Biodata
Antonio Sandu is Professor PhD at “Stefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, Romania, and Senior Researcher at the LUMEN Research Center in Social and Humanistic Sciences, Iasi, Romania. His main areas of interest include ethics, bioethics, social work and social philosophy. The original contributions of the author’s scientific activities start from the social construction of reality and social constructionism as seen from a semiological perspective. He analyses the social construction of reality by developing his very own version of social constructionism operating at the intersection between the constructionist paradigm and the theory of communicative action.
He is the author of the book: Social Construction of Reality as Communicative action, published at Cambridge Scholar Publishing (2016), and also of “Social Work Practice: Research Techniques and Intervention Models: From Problem Solving to Appreciative Inquiry”, “Appreciative Ethics: A constructionist version of ethics” and “Social-Constructionist Epistemology: A transmodern overview”, all three published by Lap Lambert between 2012 and 2013. He has also authored more than 20 volumes in Romanian and English language.
Virtualization of Social Space and Humanity 2.0
Abstract
This paper will analyze the changes that humanity is going through in the context of developing information technologies and Artificial Intelligence. We will discuss on the interactions in the virtual environment between human and non-human individuals, including the possibility of emergence of a self-aware Artificial Intelligence. Technological development allows today’s humanity the increasingly accentuated evasion off the cycle of natural evolution. On the other hand, humanity is in a stage where it is forced to reinterpret the principle of natural evolution and the development of an “artificial evolution” based on various enhancement processes. In this paper we will present some elements related to the perception of human condition in today’s society due to the technological evolution that takes place lately. The process of virtualization of the social space is based on the transfer of social interactions in a special environment of virtual hyperspace type, based on instant communication and the elimination of objective distances due to the online communication media. A number of philosophers, including Nick Bostrom, debate the possibility of emergence of an Artificial Intelligence depository of all knowledge of humanity and capable of interacting with both human beings, possibly based on neural interfaces, and with various objects of the material world, transformed into smart objects and connected to each other through the Internet of Things network. Within this paper, we are interested to what extent such Artificial Intelligence may be subject of occurrence of some quasi-religious beliefs, but also how humanity will relate to the divinity differently due to the interaction with a God-like artificial intelligence.
Keywords: artificial intelligence; virtualization of social space; virtual interactions; technological singularity and artificial evolution.