How might Generative AI affect patriarchy?
How might Generative AI affect patriarchy?
The future is up for grabs. Nothing is pre-determined. We are all ships navigating through oceans of technological innovations, corporate monopolies, charismatic leaders and reverse dominance coalitions. Automation could be designed in a way to raise workers’ marginal productivity and boost their pay. Recognising that there are many potential outcomes, let me share three major risks:
Automation could displace labour in developing countries and slow urbanisation
Feeling threatened, societies may ramp up cultural tightening and norm policing
Authoritarians may use digital technologies to repress feminist activism
Job losses and slow urbanisation
Low and middle income countries face the biggest threat, since people’s main tradable asset is their labour. If technological innovations reduce demand for overseas manufacturing and services, we should expect longer job queues, lower earnings, and slower urbanisation. This is a two-step process: first hitting jobs in exports, then reducing demand for local goods and services.
If urban labour demand stays low, Indian Dalits may remain trapped in villages - which are typically much more close-knit, oppressive and patriarchal. Cities are catalysts of social change.
In poor patrilineal societies like Bihar, families face the ‘honour-income trade-off’. If available earnings remain low, families may decide that this additional income does not compensate for their preference for honour. So women may remain dependent on patriarchal guardians. This inhibits mobility, exploration, and female friendships outside the home. Strictly secluded and surveilled, women struggle to form reverse dominance coalitions.
Cultural tightening
A growing body of evidence suggests that when people feel under siege, they seek strength through unity, want norm violators to be punished and gravitate towards supernatural punishment. Conflict seems to change people’s conceptions of God, they are more likely to see him as punitive. Threats, stress and instability - like the US farm crisis and recent pandemic - likewise spawn religosity.
“COVID-19 crisis resulted in a massive rise in the intensity of prayer. During the early months of the pandemic, Google searches for prayer relative to all Google searches rose by 30%, reaching the highest level ever recorded” .
In Ukraine, searches for God, prayer, and Jesus (бог + молитва + Ісус) peaked at the time of the Russian invasion.
Turkey’s earthquake affected regions voted for Erdogan. The horror of 50,000 deaths and mass homelessness may have strengthened support for religious authoritarianism. (That’s merely a speculation, I have not seen this tested).
If automation kills jobs in low and middle-income countries, people may feel under threat and turn to religious conservatism. That might manifest in demand for Sharia law, Latin America’s evangelical right, Hindu nationalism, or Russia’s United Front.
Authoritarianism
64% of the world now lives in an authoritarian regime. Rulers are increasingly harnessing digital technologies to amass control and surveillance. Facebook’s algorithms spawn disinformation and hate - such as in Myanmar. Rising authoritarianism spawns despondency, destroys any culture of resistance and inhibits feminist activism. Russia’s feminists are far too scared to protest publicly. ‘The cult of war’ and macho violence are celebrated, rather than questioned. In the absence of strong, autonomous feminist movements, Russia’s police turn a blind eye to pervasive brutality.
None of this is inevitable. I merely wish to share 3 potential risks. Let me know if you think differently or what I might have missed.
I agree with all those possibilities, but allow me to add one more optimistic possibility: that AI doesn't just increase marginal product, it increases, improves, and enhances work from home opportunities. In areas with even halfway decent internet access, this could dramatically increase economic opportunities for women, and mitigate the honor/income trade-off. I'm thinking highly patriarchal middle-income countries, e.g. in the Middle East. Places like Bihar, on the other hand, need large investments in infrastructure to make this feasible.