SCIENTO-RATIONALITY: EXAMINING ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN RELATION TO PERSONHOOD IN AFRICAN ONTOLOGY

This paper argues that institutional rationality has found its most profound expression in science and technology. Consequently, science and technology have tremendously emancipated man and assuaged his most pressing material needs and desires. In the course of this ontological – epistemic excurses of man, Artificial Intelligence (AI) which is the externalization of man’s rational capacities to robots has been instrumental to various successes in mankind’s scientific break-throughs, such as surgeries, space technologies etc. but, certain scholars have argued that artificial intelligence derobes man’s personhood. Yet, others feel that it does not remove personhood but actualizes it in man. At this cross-road, our examination of the true nature of A.I as it relates to man’s personality becomes germane. This is more so, when in the midst of the raging debates of the AI, few (if any) have examined AI in the African context of personhood. Thus, we shall attempt to address the following questions: Is there any actual or potential tendencies of AI playing isolationist pranks on man from his product? Does AI as man’s rational creation portend the possible threat of derobing personhood from him? What implication does AI hold for the African conception of personhood? Why should a human being extend his personhood to machines? Answers to these questions and more are not easy to come by as they are both normative and descriptive, hence there is plausibility in following any of the two divides of arguments. Since the issue of AI affects man in his individual and collective nature, it becomes a burden to his existential problem. Philosophy should then instruct and prod man out of this existential quagmire in order to elevate mankind.