Carr Center Discussion Paper 2020-009

From Rationality to Relationality

Ubuntu as an Ethical & Human Rights Framework for Artificial Intelligence Governance

Introduction

The discriminatory effects of automated decision making systems (ADMS) are tied to the philosophical origins of artificial intelligence, and to the economic, political, and social structures that shape it. Artificial intelligence and the structures that shape it derive from the Western world’s early conception of what it means to be human. This foundational view of personhood has influenced the assumptions about artificial intelligence and has shaped the economic, political and social structures that also affect the creation and use of artificial intelligence.

The traditional Western view of personhood is based on rationality. Aristotle, who set the foundations of logic as a discipline, believed that “man is a rational animal” and that truth could be rationally deduced through formal rules of logic.¹ Centuries later, Descartes, the so-called “father of modern philosophy,” reinforced the central role of reason in personhood in his declaration, “I think therefore I am.”² Kant, in similar fashion, gave ethical importance to rationality in his Categorical Imperative by basing moral autonomy entirely on one’s rationality.³ Kant argued one could use rationality, the essence of personhood, to discover moral laws that, when applied universally, would not contradict.

Universal laws that could be reasoned by rational beings inspired the Enlightenment-era belief in the possibility of an alphabet and mathematics that could represent every concept, every concept’s relationships, and their truthfulness.⁴ Prominent Western mathematicians, logicians, and early computer scientists, from Lull with his logic machine to Turing and his idea of a thinking machine, would be motivated by this traditional view of personhood to believe a type of algebra could be created such that machines could be automated to determine the truth of any statement in a way matching or surpassing human thinking.

Ramon Lull was a logician inspired in part by Sub-Saharan Africa’s binary divination system that had made its way to Europe through African Muslim Moors during the period of 700 years in which Africans controlled parts of Spain and Portugal.⁵ Lull believed that a logic machine could be created to derive biblical truths rationally, especially for the conversion of Muslim “infidels” to Christianity.⁶ In his Ars Magna, Lull asserted that “thinking [was] a computational process.”⁷ The German logician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, inspired by Aristotle’s view of rationality and foundational work on logic and by Lull’s Ars Magna, devoted much of his life to creating a universal language of which the most basic irreducible elements could be combined to express all concepts that can be represented by natural language. In Leibniz’s envisioning, this language would be the foundation of a formal system that was finite in that the number of all possible expressions could be counted, and complete and consistent in that every possible expression of the system was provable by its language and rules.⁸

Leibniz believed the algebra of the formal system could be applied by a logic machine, the “Calculus Ratiocinator, or an easy and infallible instrument of reasoning” to determine truth rationally.⁹ In a letter to Rodeken in 1708, Leibniz writes about the calculus ratiocinator as “A certain characteristic of reason, by whose aid it is possible to arrive at truths of reason, as if by a calculation, in all other matters insofar as they are subject to reasoning, just as in arithmetic and algebra”. Leibniz believed all reasoning is calculation, and seemingly inspired by the philosopher Hobbes,¹⁰ believed that “Thomas Hobbes ... rightly stated that everything done by our mind is a computation, by which is to be understood either the addition of a sum or the subtraction of a difference.”¹¹

Leibniz inspired both George Boole, who developed a simplistic algebra (Boolean logic) for representing the truthfulness of statements, and Gottlob Frege, who improved Aristotle’s symbolic language by developing new symbols for deriving the truth of more complicated statements based on rules of substitution.¹² However, in 1931, Kurt Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, which proved that a formal system cannot be both complete and consistent, laid to rest Leibniz’ idea of a universal language that could rationally describe every concept. Gödel showed that a consistent formal system, such as the mathematics of computing, cannot by itself prove the truthfulness or falsity of all theorems that can result from the system’s rules and axioms. This would be a breakdown in rationality, since there will always be some effects of a system that cannot be deduced using the rules and structures of that system. On the surface, it would appear that Gödel’s revelations would threaten the possibility of artificial intelligence, suggesting that “there is some elusive and ineffable quality to human intelligence” unattainable to machines which, unlike humans, operate in consistent formal systems.¹³ However, Gödel believed humans were also prone to the same limits accused of machines:

“The human mind is incapable of formulating (or mechanizing) all its mathematical intuitions. That is, if it has succeeded in formulating some of them, this very fact yields new intuitive knowledge, for example the consistency of this formalism. This fact may be called the ‘incompletability’ of mathematics. On the other hand, on the basis of what has been proved so far, it remains possible that there may exist (and even be empirically discoverable) a theorem-proving machine which in fact is equivalent to mathematical intuition, but cannot be proved to be so, nor even be proved to yield only correct theorems of finitary number theory.”¹⁴

The significance of Gödel’s quote is that a human mind is not necessarily superior to a machine, since human mathematical intuition, formal logic, which corresponds to a consistent formal system, is just as incomplete as a computer that cannot always give reason as to why it reaches a certain result. The quest for mechanical intelligence would continue, however, as Gödel affirmed that machines can also be intelligent, since intelligence, or reaching intelligent conclusions, is not necessarily limited to the completeness of a consistent formal system. Similarly, Alan Turing, a founding father of artificial intelligence, in his seminal Mind paper (1950) began conceiving machines that can think, “which is to say, actively solving problems, working out strategies, and discerning implications.”¹⁵ In his definition of thinking, Turing asserted that “the whole mind is mechanical” and that “the problem [of thinking] is mainly one of programming”, supporting the belief that thinking is essentially a computational process.¹⁶ Turing hypothesized that a computer, through “clever engineering”, could be built to simulate a child’s brain and through “an appropriate course of education one would obtain the adult brain.”¹⁷ This idea was the precursor to modern artificial intelligence, in particular machine learning.

