Thinking about technique from bioethics, half a century after Heidegger

Abstract

The restricted unconcealment of modern technology prevents having a free relationship with it. Only the quantitative is revealed, what is capable of being accumulated. The restricted and non-original form of revealing dataizes nature. This dataization implies the passage from the thing to the non-thing, that is, to the empire of data. Nature is reduced to its recordable dimension. In this reductionism, unconcealment is not directed towards the truth, but remains in instrumentality. The dataization of nature is a devalued way of knowing. The instrumentalization of nature and knowledge by its reduction to data management simplifies relationships and does not allow access to the domain of the complex, the open, the always veiled. It is from this perspective that thinking about technique is once again vital for man, because AI should not be the product of a restricted way of being but of a rational, supportive, free and ethical way of provoking. The application of the precautionary principle is a way of provoking that has these characteristics. Thinking about the technique that will give rise to AI is much more than thinking about it. The conclusions we draw will tell us more about ourselves than what we have been able to record up to now. The technique will not stop and will continue with or without us. Ethics is definitely an advance directive, which will only be effective if we don't have to use it. If we need it, there will be no human record that guarantees its fulfillment.