Need for Discernment on the AI Question
For Muslims, the framing and positioning of Artificial Intelligence and the 4th Industrial Revolution as a whole by its proponents and propagators—chiefly the technocrats, and corporate elites—should be called into question and seen from a bigger historical perspective.
This is because distinctions of notions, assumptions, and worldviews are being blurred even more pronounced today—a 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.
For instance, it is wrong to say that an “AI bot can easily surpass a traditional scholar’s abilities” as such a statement assumes that the “knowledge” a scholar possesses is equated to mere facts or information.
This process of blurring of notions is called “secularisation as a philosophical programme” which restricts or changes the meanings of concepts—including those which religions and civilisations such as Islam have considered being permanently established.
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 “worldview”—what the mind’s eye perceives to be true and real), informed by Revelation.
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.
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’s personal spiritual destiny and one’s communal and civilisational agenda.
This is compounded further by the fact that educated Muslims in recent times, by and large, through their higher education specialisation (from “universities” which no longer embody the “universal” only “the particular”) and in tandem with the emergence of the internet, have led them to “think-in-isolation” instead of “thinking-in-a-coherent-whole”.
This pattern of thought—of thinking in isolation—has 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—every start-up, enterprise, or business is geared towards individual achievement alone with no communal considerations. It causes “working in silos” which governments struggle to overcome.
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.
This writer believes that the dilemma that the global Muslim ummah is facing with respect to the advancement of AI is not merely a question of “what is the middle ground between total rejection and total embrace of technology (in this case AI)?”, 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 “democratising knowledge and information”.
In addition, there is also the “information overload” 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 ‘Ayn and Fard Kifayah).
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 (1978), “Knowledge 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.”
Thus, the goal for Muslim technologists with respect to AI should not be merely to “democratize” access to knowledge or information, but rather to facilitate or aid the entire civilisational enterprise of restoring adab towards knowledge, which necessarily lead to a condition of justice within one’s self, and in the environment.
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) 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.