While Gödel’s incompleteness theorems have not seriously undermined the quest for artificial intelligence, they do present strong contradictions to the notion of rationality as the essence of personhood. If a consistent formal system is incomplete, and logic is a consistent formal system, and logic is the basis of human reasoning, then humans cannot be self-complete, as rationalists would argue, while their system of reasoning is itself incomplete. If the essence of personhood is rationality, and no individual can achieve complete rationality through self-means, then no one is a person, or at best no one is a full person. Rationality and dehumanization are thus linked: personhood based on rationality is a reduction of personhood.

It would also stand to reason that if no consistent formal system, such as the ones Gödel describes, are complete on their own, then consistent formal systems must be all interconnected and dependent on each other for completeness. In Gödel’s theorems, another consistent formal system is needed to rationalize the irrational theorems of a given consistent formal system. This would mean that rationality is not an individual product or endeavor of a consistent formal system but is a result of interconnected consistent formal systems. Rationality is thus a product of relationality. The aphorism can be formed that “a consistent formal system is complete through other consistent formal systems.” If a substitution is made where a consistent formal system is an isomorph of personhood, it follows that a person is a person through other persons. Personhood is fundamentally relational.

Rationality’s dependence on relationality should be obvious. Douglas Hofstadter, extrapolating from Gödel’s incompleteness theorems, makes the claim that no human or group of humans are necessarily complete on their own:

“Of course, there are cases where only a rare individual will have the vision to perceive a system which governs many peoples’ lives, a system which had never before even been recognized as a system; then such people often devote their lives to convincing other people that the system really is there, and that it ought to be exited from!”¹⁸

Mathematical and scientific knowledge are not the exclusive gold standard for defining ethics or how to live a dignified life. Humans are complex and society is characterized by complex interactions with varied ways of knowing and feeling that cannot be modeled by computers or sufficiently understood without incorporating the empirical knowledge others provide. This cautionary advice has not prevailed within artificial intelligence circles.

History reveals modernity’s dehumanization in that irrational measures are often taken in the pursuit of rationality.

The most popular introductory undergraduate computer science book on artificial intelligence defines a “rational agent [as] one that does the right thing.”¹⁹ However, the reproduction of power asymmetries through automated decision making systems shows that the rationality of computers, or of humans programming the machines, does not always result in the right thing and is limited without proper context (relationality). ADMS are being used to perpetuate racism and gender stereotypes in part because computers cannot understand or take into account social contexts, in particular the racial attitudes and gender norms that exist. This is not a problem of not having enough data, it is simply that data does not interpret itself.²⁰ It does not tell us how to respond or act in a moral dilemma or how to avoid moral dilemmas.

The perceived infallibility and supremacy of rationality, especially as administered through machines, exacerbates the marginalization of those in society whose exclusion has been rationalized or found “productive.”²¹ History reveals modernity’s dehumanization in that irrational measures are often taken in the pursuit of rationality.²² The Nguni philosopher Ramose asks, “why is it that the African’s right to life continues to be denied, derecognized, and remains practically unprotected by the beneficiaries of the violence, irrationality, and the inhumanity of colonization?”²³ He continues, “[b]iological accidents like blue eyes, skin colour, short hair, or an oval cranium are all little pieces of poor evidence to prove the untenable claim that only a particular segment of humanity is rational”.²⁴ South American decolonial scholars Quijano and Mignolo have remarked that Western modernity has been accompanied by a repressive “darker side” of subjugation called coloniality, a “relationship [that] consists, in the first place, of a colonization of the imagination of the dominated.”²⁵ Horkheimer et al. make a similar critique: “[o]n their way toward modern science human beings have discarded meaning. The concept is replaced by the formula, the cause by rules and probability”.²⁶ Meaning and meaning-making are not computational processes.

While the view of personhood based on rationality and autonomy was essential in European and Euro-North American Enlightenment era philosophy, freeing the Western world from serfdom and subjugation by religious institutions and monarchies, it created its own inequalities and subjugation. The definition of rationality was constrained in ways meant to advance European and Euro-North American colonial conquests.²⁷ Personhood was not equally applied to non-Europeans. The European view of personhood provided the ethical laws and moral license to subjugate non-Europeans. Africans were thought to lack rationality or comparable intelligence to that of Europeans, and, through colonization and enslavement, could be nurtured to become rational and fully human like Europeans.²⁸ Nineteenth century missionaries in Southern Africa, for example, believed the Zulu language demonstrated a long forgotten intelligence in the natives, that could be resurrected by the Zulu people’s adherence to European culture and thinking.²⁹

At the core of Europe’s colonial encounter with Africa and rest of the colonized world was a clash of values in which the Enlightenment ideals of “freedom”, “humanity”, and “equality” were revealed to be limited, even hypocritical, as these ideals often made special exceptions for the colonial and imperialistic subjugation of Africans and other non-Europeans. The South African philosopher Ramose describes this period as the “struggle for reason”.³⁰ These special exceptions failed to preserve the human dignity of Africans and were deemed by European religious, political, and economic structures as necessary to bring about what Cornel West calls the “Age of Europe”.³¹

The inefficacy of Enlightenment ideals was not the result of their poor application; rather, in West’s words, the subjugation of Africans provided the “constitutive elements in the historical formation of the economic, political, and cultural expressions of the Age of Europe, including the Enlightenment.”³² This is to say that Enlightenment ideals, while seeking to promote liberty, but faced with the contradictions and unsustainability of capitalism, created racially categorized loopholes to simultaneously promote the subjugation and enslavement of Africans.³³ Locke, Hegel, Hume, Kant, Mill, and other Enlightenment era philosophers participated in or supported colonialism, racism and the subjugation of Africans.³⁴ The Enlightenment ideals, based on liberating the rational person, never intended to assert the fundamental human rights and dignity of all humans—doing so conflicted with Euro-American growth, expansion, and hegemony.

