Ethical dilema of Algorithms: The Subject between existential and virtual engagement

Abstract

What constitutes the ethical dilemma in the use of user data by new technology companies? Based on this question, how to think about the contemporary subject and his social relations, highlighting ethical aspects? The purpose of the discussion here is to understand the relationship between existence and engagement, from a critique of the technology era and the paradigm of the so-called virtual engagement produced by algorithms. The internet is, in contemporary times, the place where all things are, but without a body. It is a theoretical discussion that takes existentialism and its notions of engagement and existence as a reference, in a dialogue with the notion of contemporaneity and a certain understanding of what technology represents. The emerging subject in this context seems to deal with an existence in which the materiality of life is suspended: the escape to virtualization through social networks, social isolation as a measure to face the recent health crisis, familiarity and identity with the avatars each increasingly common in the way of being, as well as a certain collapse of the relationship with worldliness - the degradation of the environment. All of this seems to compose the scenario where the experience of existential engagement takes place under the tutelage of AI's. There is a kind of cyborgization of life. Considering the existentialist understanding of the human condition, thinking about practical ethics in this context where the subject is entangled by this technological customization, experienced in a quantifiable existential engagement, is what this reflection intends. For the purposes of a possible existentialist ethical understanding, we highlight here, therefore, aspects of the autonomy of choice of a subject who undergoes virtualization under the tutelage of a machine: invention and technique, engagement and existence. What is the output for the subject?