IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - July 2021 - 115

Hofstetter
the image of man it is based upon " [8]. The law professor
had recognized that, once a new image of man manifests
eventually also due to technological progress, such change
would also entail a change in law and legal norms. By
then at the latest, a " New Man " becomes deeply anchored
in society. The conclusion is that every technological
advance also makes a substantial social experiment.
The fundamental rights and democratic order, to which
Europe has expressly committed itselfin the Lisbon Treaty,
corresponds to a certain image ofman. As technology progresses
toward mass surveillance, data analytics, and algorithmic
control, a New Man looms. Based on such New
Man, an emergent digital society may still be democratic,
but maybe instead it is autocratic and dictatorial. Whether
or not a European digital society remains a democratic
society, therefore largely depends on the answer to the
question whether or not a new image ofman is manifesting
itself under the dictates of human data fusion and algorithmic
control based on artificial intelligence. To make such
judgment, a key sociopolitical objective of Enlightenment
should serve as benchmark: the sovereign human being. If
the availability of human mass data and powerful artificial
intelligence changes the nature of sovereign man, it will
unavoidably have an impact on the democratic values
Europe has committed itself to. To judge the impact, one
has to briefly consider two of the many driving technological
forces ofdigitization.
EXPANSION AND FLOW: WHEN SAPIENS WIDENS OUT
As ambient intelligence advances, technological forces are
set free that will continue to change the 21st century in the
coming decades. One force already has had a direct impact
on the image of man: it is quantification, the numerical
analysis of man. Quantification means that man is being
measured and weighed to come into existence as digital
twin and a bunch of data. Incidentally, such measurement
is considerably easier when Sapiens voluntarily carries
measuring mobile devices closely to his body.
Such a measuring device is the smartphone, used by
Sapiens to expand and enhance his capabilities with artificial
sensors and actors. The smartphone is carrier technology
not only for networked communication between
people, but also for a variety of sensors, including brightness
meter, microphone, accelerometer, camera, electronic
gyrocompass, gravity meter, GPS, and proximity sensors.
On top ofthese sensors delivered with the smartphone hardware,
every smartphone user can install apps providing software-based
sensors: clinical thermometers, sleep meters,
acoustic sensors for different frequency ranges than the
human ear is able to perceive, sensors to measure blood
sugar or blood pressure. With the use of such interoperable
sensors, Sapiens experiences an expansion ofmaterial existence
in the 21st century. Enabled by advanced sensory and
JULY 2021
REDUCTION AND BIG NUDGING: WHEN SAPIENS
SHRINKS TO A DATA HEAP
The American technology company x.ai programmatically
once titled its advertisement in a social network as follows:
" Using AI to program humans to behave better "
[10]. Artificial intelligence should reprogram people.
Insights initially developed by life sciences are being
picked up by digital technology giants, which are telling
us that the human being was nothing but a biochemical
algorithm, deterministic, predictable, controllable.
In fact, x.ai's advertising lifts the mask from an ideology
which accompanies Big Tech's 21st digital agenda:
Homo sapiens shall be optimized to become Homo superior.
According to this euphemism which hides what is
Big Nudging, technology giants claim to help Sapiens
striving for happiness and overcoming death, physical
constraints, and natural evolution merely with the help of
technology [11]. The claim that x.ai makes is therefore by
no means far-fetched. Its technical realization is already
possible today, and the only task left to do is to roll out
optimizing systems on a broad basis and plant them deeply
into the mainstream.
IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE
115
actuator abilities, Sapiens receives and sends more data and
information than ever before. He sends incessant streams of
messages to followers, friends, family, work colleagues, or
voters. He works on the go, is sending e-mails to business
contacts or is processing documents online. There are voices
defining a person expanded with a smartphone already
as a Cyborg, a human organism that is partly enhanced by
computers, providing human expansion which is not only a
tangible reality, when people visibly carry their devices
with them all day long, but also happening invisibly in the
disembodied virtual space, in " cyberspace. "
Both consciously created data and unconsciously
machine-generated measurement streams of bits and bytes
are first ofall being transmitted to and saved by gatekeepers
such as Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and the
like, who process the data for their profits when sharing
them with consumer goods providers and their advertising
agencies, a process being referred to a " surveillance capitalism "
[9]. Only then those enterprises make data available
to Sapiens' own network. The order mentioned is metaphorical,
because many users are not aware how Big Tech
saves and processes their data streams, emails, short messages,
and online comments as those seem to reach the
receiver network almost in real time. For Big Tech, however,
the acquisition, storage, and analysis of data streams
forecasting and control purposes are of central importance
for the digital business model of the 21st century. They
allow for indecent financial gains when being transformed
into stimuli to control consumption and spending.
IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - July 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE - Aerospace and Electronic Systems - July 2021