The critical point is that colonialism and capitalism, twin processes sharing the same historical birth and philosophical foundation, have been at all times attacks on personhood—the things that make us feel human and dignified. The digital colonialism and surveillance capitalism enabled by artificial intelligence will not preserve the human dignity of all. The increased rationalization of life through artificial intelligence will, just as Euro-American modernity has, perpetuate inequality, even challenging those rights that are based on rational personhood. Models that aggregate individual data points in order to apply a generalization to a future data subject deny the individuality and autonomy of that future data subject, and the notion that truths, and perhaps all truths, about an individual can be rationally computed destroys the core idea of privacy.

The digital colonialism and surveillance capitalism enabled by artificial intelligence will not preserve the human dignity of all.

Postcolonial African philosophy’s relevance to the ethics of artificial intelligence is that, as a response to the traumatic encounter between the African world and European modernity, it puts in clear view modernity’s dependency on marginalization and exposes the weaponization of rationality veiled as moral benevolence.³⁵ It “challenges the present globalization and its pretensions of universalism, which hides the reality of the Europeanization and Americanization of the modern world”,³⁶ and is “a criticism of the dehumanizing tendencies of European culture which, over the past centuries, found expression in slavery, colonial expansionism, and the still very present racial discrimination.”³⁷ African philosophy may be a means to not only respond to AI’s disproportionate negative effect on people, but to achieve global equality and protections from the bottom-up. In the introductory chapter to the “Caribbean” section in their book, I Am Because We Are, Hord and Lee argue that:

[if] “the impositions of colonialism and racism” are fundamental to the Enlightenment ideal of reason, then the task of Africana philosophy is the “recovery and constructing of alternative models of intellectual life” in the context of which black people can achieve the freedom that comes with a genuine sense of belonging to a world.³⁸

As soulless, spiritless, supposed human-like automated thinking machines increasingly describe and prescribe human action while systematically dehumanizing segments of society—often those historically subjugated to Western imperialism and its modernity—the more imperative our response must be. The inhumanity of the logical reduction of personhood must be challenged and rejected for more humane and relational alternatives. The pressing remedies must take into account the reality of the interconnectedness of society, and the increased intertwinement afforded by artificial intelligence, such as the models that aggregate individual behaviors and generalize them to unknown and future data subjects.

Various ethical frameworks, corporate “principles”, and major international human rights instruments, such as the International Bill of Rights, have been proposed to address the negative consequences of automated decision making systems.³⁹ It is essential that these frameworks do not, through a predominantly Western view, ironically reproduce the core problem of algorithmic decision making systems and ignore the adequate inclusion of marginalized communities in their design and application. The solutions must not be flawed by the flaws they seek to solve. Ethics is not missing in technology. Our ethics and values are always present in the creation and use of technology. The technology society creates and chooses not to create is a window into the ethics and values of the powerful. What is missing are ethics of compassion, equity, relationality. Personhood must be extended to all human beings, informed by the awareness that one’s personhood is directly connected to the personhood of others.

The African conception of personhood, as captured in ubuntu, the Sub-Saharan African philosophy, is relational. It is of the rational self, as limited as that rationality may be, becoming a relational self through an ethical maturity demonstrated by fulfilling one’s social duties and responsibilities to others.⁴⁰ The individual self thereby becomes the communal self. Relational conceptions of personhood from the African continent are nearly nonexistent in the discussions of ethics and AI, and, if they appear, they lack an exhaustive approach. Amongst other aims, this chapter seeks to contribute what may be the first substantial conception of “African” ethics and artificial intelligence, through the constructs of Nguni philosophy, and in general to present relational personhood as a concept whose promise for stronger human rights and ethics are one of “[Africa’s] gift to the world.”⁴¹

For ethicists, public interest technologists, and all others working in the arena of ethics, technology and human rights, the root causes (beliefs and incentives) of the negative effects of technology must be first identified if progress is to be made. This chapter proceeds by challenging individualism in its most general sense, that the individual as an “autonomous self” is self-complete and is the central point of value within society. Four interrelated flaws within individualism will be explored: 1) the rationalization, rewarding, and justification of unnecessary inequality, 2) the lack of upward mobility due a model that rewards the exploitation of power asymmetries, 3) the exacerbation of inequality due to the lack of upward mobility, and 4) cycles of instability due to increasing inequality.

This chapter will proceed by describing ubuntu in more detail, framing data colonialism and surveillance capitalism within an ubuntu framework, and describing five general critiques of ADMS systems as direct violations of ubuntu: 1) the exclusion of marginalized communities and their interests in the design, development, decision making, and funding of ADMS, 2) biases resulting in the selection of features in ADMS and biases entrenched in the data that generate these systems, 3) power asymmetries worsened by the use of ADMS, 4) dehumanization that occurs from the commodification of our digital selves, and 5) the centralization of the resources and power necessary in designing and using ADMS. The central point is that any harmful ADMS system suffers from one or more of these five defects, which the principles of ubuntu can overcome. The chapter concludes by laying out an ethical human-rights centered governance framework for ADMS based on ubuntu.

