类多元化的特定攻击的影响。我通过参与对数据化危害和社会关系的算法中介的日益增长的跨学科批评，发展了这一主张的含义，超越了阿伦特自己的工作^{6的局限性。}尽管阿伦特以其极权主义研究而闻名，但她审视了高低技术统治对人类多元化的破坏，从帝国主义、反犹太主义和种族主义到核战争、生命政治，甚至宗教“超凡脱俗”社区的影响。⁷对于许多学者来说，阿伦特的持久遗产在于反对种族主义、右翼民粹主义和法西斯主义在 21 世纪的死灰复燃；Zuboff 和 Weizenbaum 等其他^{8人利用她的工作来理解电力计算技术前所未有的特性。9}我提议，当前关于现实的公投的本体论和政治利害关系需要一个系谱学的解释，说明历史上对人类多元化的特定威胁是如何在数字权力技术中自动化和重新编码的。在数字时代之前，阿伦特就反犹太主义、帝国主义、种族主义和难民危机对人类多元化的破坏提供了这样一个谱系描述，最终导致极权主义的可怕新事物的出现。在直接面对数字权力技术损害的跨学科思想家中，当代批判种族理论家（尤其是 Ruha Benjamin 和 Simone Browne）认为，反黑人种族主义的悠久历史既早于全球大数据制度，又被重新编码和人工智能。在这个跨学科框架的基础上，