Richard St'ahel

Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences

"Towards the contradictions that AI technologies generate regarding environmental democracy"

AI technologies are almost exclusively generated and operated by corporations, i.e. institutions that are neither established nor governed by democratic principles and procedures. Therefore, they do not have internal mechanisms of self-limitation that would make it possible to assume that they will not abuse the power they have. On the contrary, there are many indications that AI is exacerbating the democratic deficit accompanying the functioning of transnational institutions and corporations. Great powers that can acquire AI technologies use them to expand control over the activities and thoughts of citizens rather than to expand their participation in governance. Small states face the growing ability of superpowers and transnational corporations to control and guide their policies. The will of citizens thus often comes into conflict with the real possibilities of states to implement policies against the interests of superpowers and corporations. Therefore, trust in state institutions and the acceptance of the system of constitutional democracy itself decreases. In practice, the efforts to expand citizen participation in political, economic, and technological decisions are increasingly referred to as a populist threat to democracy. However, regarding environmental democracy, the weakness of real democracies is the inability to subordinate economic and technological power to effective democratic control and generate solutions to socio-environmental risks and crises through democratic procedures (to bring solutions with majority support). Real democracies are determined by the imperative of growth and the Imperial Mode of Living; therefore, they are unable to ensure the long-term sustainability of the socio-economic, let alone environmental preconditions for their existence. Environmental democracy is based on the imperative of sustainability and assumes the possibility of expanding democratic control over economic and technological power. The basis of the legitimacy of the political system of the New Climatic Regime is considered to be the availability of the basic prerequisites of life for all.

Bio

Assoc. Prof. Richard Sťahel, PhD. is a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences in Bratislava, where he holds the position of director of the institute and the head of the Department of Environmental Philosophy. He specializes in environmental and political philosophy and the philosophy of human rights. He examines the causes of the global industrial civilization crisis and the philosophical, social, and political consequences of climate change and the mass extinction of plant and animal species. He pays special attention to the philosophical aspects of the Anthropocene, ecological civilization, and environmental democracy concepts.