Artificial Intelligence Robert Long

The Offline World and Risk

ByProf. Robert Long

Last week my granddaughter went on her first camp, a remote location where phones wouldn’t work and where making a campfire was a lesson. The group of teenagers were faces with the realities of an offline world and the realities of living/being as person in relationships. This is a world where you have to cooperate to pitch a tent, share hard ground and risk a bush walk. This is a world where being in the environment, ecological reality and understanding Nature is as simple as not pitching a tent on an ant’s nest.

Being in the offline world is a shock for some but it’s the world where Autopoiesis (a self-organizing ecology) and Allostasis (the sustaining of life) work. If you don’t understand these ecological fundamentals you most likely think that human systems are the nature of reality.  In this offline world one is obligated to resilience in the face of the weather, regardless of what dreams you have in the online world. This is a place where carrying a poncho or rain coat matters.

When I was teaching, I once took a Year level of kids on a camp and one group had packed a hairdryer. When asked where the power points were, I told them they were at the base of the trees and yes, they went looking for them, until they were told it was a joke.

I was on a bike track recently with my granddaughter and nearly had a collision because the bike coming the other way has a phone mounted in the middle of the handle-bars and they were watching the phone as they were riding. What is the point of riding a bike if your consciousness is focused on a phone not the joy of riding?

One of my favourite clips lately is this one: https://youtube.com/shorts/2M7BNknTm10?si=pM9K96Uugtrf5WIi

Whilst the clip is designed for humour it makes a great point. There is a reality called the offline world. This is a world where there is Real Risk (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/real-risk/). This world is where you break arms climbing trees and enjoy the wind in your hair as you ride.

And whilst all the hype and propaganda of AI is pushed in risk and safety, we get distracted from this world where AI will never take jobs and can never access. Machines and computers can never can be sentient or conscious, they have no body and so will never know what a nervous system generates. There is no e-motion in AI and never can be. And without e-motion, there is no learning.

Rather than get sucked into the myths of AI perhaps read:

Lakoff and Johnson (1999) Philosophy in the Flesh, The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. Or:

Claxton, G., (2015) Intelligence in the Flesh, Why Your Mind Needs Your Body Much More Than it Thinks.

The reality is, the AI world is an online world, it is not and never can be an embodied world.

Similarly, AI can never be the offline world, the natural world. Moreso, in this online world where Technique has become god (Ellul, 1964, The Technological Society https://monoskop.org/File:Ellul_Jacques_The_Technological_Society.pdf), the quest for ultimate efficiency is measured in the dehumanisation of persons and the destruction of Socialitie. When a data centre drags all the water and energy a society needs (https://www.lincolninst.edu/publications/land-lines-magazine/articles/land-water-impacts-data-centers/; https://www.techbusinessnews.com.au/blog/how-the-worlds-data-centres-are-quietly-burning-the-planet/) to maintain the myths and delusions of an online world, we have a serious problem of Real Risk.

The Real Risk in the online world is the delusion that the online world is reality. This is fostered by a lack of critical thinking that cannot interrogate the source of propaganda and hype. In SPoR, we have a simple tool to help critique propaganda and hype:

Rather than fall for the hype of the AI online world, a few simple questions and some Critical Discourse Analysis (https://safetyrisk.net/critical-thinking-a-checklist-for-safety/) will help bring things back down to earth. What is most problematic about the discourse in risk and safety on AI, is a complete lack of ethical thinking and discernment about embodied knowing.

I remember 10 years ago all the hype about driverless cars (https://youtu.be/tiwVMrTLUWg?si=kU40qATz37ES4Prg). Apparently by now, our roads would be filled with them. And yet, we know that AI will never have the thinking power of a human. AI is ‘artificial’ and will never have flesh, blood, nerves and body that thinks with a nervous system. Indeed, AI doesn’t think, its nothing more than a fancy mirror

If you live in a faux world where you think a chatbot provides empath I feel sorry for you.

Much of what is being peddled in risk and safety about AI is mythology, a symbolically represented false narrative that says the online world is real. Perhaps read this: https://safetyrisk.net/faith-in-ai-and-ai-safety/ Myths are created when semiotics and narrative are made one. Myths are not true in a rational sense but are made true in a semiotic sense.

Indeed, so much of what I see these days is not about reality but a religious faith in AI. The Real Risk about AI is not just about destroying the planet but the religious faith of those convinced reality is online.

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Here is a reading list to get you started on critiquing the myths of AI:

Atkinson, R., and Moschella, D., (2024) Technology Fears and Scapegoats. 40 Myths about Privacy, Jobs, AI, and Today’s Innovation Economy.  Palgrave Macmillan. Cham, Switzerland.

Banafa, A., (2024)  Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. Routledge. New York.

Borovick, H.,  (2024). AI and the Law, A Practical Guide to Using Artificial Intelligence Safely. Apress. New York.

Buolamwini, J., (2023)  Unmasking AI, My Mission to Protect What is Human in a World of Machines. Random House.  New York.

Boylan, M., and Teays, W., (eds.) (2022)  Ethics in the AI, Technology, and Information Age.  Rowman and Littlefield.  New York.

Coeckelbergh, M.,  (2020)  AI Ethics.  MIT Press. Cambridge Mass.

Dubber, M., Pasquale, F., and Das, S., (2020) The Oxford Handbook of Ethics and AI.  Oxford Uni Press.  London.

Ellul, J., (1964)  The Technological Society.  Vintage Books. New York. (https://monoskop.org/File:Ellul_Jacques_The_Technological_Society.pdf)

Hasselbalch, G.,  (2021) Data Ethics and Power. A Human Approach to Big Data and AI Era. Edward Elgar Publishing. Cheltenham.

Hendrycks, D., (2025)  Introduction to AI Safety, Ethics, and Society. CRC Press. Boca Raton. FL.

Madsbjerg, C., (2017)  Sensemaking, The Power of the Humanities in the Age of the Algorithm. Hachette Books.  New York.

Postman, N., (1992) Technopoly, The Surrender of Culture to Technology. Vintage Books. New York.

Powell, J., and Kleiner, A., (2023) The AI Dilemma, 7 Principles for Responsible Technology. Berrett-Koehler Publishers. Oakland CA.

Richterich, A.,  (2018) The Big Data Agenda, Data Ethics and Critical Data Studies. University of Westminster Press. London.

Santoni de Sio, F., (2024)  Human Freedom in the Age of AI. Routledge. New York.

Vallor, S., 2024. The AI Mirror, How to Claim Out Humanity In an Age of Machine Thinking.  Oxford Uni Press, London.

Prof. Robert Long

Prof. Robert Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Prof. Robert Long

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Prof. Robert Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

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