Individualism: the irrational personhood

The dominant culture of computing, inextricably linked to individualism, contributes to dehumanization. This has been a colossal failure in foresight on the part of techno-libertarians who envisioned the internet as a free space where human dignity and autonomy would organically coexist.⁴² The reasons are clear: since its inception, the commercial computing industry, in academia and in Silicon Valley, has been afflicted by “rugged individualism...a distinctively masculine identity in which individual artistic genius... [are] mobilized as sources of personal and professional authority,⁴³ American exceptionalist “technochauvinsim [that] arises from the antiquated American conviction that most things worthwhile in science and engineering inevitably bloosom [sic] first in the United States,”⁴⁴ and libertarian ideals expressed as techno-libertarianism/cyber-libertarianism,⁴⁵ extolling mantras such as “information wants to be free.”⁴⁶

These elements have constituted an individualistic cyber-libertarian environment based on the triumph of the individual—the glorification of unrestrained “enlightened self-interest”, the belief that “the internet, as the pinnacle of scientific and technological achievement, subverts hierarchy, revitalizes democracy, reduces racial and national conflict and leads to planetary interconnectivity and unity,”⁴⁷ and high tech capitalism where as early as the mid 1990s “advertising ha[d] become so prevalent as an online revenue source.”⁴⁸ Referring to this unholy trinity, Paulina Borsook in 1996 begins to identify the irrationality allowed by the nexus of libertarianism, capitalism, and high tech:

Technolibertarians rightfully worry about Big Bad Government, yet think commerce unfettered can create all things bright and beautiful — and so they disregard the real invader of privacy: Corporate America seeking ever-better ways to exploit the Net, to sell databases of consumer purchases and preferences, to track potential customers however it can.⁴⁹

Zubin Meer defines individualism in its broadest terms as a family of concepts, of which some connote “a dynamic capitalist economic rationality—utilitarian, competitive, and profit maximizing—inimical to the supposed torpor of feudal and tribal mentality alike.”⁵⁰ Although individualism has had both negative and positive connotations since the 19th century, it is undeniable that “individualism is inexorably tied to the specific but intertwined historical processes that have shaped the last five centuries or so of Euro-American modernity: capitalism and liberalism, secularism and humanism, historicism and science.”⁵¹

What was significant about Europe’s central belief in reason as the substance of personhood was that reason was an individual quality and activity, therefore placing the individual as the centermost point of concern in society. One’s rationality was not constrained by the rationality of others. By relying on the rationality of one’s mind, and through one’s own means, one was complete, ruler and autonomous. Praising rationality as the great leveler, Francis Bacon—the “father of modern science”—writes:

Therefore, no doubt, the sovereignty of man lieth hid in knowledge; wherein many things are reserved, which kings with their treasure cannot buy, nor with their force command; their spials and intelligencers can give no news of them, their seamen and discoverers cannot sail where they grow: now we govern nature in opinions, but we are thrall unto her in necessity: but if we would be led by her in invention, we should command her by action.⁵²

The Enlightenment goal of self-realization through the “mastery of nature” is today’s self-realization through the mastery of bits and cyberspace.⁵³ The pursuit of mastery of nature, necessitating liberty as a foundation of individual rights, is a parallel to the mastery of cyberspace, the “new home of the Mind...where liberty itself always speaks” with great authority, as proclaimed by techno-libertarian movements.⁵⁴ These connected movements can be understood as subjugation. Goldberg, the South-African critical race scholar, writes “[s]ubjugation perhaps properly defines the order of the Enlightenment: subjugation of nature by human intellect, colonial control through physical and cultural domination and economic superiority through mastery of the laws of the market.”⁵⁵ The liberty for mastery of nature tolerates the inevitability of inequality.

Any system, whether political, economic, or social, that is organized and structured around individualistic principles eventually produces harms.

The inequality resulting from liberty seems to have been recognized by American founding fathers and European thinkers. While on the floor of the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Alexander Hamilton expressed the shared belief that “inequality will exist as long as liberty exists” saying that “it inevitably results from that very liberty itself.”⁵⁶ Pittman, a constitution scholar and authority on George Mason, the originator of the Bill of Rights, summarizes the sentiment of the occasion, stating that:

Equality beyond the range of legal rights cannot thrive in free soil. It thrives only in the sewers of Slavic slavery ... Equality beyond the range of legal rights is despotic restraint … Equality homogenizes so that the cream no longer rises to the top. It puts the eagle in the henhouse that he may no longer soar.⁵⁷

In a separate article, Pittman continues:

It is inequality that makes “the pursuit of happiness” something more than a dry run or a futile chase. It is inequality that makes the race. It is the father of every joy and the giver of every good gift.⁵⁸

While there will always be some type of inequality, here defined as natural and artificial differences between humans, Pittman’s metaphors of “cream” and “soaring” are justifications of unnecessary inequality. The allowance for the “cream” to rise to the top creates antipathy to forms of solidarity more needed today in an increasingly interconnected world.⁵⁹ The individualistic libertarian ideals allow for inequality through excessive and greedy competition as individuals center their actions around their own self-interests.⁶⁰ This highly competitive nature is prominent in Silicon Valley culture. Internet technology startups, with mottos such as “move fast and break things,” often aim to disrupt an industry and make as much profit as possible in the process.⁶¹ However, this leaves little consideration for the greater social and environmental consequences. This is akin to indulging the liberty to move at the speed of electrons without seat belts or road signals. Unfortunately when things do “break,” the marginalized are the ones disproportionately affected.⁶² These are the flaws of individualism.

