AI first. AI at any cost. AI because we can. AI for everything. DIGSUM Director and Professor Simon Lindgren was the lead author of a debate piece, published on the WASP-HS blog. Lindgren, together with Jason Tucker and Virginia Dignum, argue that the Swedish AI Commission’s roadmap, Färdplan för Sverige, prioritises an AI-first mindset rooted in urgency and global competitiveness, which risks framing AI as an inevitable force and a one-size-fits-all solution to complex societal problems. The authors critique this accelerationist approach, warning that prioritising swift action will obscure deeper structural issues. They highlight the dangers of viewing technology as capable of fixing anything and everything without fully understanding underlying problems. This solutionist logic, they argue, can exacerbate societal inequalities, as exemplified by the Försäkringskassan fraud-detection system, which discriminated against marginalized groups while resisting calls for transparency. They urge policymakers to first define societal problems and assess appropriate tools, emphasising that AI is not always the answer. As Lindgren put it in a social media post:
There are always multiple ways of defining, describing, and approaching social problems and, just because they are urgent, it does not mean that new, comprehensive, and seemingly efficient, technological solutions become automatically legitimate. Solutionism assumes that everything that can be rationalized should also by necessity be made so; but such is not always the human condition. We move down a very dangerous path if we see technology as something that can ‘fix the bugs of humanity'. First, fully define the problem to be addressed. Second, consider what is the adequate toolset. Only sometimes, not always, the answer is AI. Just like a xerox machine is not the best way to paint a wall. [Source]
Read the full blog post [here]. Lindgren was also one of the researchers behind [this op-ed] in Swedish newspaper Dagens Industri, where a group of leading voices in the debate on AI, politics, and media make a similar call for more reflection and critical thinking around these issues – areas where the social sciences and humanities will have a crucial role to fill.