Artificial Intelligence and the Modern Condition of Expertise

• Published date: 01 January 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231204968
• Author: Roy L. Heidelberg
• Date: 01 January 2024
• Subject Matter: Perspectives

https://doi.org/10.1177/00953997231204968

Administration & Society

2024, Vol. 56(1) 73 –95

© The Author(s) 2023

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00953997231204968

journals.sagepub.com/home/aas

Perspectives

Artificial Intelligence and

the Modern Condition of

Expertise

Roy L. Heidelberg1

Abstract

The following essay offers a political theory of the expert. I draw connections

between the authority derived from expertise to the emerging role of artificial

intelligence in a political condition marked by an impersonal sovereign. I begin

with a detailed description of the role of the expert and expertise with specific

attention to the function of knowledge as a source of authority. Through

the work of Max Weber and Carl Schmitt, I connect the political role of

the expert to the rise and prominence of the administrative or total state.

The essay focuses on the connection between the expert as an authority in

the modern state and the emergence of a political logic that invites artificial

intelligence into the realm of authority.

Keywords

artificial intelligence, bureaucracy, sovereignty, impersonal, expertise,

expert, pragmatocracy

[. . .] it may be worth our while a little to reflect on FOUR SORTS OF

ARGUMENTS, that men, in their reasonings with others, do ordinarily make

use of to prevail on their assent; or at least so to awe them as to silence their

opposition. The first is, to allege the opinions of men, whose parts, learning,

eminency, power, or some other cause has gained a name, and settled their

reputation in the common esteem with some kind of authority. When men are

established in any kind of dignity, it is thought a breach of modesty for others

1Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, USA

Corresponding Author:

Roy L. Heidelberg, Louisiana State University, 2053 Business Education Complex,

Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.

Email: royh@lsu.edu

1204968AAS0010.1177/00953997231204968Administration & SocietyHeidelberg

research-article2023

74 Administration & Society 56(1)

to derogate any way from it, and question the authority of men who are in

possession of it. This is apt to be censured, as carrying with it too much pride,

when a man does not readily yield to the determination of approved authors,

which is wont to be received with respect and submission by others: and it is

looked upon as insolence, for a man to set up and adhere to his own opinion

against the current stream of antiquity; or to put it in the balance against that of

some learned doctor, or otherwise approved writer. Whoever backs his tenets

with such authorities, thinks he ought thereby to carry the cause, and is ready

to style it impudence in any one who shall stand out against them. This I think

may be called ARGUMENTUM AD VERECUNDIAM.

John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding,

book IV, chat XVII, section 19

Ted Chiang’s (2000) very short story “Catching crumbs from the table” is writ-

ten as a report on the conditions of science after a point when scientific inquiry

will have “moved beyond the comprehensibility of humans.” In the story, writ-

ten as a short scientific report, a genetic therapy has been developed that is

administered during fetal brain development, allowing some biological humans

to receive direct neural transfer (DNT) of scientific learning. Having this ability

effectively alienates these “metahumans” from other humans as they acquire

the knowledge associated with it. Those without this genetic ability to perform

DNT are left outside of the frontiers of science; those with the genetic modifi-

cation, the metahumans, perform the work that sustains scientific discovery.

What human researchers are left to do is interpret the scientific work of meta-

humans, to perform the work of hermeneutics as scientific inquiry. This activity

gives rise to artifact hermeneutics: human researchers seek to understand how

something works by reverse engineering the artifact itself, but this yields lim-

ited insight and primarily provides human researchers with just enough infor-

mation to grasp what has already been done. Chiang’s report from the future

ends in a sanguine tone, noting that the technologies that gave rise to metahu-

mans were invented by humans, so it is conceivable that further inventions by

humans can enable humans to “upgrade” their minds so that they match the

intellectual power of metahumans. Even in the future the hope for a solution to

the problems of technology lie in the technological power of humans.

The allegorical message of Chiang’s fictional report has affinities with the

present conditions of expertise and artificial intelligence. Obviously, there is

not a genetic treatment (called Sugimoto gene therapy in the story) that pre-

pares a human fetus to develop into a metahuman with an ability to receive

information and data directly into the brain. But I think that the conditions of

modern expertise in the administrative state can be understood as a condition

in which complex knowledge generation is difficult to access and creates a