Individualism is flawed in at least four ways: it 1) Justifies inequality (e.g., the poor are poor because they deserve to be poor); 2) Limits upward social mobility (e.g., individuals of marginalized communities must work twice as hard to get half as far); 3) worsens inequality (e.g., as the rich get richer the poor get poorer); and 4) creates cycles of instability (e.g,. within politics, cycles of coups that occur when authoritarians, individualists in their own right, prioritize private interests over the public interest). These flaws are not by chance or an effect of poor implementation of individualist ideals, but instead are inherent flaws of individualism that inevitably lead to extreme power asymmetries and inequality. Any system, whether political, economic, or social, that is organized and structured around individualistic principles eventually produces these harms.

The manner in which we organize our societies can lead to adverse outcomes if it is not done with equity in mind. Consider the following problem, referred to as the “10 Dollar Problem”.

Suppose a population of four people in which $10, denominated as four bills, one $5 bill, two $2 bills, and a $1 bill must be distributed amongst the population. How should the distribution of the bills be carried out in a manner that leads to a just and equal society? Suppose individuals, acting fairly and using their own efforts and advantages, are treated as autonomous, self-dependent rational beings, each with the goal to maximize their own utility, a position that reflects individualism. What characteristics are likely to be associated with the individual likely to collect the most? Most likely the one with the best competitive advantage (“strongest”, “fastest, “smarter”) will win. If this is a “fair” and acceptable outcome, then the distribution system is set to reward competitive advantages. This distribution justifies some people getting less because it is assumed such individuals are fairly rewarded less based on their competencies or productivity.

The first fundamental flaw of individualism is that it justifies inequality, as illustrated in the “10 Dollar Problem”.⁶³ By incorrectly assuming a pre-existing state of equality, individualism creates inequality by rewarding differences that can be leveraged competitively. This leads to a “winner takes all” attitude, a race to the bottom. The Silicon Valley culture of disruption is a “winner takes all” culture. Speed is treated as an indispensable competitive advantage and precautions in terms of diversity of startups or the societal consequences are treated as secondary. Often private interests win and the public, especially the marginalized, loses. This leads to the belief that those who are poor are poor because they deserve to be poor. As autonomous beings, those with less must have failed in one aspect or another and thus are justly rewarded.

If money is a tool for exercising one’s autonomy, should an equal society allow for unequal degrees of autonomy even if they are “fairly” earned? Should the richest exercise the greatest autonomy and influence over society and the poorest receive the smallest amount of autonomy and influence? An affirmative answer to the preceding allows for advantaged individuals to have more autonomy than the collective and eventually allows for the “Iron Law of Oligarchy” to take effect.⁶⁴

Individualism’s second flaw is that for the disadvantaged to acquire more, they must develop and exercise a competitive advantage over others. This notion limits upward mobility because the marginalized, already operating at a deficit, must incur an added cost in order to be competitive. Disenfranchised groups often exclaim the need to work “twice as hard to get half as much.”⁶⁵ This symbolizes the unequal exchanges of power within an unequal society. In order to acquire more, the disenfranchised, while having limited access to resources, have to work much harder than their privileged counterparts who come from positions of power. This makes upward mobility needlessly difficult to achieve.

This state creates the conditions for the third flaw of individualism: it worsens inequality. This is a corollary of the second flaw. The difficulty in upward mobility exacerbates inequality by enabling those with advantages to leverage power asymmetries and generate wealth. Suppose the 10 Dollar Problem is applied repeatedly, and those with an existing competitive advantage are better suited to acquire more resources. The acquisition of more resources, in turn, adds to their competitive advantage, which allows them to be even more competitive the next time around, and so forth. Without any intervention, high inequality will result. The state of high income inequality from the United States to South Africa demonstrates this notion.⁶⁶ The state of inequality is exacerbated as the disadvantaged find it more difficult to compete and the already empowered are much more equipped to exercise their competitive advantages and capture more of society’s resources.

Consent without power leads to inequality.

In an unequal society, the exchanges of power are unequal and produce Marx’s alienations. Those who have acquired resources, and greater autonomy, are able to dictate the conditions of power exchanges. When great power imbalances exist the conditions for consent diminish, as it becomes difficult to give consent when one has no meaningful alternatives. Even if multiple parties agree to an exchange it does not necessarily mean the exchange was fair. When marginalized communities accept undesirable propositions, especially those offered by tech companies, their acceptance cannot be treated as an indication of fairness or true consent.⁶⁷ Consent without power leads to inequality.

When internet tech companies provide services to society, such as connectivity or recommendations, in exchange for greater access to the private lives and attention of citizens, it cannot be characterized as a fair transaction when often large marginalized populations are not able to refuse without losing critical services. In the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, when tech companies provide free internet and digital social connectivity through online platforms, in exchange for great amounts of privacy invasion and commodification of users’ behaviors, it cannot be treated as a social good. Often these populations have to trade their privacy or risk losing access to connectivity. Individualism allows for these inequalities in power exchanges.

