AI and the Borg Collective

A number of jurisdictions are using AI to identify people who may potentially be involved in criminal activity. Unlike the sleuths we follow faithfully on TV, Detective AI does not zero in on a potential suspect’s actions in order to detect hints of socially deviant behavior. Instead, it focuses almost exclusively on an individual’s sociological markers.

An unemployed individual, Frank, who suddenly pays cash for a Beverly Hills estate, is behaving in a way that may, or may not, indicate criminal behavior, even if the crime, Mr. Capone, is nothing more than tax evasion.

Of course, there’s no proof that any crime has been committed. Frank may have received a large inheritance from a long lost uncle. But on the surface, Frank’s behavior is suspicious, and so we are generally comfortable with Detective O’Malley (or AI) ‘looking into it’.

Sally, on the other hand, is homeless. She has never in her life so much as shoplifted a pack of gum, but her demographics fit a profile that has been highly correlated in various studies with criminality. 

Did I mention she was ‘unhoused’ and without any ‘visible means of support’? She falls into a particular age group, has a particular level of education (or lack thereof), a certain work history, credit score, etc. And, of course, she happens to belong to a certain ethnic group (insert your favorite target here).

While Det. O’Malley would have no reason even to interview Sally, AI has flagged her for ‘aggressive’ law

enforcement follow-up. Justified? Or not?

It is true that Sally’s demographic characteristics, when combined, have a higher than average correlation with criminal behavior. While that certainly doesn’t mean that Sally is a criminal, does it justify ‘keeping an eye on her’?

Long before true AI, the IRS used such a model to pick out taxpayers (or non-payers) for audit. Supposedly, a certain number of taxpayers are randomly selected for audit each year and an additional number are targeted based on income level, lifestyle, occupation, audit history, etc. Is such a selection process justified? A truly randomized selection process would be fairer, but it would hardly ever catch serious tax cheats, and it would raise very little revenue for the taxing authorities.

On the other hand, auditing only ‘high-fliers’ would encourage ‘low visibility’ individuals to consider themselves immune. So, the traditional audit selection criteria have a lot going for them:

1. They catch a lot of cheats and raise a lot of revenue in the process.

2. They discourage those who might be tempted to play in ‘the grey zone’.

3. They even encourage folks to over-report income and under-deduct expenses so as not to attract the auditors’ attention.

4. Finally, they make sure everyone knows that no one is exempt from oversight.

It’s hard to imagine a more efficient algorithm…but does that make it fair? Back to Sally. AI treats Sally as the intersection of a bunch of sociological variables. The apparent assumption, stated primitively, is that if you add up all of the influences in Sally’s life, you should be able to predict her behavior with a tolerable degree of accuracy.

Of course, much hinges on your definition of ‘tolerable’; what can you tolerate? Do you require a level of conviction that puts the matter beyond any reasonable doubt (criminal standard)? Or will you settle for anything above a 50% probability (civil standard)? Or will any correlation over ‘merely random coincidence’ satisfy you?

But regardless of your level of tolerance, there is a bigger problem: Sally’s sociological markers don’t include Sally. There is no allowance for Sally’s agency. We have ‘post-modernized’ Sally, reducing her to the sum of her influences. It is not Sally who acts, it is her poverty, ethnicity, etc. that act through her. And yet, it is Sally who will ‘do the time’ if convicted. Fair?

At the other end of the spectrum, the model of community displayed by Startrek’s Borg Collective takes ‘post-modern Sally’ to a whole other level. While AI threatens to turn Sally into the sum of her sociological influences, the Borg model reduces Sally to a simple quantum in a complex meta-mind. 

Effectively, the Borg hijack Sally’s brain, her ‘compute power’, and deploy it in service of an agenda that has nothing to do with Sally and has no concern for her welfare other than, perhaps, keeping her alive long enough to maximize her return on the Borg’s investment.

Sally’s fate is that of post 20^th century humans generally. She is caught between two lines of fire. On the one hand, her unique personality has been outsourced to a series of external influences: Freudian parenting, Jungian archetypes, Marxist class. On other hand, her personhood has been co-opted by a disinterested meta-mind for its own, possibly nefarious, purposes.

Sally’s agency has effectively disappeared. She is doubly relieved of responsibility. First, her behavior has been accounted for solely as the intersection of influences: nothing uniquely ‘Sally’ required. She is de trop, redundant, white noise. She is a ghost in her own machine. (Ryle)

On the other hand, her behavior is dictated by her compulsory service to the collective Borg identity. Sally is the prototypical Nazi commandant; she is ‘just following orders’.  

To what can I compare 21^st century Sally? Shall I compare her to a summer’s day? I don’t think so. How about a cell in an animal body? On the one hand, she is a product of her nuclear DNA, her mitochondria, and the proteins they produce; on the other hand, she is a cog in an organelle whose sole responsibility is the well-being of its meta-organism.

Close, but still not quite. A cell in an animal body probably retains a smidge more agency than our hapless Sally. We may be witnessing Stage IV in the evolution of life on Earth: (1) RNA/DNA and the prokaryotic cell, (2) the eukaryotic (nucleated) cell, (3) the multicellular organism, (4) the collective.

There is a contrarian view. There is a model in which there is only Sally. It is Sally who synthesizes her environmental influences into a single organism, and it is that organism, in voluntary association with others, that shapes the behavior of her society.

Interestingly, this view achieved its most coherent expression c. 100 years ago as the apex of British Empiricism (Alfred North Whitehead) and the heart of Continental Existentialism (Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre). 

Both schools celebrate the absolute sovereignty of the individual over her identity and destiny. According to Whitehead’s Process Philosophy, the individual designates her Actual World, sorts that World, judges it according to Transcendental Values, and adjusts it according to Subjective Aim, i.e. the individual’s vision of ‘herself in the World for others’. 

In its purest form (Sartre), the existential self is solely responsible for his own choices, his own actions. There are no influences, unless we lay claim to them, and there are no intended consequences, unless we identify with them. The Devil makes no one do anything and no one is ever ‘just following orders’. "We are the World", we make be what comes to be, we alone are responsible.

Ironically, the sovereignty of the individual is probably best recognized today in Judeo-Christian spirituality. From Hasidic Judaism (and Kabbalah) to Evangelical (‘born again’) Christianity, the focus is first on our personal relationship with God and then, in the context of that relationship, on our liberating, peacemaking role in the World. 

In both traditions, we are commanded to love God unreservedly and to love others as ourselves. This is a powerful antidote to the fragmentation and collectivization of the self. Who’d a thunk it? (Hairspray) Judeo-Christianity has become the counter culture of the 21st century, our last line of defense against the Borg Collective. So buckle up! “There’s rough seas ahead.” (Yellow Submarine)   

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Edward Hopper’s Night Windows (1928) captures a fleeting, voyeuristic view through an illuminated apartment window, where a woman bends over in a private domestic moment. The stark contrast of warm interior light against the dark night sky heightens the sense of quiet intrusion, evoking themes of solitude, secrecy, and the subtle tension of being watched.