{"id":32744,"date":"2023-08-23T08:51:56","date_gmt":"2023-08-23T00:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/new-wp\/?p=32744"},"modified":"2025-10-03T03:36:37","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T03:36:37","slug":"need-for-more-intelligence-in-the-era-of-ai-or-need-for-discernment-on-the-ai-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/need-for-more-intelligence-in-the-era-of-ai-or-need-for-discernment-on-the-ai-question\/","title":{"rendered":"Need for Discernment on the AI Question"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Listen to this article<\/a><\/mark><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Muslims, the framing and positioning of Artificial Intelligence and the 4th<\/sup> Industrial Revolution as a whole by its proponents and propagators\u2014chiefly the technocrats, and corporate elites\u2014should be called into question and seen from a bigger historical perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is because distinctions of notions, assumptions, and worldviews are being blurred even more pronounced today\u2014a process first enunciated by earlier secular Western philosophers and scientists, but by now unconsciously continued by people of learning and practitioners of various fields and sectors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For instance, it is wrong to say that an \u201cAI bot can easily surpass a traditional scholar\u2019s abilities\u201d as such a statement assumes that the \u201cknowledge\u201d a scholar possesses is equated to mere facts or information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This process of blurring of notions is called \u201csecularisation as a philosophical programme\u201d which restricts or changes the meanings of concepts\u2014including those which religions and civilisations such as Islam have considered being permanently established.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since the advent of Islam, the learned within the Muslim community is more or less conscious of established notions which in turn shape their thoughts or vision of reality and truth as a whole (or termed as \u201cworldview\u201d\u2014what the mind\u2019s eye perceives to be true and real), informed by Revelation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These network of key notions and their meanings have been preserved for centuries by learned Muslims through various means but chiefly through their authoritative lexicons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The blurring of distinctions of key notions will necessarily lead one to be captive of ambiguity, confusion, or worse, being co-opted and deceived into a vision and agenda not conducive to one\u2019s personal spiritual destiny and one\u2019s communal and civilisational agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is compounded further by the fact that educated Muslims in recent times, by and large, through their higher education specialisation (from \u201cuniversities\u201d which no longer embody the \u201cuniversal\u201d only \u201cthe particular\u201d) and in tandem with the emergence of the internet, have led them to \u201cthink-in-isolation\u201d instead of \u201cthinking-in-a-coherent-whole\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This pattern of thought\u2014of thinking in isolation\u2014has not empowered them in reality, but made them more helpless as they are unable to perceive broader connections, let alone recognise interconnections in reality. Every man has become an island\u2014every start-up, enterprise, or business is geared towards individual achievement alone with no communal considerations. It causes \u201cworking in silos\u201d which governments struggle to overcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, there may be some emotional attachment to Islam among Muslims but it is not bounded by a coherent thinking or intellectual framework informed by Revealed Truth. Hence, every Muslim individual and group tends to have differing and contesting vision of what it means to contribute to the Ummah<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This writer believes that the dilemma that the global Muslim ummah<\/em> is facing with respect to the advancement of AI is not merely a question of \u201cwhat is the middle ground between total rejection and total embrace of technology (in this case AI)?\u201d, rather the moral conundrum is that: since most of the advanced technologies (and now AI) have been developed without any prior consideration of a metaphysical point of departure (which the secular West have long rejected as meaningless since the time of Immanuel Kant), the direction of how technologies are developed will necessarily be contributing to an extreme of excess, although it is agreeable with the secular progress ideal of \u201cdemocratising knowledge and information\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, there is also the \u201cinformation overload\u201d scenario which does not reflect the state of affairs congenial to Muslim spiritual life and civilisation wherein everything, every fact and information, is supposed to be perceived and situated in its proper place (hence, the classification of knowledge into Fard \u2018Ayn<\/em> and Fard Kifayah<\/em>). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Islam does place the pursuit of knowledge at a premium, it comes with a certain qualifier. As Professor Dr Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas reminds us in his book Islam and Secularism <\/em>(1978), \u201cKnowledge must be approached reverently and in humility, and it cannot be possessed simply as if it were there available to everyone irrespective of intention and purpose and capacity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, the goal for Muslim technologists with respect to AI should not be merely to \u201cdemocratize\u201d access to knowledge or information, but rather to facilitate or aid the entire civilisational enterprise of restoring adab<\/em> towards knowledge, which necessarily lead to a condition of justice within one\u2019s self, and in the environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is incumbent, therefore, for a select group of Muslim policy-makers and Muslim technologists to have more clarity on these issues and considerations, and equip themselves with knowledge of the Worldview of Islam. This is necessary as a matter of fulfilling a Communal Obligation (fard kifayah<\/em>) so that any initiatives involving AI or advanced technology would complement the broader intervention and redirection of the state of affairs in the global Muslim community spearheaded by leading Muslim scholars and thought leaders of our time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For Muslims, the framing and positioning of Artificial Intelligence and the 4th Industrial Revolution as a whole by its proponents and propagators\u2014chiefly the technocrats, and corporate elites…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"_wpzoom_pinterest_image_url":"","_wpzoom_pinterest_hidden_image":"0","_wpzoom_pinterest_description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[225,249],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","category-audio-articles","category-225","category-249","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32744"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81275,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32744\/revisions\/81275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ikim.gov.my\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}