The fourth flaw is that individualism creates cycles of instability, a view captured by Kwame Nkrumah in his discourse on neocolonialism and Hegel’s comments on capitalism. In Hegel’s comments the solution to the instability and a “penurious rabble” is the colonization of other nations.⁶⁸ Nkrumah, differing, writes:

Neo-colonialism, like colonialism, is an attempt to export the social conflicts of the capitalist countries. The temporary success of this policy can be seen in the ever widening gap between the richer and the poorer nations of the world. But the internal contradictions and conflicts of neo-colonialism make it certain that it cannot endure as a permanent world policy. How it should be brought to an end is a problem that should be studied, above all, by the developed nations of the world, because it is they who will feel the full impact of the ultimate failure. The longer it continues the more certain it is that its inevitable collapse will destroy the social system of which they have made it a foundation.⁶⁹

An oppressive system is unstable because it relies on oppression, and oppression of others cannot be forever guaranteed. The marginalized masses, desiring to change their state of affairs, will eventually accumulate the activation energy needed to realize their potential power, leading to a cataclysmic capture of power in some form of revolution. This is, in Nkrumah’s words, a desperate “state of economic chaos and misery that revolt actually breaks out.”⁷⁰ However, if the new power distribution is individualistic, the cycle begins again—artificial differences are rewarded, which leads to a lack of upward mobility, which worsens inequality, and results in a seizure of power disenfranchising the former rulers in the process. It cannot be known how the distribution of power will occur in such an aftermath and how justice will be carried out. The former oppressors can only hope that the system of justice adopted by the new power distribution has an orientation towards reconciliation and creating harmony between all members of society. Ubuntu incorporates these principles.

Ubuntu as Relational Personhood

Ubuntu relational personhood is diametrically opposed to rationality as personhood, the philosophy that has shaped Western individualism, the Western world’s asymmetric relationship with much of the world, computing culture, and AI’s quest for a mechanical personhood. Ubuntu is the basis of African philosophy, the “wellspring flowing with African ontology and epistemology.”⁷¹ Ubuntu has been popularized internationally through the experiences and philosophy of the Suthu and Nguni of southern Africa, which include three of the first four African Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Although it shares parallels with the African humanism found across Sub-Saharan Africa, “it must be recognized that Ubuntu is a profoundly southern African manifestation” and the political identity of South Africa (Mbeki).⁷² Ubuntu as used here will be a non-exclusive reference to Nguni philosophy, with the implied belief that it also represents Suthu knowledge systems.

Nguni philosophy is contained in its oral literature, not as an antithesis to written literature, but that it marks “a development of a more complex literary genre which has utilized to the maximum the social and linguistic potential.”⁷³ This literary form “has evolved a special set of principles necessary for the socialization of thought.”⁷⁴ The elucidation of ubuntu conversely relies on the backdrop of Nguni languages, proverbs, poetry, idioms, and culture—the living library of Nguni thought. The entries in the thought system often utilize special naming conventions that enclose meaning through the affordances of the Nguni languages. The late Zulu poet and philosopher Mazisi Kunene writes, “If the naming of things follows a principle of describing their function, appearance, sounds and relationships, not merely to identify and label them, it is from such a study that one can amass and trace some of the fundamental philosophies of the culture.”⁷⁵ Alfred T. Bryant, the author of the 1905 Zulu-English dictionary, although holding antiquated colonialist views that denied the civilization of amaZulu, is in agreement with Kunene when he writes:

Nor does the language show any structural inferiority; indeed, in this respect it absolutely outclasses many of our European languages, and, had it been planned by one of our most modern inventive geniuses, it could scarcely have been better modelled. In the hands, so to say, of one expert in its use, it is capable of expressing anything in the run of ordinary life, in a manner as perfect, and oftentimes in an easier and clearer way than in English. No reasonable person would expect it to have already made provision for all those abstract ideas, scientific facts, and paraphernalia of civilised life, which had never yet come within the sphere of its experience. And yet it carries within itself ample power and resources for answering all those requirements. Owing to its unrivalled onomatopoeic capabilities, it provides both a medium of lifelike expression that the cleverest European raconteur could never aspire to, and offers an ever-ready means for the coining of endless new words ... Indeed, in certain respects it is probable that no living European language, if left only to its own resources and unable to borrow from other languages, could even compare with it ... The Zulu language, then, is eminently well-stocked and vividly expressive, is resourceful and plastic to all demands.⁷⁶

This presents an immediate challenge, for to describe ubuntu in English, or apart from its organic Nguni environment, is to give up on greater clarity afforded by the aesthetics and structure of Nguni languages. Bryant asserts this regarding isiZulu:

It luxuriates in sweet, mellow vowel-sounds, and the quaint musical cadence of its flow rivals the most silvery-toned Italian. Its most prominent philological feature, however, is that alliterative concord, so ingenious as a grammatical scheme, which carries a flow of progressive harmony throughout the whole of each sentence; while the feature which gives the language its greatest power is its marvellously elaborated verb, which presents, as Prof. Keane observes, ‘no less than 250 different forms, temporal, modal, positive, negative, active, passive, causal, augmentative, etc., so that the language is in this respect probably unsurpassed even by the intricate verbal systems of the Finno-Tartar group.’⁷⁷

Despite the cultural and literary inadequacies that have often distorted the transmission and comprehension of authentic African thought, a subset of ubuntu will be described in a manner that can allow for its corrective use and impact in the governance of artificial intelligence.⁷⁸

The term ubuntu serves three purposes: 1) it is an identifier for Nguni philosophy, 2) its meaning refers to the quality of being a person, personhood, sharing the same root as umuntu/abantu (the singular/plural forms of “person”), 3) its etymology reveals the orientation and nature of personhood: one of becoming. The focus of this section will largely be on the last two purposes which will provide the foundation for the implication and application of ubuntu.

The first step towards clarifying ubuntu is to transform its spelling to ubu-Ntu, which brings the reader closer to the authentic conveying of the intentions behind its etymology. Ntu is a root associated with humanity: person, people, culture, and personhood. In isiZulu, a person, being the personification, instance of Ntu, is umu-Ntu; people is aba-Ntu, the philosophy, the state and quality of Ntu, is ubu-Ntu; and its direct practice (culture) is isi-Ntu.

Ntu is connected the idea of uMvelinqangi (“the Creator that appeared before all things”) who “was the ultimate reality from which all things were to derive their being.”⁷⁹ Ngubane describes the nature of reality in the following:

All [creation] were manifestations of [Mvelingqangi’s] infinite form. Inside [Mvelingqangi’s] being was an infinity of specialized forms making up apart of the whole. These were the spirits of living things, some of which had human forms. When they were clothed in flesh, they became the human beings who inhabited the earth...As a future spirit form or idlozi, the individual personality had a sacredness that was absolute and immutable. He was the individualized essence of Mvelinqangi. The concept of equality in the African community was based on this evaluation of the human personality. From such an evaluation sprang an important ethical code, which prescribed that the good life was the one in which individuality was treated with reverence and consideration ... Supreme virtue lay in being humane, in accepting the human being as a part of yourself, with a right to be denied nothing that you possessed … This code constituted a philosophy of life, and the great Sutu-nguni family ... called it, significantly, ubuntu or botho.⁸⁰

Ngubane’s passage emphasizes that umu-Ntu, as an individualized essence of uMvelinqangi, is a unique being that simultaneously incorporates the individuality of others. In this sense one is not complete in oneself, but relies on others for completion. The person, in addition to existing in relation to others, exists in relation to the “specialized forms making apart of the whole.” These forms consist of the individual, community, environment, and the spiritual. Accepting the another human as part of oneself is to be in harmony with ultimate reality, for accepting others is in compliance and reverence for uMvelinqangi, the ultimate reality from which humans and all forces derive and are intricately and inextricably interconnected. This provides the foundation for relational personhood. In this definition, relationality is the acceptance of the individuality of others, for all are interconnected, and in general it is the acceptance of the interconnectedness of humans, nature, and the spiritual. Kunene calls this the “Fundamental Law of Humanity (umthetho wobuntu) … a timeless set of values which by their ethical authority supersede the whims of temporal political power.”⁸¹ Therefore, within ubu-Ntu, personhood is fundamentally relational. Relationality is the nature of reality and the measure of ethical living.

Ethics in ubu-Ntu is the measure of one’s relationality with others, the environment, and all other interdependent parts. When one develops meaningful relationships with others, meeting the duties that the reverence of others may require, one is considered ethical, or “unoBuntu” (“they have ubuntu”). The opposite orientation, geared towards the self and the distancing of oneself from others, is considered unethical, “akala ubu-Ntu” (to not have ubuntu).⁸² The prefix ubu indicates a state of being and becoming, and along with the stem Ntu evokes the idea of a continuous being or becoming a person oriented towards cosmic unity and creative purpose.⁸³ Ramose suggests that ubuntu describes an enfolded being, an incessant orientation towards ntu.⁸⁴

Having ubu-Ntu, or “okuba ngumu-Ntu” (being a person), is embracing the normative role emphasized in the philosophical meaning of umu-Ntu. This is a continuous process where one becomes more or less of a person in relation to their treatment of others. In this endeavor one can fail or succeed in achieving the ultimate goal of being umu-Ntu. When a person fails at achieving ubuntu, It is common in Nguni languages to say “Wo, akumuntu lowo” (Oh, that is no person), referring not to biology, but the negation of one’s duty to act humane.⁸⁵ The negation of one’s duty of “okuba ngumu-Ntu” (being a person), despite ample opportunity, elicits “the harshest judgment that the humblest African in the Sutu-nguni community can make of his neighbor [which] is to say that he is not humane.”⁸⁶

The duty to recognize others, as an orientation towards ubu-Ntu, is represented by the most common Zulu greeting, “Sawubona”, which means “we see you”, or “I on behalf of the community recognize and affirm your humanity”. An individual, being the embodiment and reflection of the community, necessitates the plural “we” – “We, recognize your dignity, your individualized essence of Ntu”. By being accepted one experiences greater quality of personhood; the recognized can say “I am human because I belong.”⁸⁷

The individual recognizing another is best understood in the context of the community recognizing another or the community recognizing itself, its interconnectedness with itself, through the recognition of the individual. The individual is interconnected to all communities across time and space. Every greeting given and received is an affirmation of the inherent dignity, individuality, and interconnectedness in being human. One of the dimensions of interconnectedness is self-similarity between humans, and between the community and the individual. Kunene writes:

A concept that must be understood in dealing with African/Zulu thought systems is the idea that things cumulate from the smallest entity (utho) to the largest aggregate (izinto). Through growth, things are activated and they evolve in cycles of being, building up from the smallest to the largest entity. Thus, the largest entity contains within itself the smallest units which are themselves replicas of the aggregate of things. This simply means that our world is conceptually duplicated not only in all minute organisms but also in all cosmic-scale phenomena.

Kunene’s quote emphasizes that ubuntu’s relationality is not just between humans, but the same harmonious relationship is replicated in larger and larger scales throughout the cosmos, between the physical and spiritual words, and within the realm of the ancestors, connecting all. This relationship, extending through time and space, is captured in fractal geometry of the traditional layout and architecture of imizi (homesteads) of the Nguni.⁸⁸ The arrangement captures a oneness in purpose and the idea that the individual is the image of the community and the community is the image of the individual. The individual and the community act in harmony and are connected throughout time and space. This self-similarity is reflected in ubuntu’s commonly cited aphorisms “I am because you are,” and “a person is a person through other persons.”⁸⁹

The interconnectedness between time and space is demonstrated through generational equivalence common in many parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. A grandchild, for example, may be referred to as the grandparent without contradiction.⁹⁰ In Nguni societies individuals, often adults, are addressed by the name of their clan name or a previous ancestor, symbolizing a oneness in essence across space and time.⁹¹ When expressing gratitude to an individual it is often said “to your clan” where the clan name or its prominent members across time are mentioned. In the highest form of praise to an individual, known as “praise poetry”, one often recites the recipient’s clan’s heroic pursuits and activities throughout time that reflect the social ethic. Individuals assume the identity of the whole and are a manifestation of the whole. It is understood that a person is the physical embodiment of the past, present, and future communities.⁹² In the Zulu Personal Declaration of 1825, Ngubane writes:

I am the face of humanity.
The face of humanity is my face...I am Father-Mother-Child.
I am the past, the present and the future.
I have no beginning and no end;
I am the geodesic circle in which Father and Mother merged to become Me.
I extend myself into the child.
I am the brick out of which society is built;
I am the Eternal Person.⁹³

The dehumanizing effects of removing the social communal self from the biological self can be demonstrated in the internationally condemned practice of solitary confinement.⁹⁴ If the self is fundamentally the rational self, the self should not deteriorate to the extent that it loses itself and a sense of rationality when it is removed from meaningful social relationships (relationality). When one greets another by “sawubona” one responds to that essential human need by affirming, “I recognize and affirm your humanity, your expression”.

Given the context of Nguni knowledge systems, ubu-Ntu philosophy focuses on humanity’s purpose, place, and experience in the maintenance of universal harmony.⁹⁵ In practical terms this means examining and improving the quality of the interconnected relationships that define humanity’s existence such that the distribution of power within and between these relationships enables social progress, social harmony, and human dignity. These three criteria are interdependent—social progress is impossible without social harmony, and social harmony is impossible without an emphasis on human dignity—and are the foundational requirements in applying ubu-Ntu as a framework for determining ethical decisions in any given context. Certain principles contribute to these foundational ideals: solidarity, reconciliation, positive reciprocity, equity, equality, and community (as opposed to coexistence).

Human nature is by default free and at liberty to choose good or wrong. The individual must use their liberty to act in harmony with the rest of society.

Ubu-Ntu can be reconstructed from five Nguni proverbs: “Umu-Ntu ngu mu-Ntu”, “Akumu-Ntu lowo”, “Umu-Ntu akalahlwa”, “Inkosi yinkosi ngaba-Ntu”, and “Umu-Ntu ngumu-Ntu ngaba-Ntu”. These succinct proverbs may be used to provide principles that can be applied in human rights law and the ethical governance of artificial intelligence in ways that improve social progress, harmony, and human dignity. The following section will go through each in turn.

“Umu-Ntu ngu mu-Ntu” – A person is a person

This is often said when a person does something either significantly wrong or good. It emphasizes that human nature is by default free and at liberty to choose good or wrong. The individual must use their liberty to act in harmony with the rest of society. A person, as the individualized essence of ultimate reality, is in a position to know themselves better than others may. Therefore one’s conscience in isiZulu is often called “umzwangedwa,” which translates to “I hear it by myself”. One must train both “the precision mind (ubuchopho) and the cosmic mind (ingqondo)” to align with the harmony of the whole.⁹⁶

“Akumu-Ntu lowo” – They are not a person

Given as a critique, it emphasizes that personhood is something that may be lost. While one may still be a person in the biological sense, one experiences a degraded state of personhood when acting in opposition to one’s duty to others and to the harmony of the organic whole. To be disconnected in such a manner is to have a reduced personhood, and when society or another individual disconnects an individual from being in community with others it is a violation of one’s basic human right to be accepted into community.⁹⁷

“Umu-Ntu ngumu-Ntu nga ba-Ntu” – A person is a person through other persons

This emphasizes the self-similarity, relationality, and interconnectedness of personhood. One’s personhood, and the measure of ethics, is a function of how one relates to others. When one uplifts the humanity of others, one uplifts oneself. When one degrades the personhood of another, one degrades oneself. Similarly an ethical society or institution is ethical in as much as it treats the individual as a person. If a society denies an individual restoration or the chance to be in community, it acts unethically. The failure and success of an individual is equally the failure and success of the community.

“Umu-Ntu akalahlwa” – No one is beyond redemption

Because the individual is born free, with a conscience and the power of choice, and by virtue of existing carries a unique divine mandate only irrevocable by uMvelinqangi, the individual earnestly willing to be in community and to sustain the community must be allowed the opportunity to do so. This emphasizes reconciliation and tolerance, and explains the logic behind South Africa’s national Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The violation of the humanity of another is considered a process that requires the violator to cast away their own humanity.⁹⁸ As the oppressed and the oppressor are both in need of having their humanity restored it is a violation of ubuntu to deny restoration to either the oppressor or the oppressed.⁹⁹

“Inkosi yinkosi ngaba-Ntu” – A leader derives power from the consent and will of the governed

This emphasizes that the purpose of leadership is to serve the needs of the constituents. Ubuntu rejects the concentration of power amongst a few elite. Ubuntu is decentralized in nature and requires consensus to be reached through cooperation and participation of the parts that constitute the whole. Although individuals may differ in role, the oneness and equality of each is maintained and enforced. In traditional Nguni institutions that may appear centralized, the central body’s powers are greatly limited. The central figure within traditional societies is merely symbolic and represents the consensus, oneness, and the “social ethic” of the group.¹⁰⁰ The central figurehead serves as a custodian of the welfare of the society and the powers they employ are greatly checked and must always adhere to the will and demands of the group.¹⁰¹ The celebration of a hero or an institution in ubuntu is the celebration of the ideals held by society, the social ethic, rather than a celebration of a particular individual or an institution.¹⁰² Ubu-Ntu, while revering individuality, rejects individualism, and dictatorship/autocracy is deeply individualistic.