Recent debates in the philosophy of technology center on the notion that technology can disrupt concepts and values. Among these, Artificial Intelligence (AI) emerges as a prominent example, demonstrating its potential to disrupt fundamental notions such as personhood, agency, and responsibility. However, existing debates have thus far failed to adequately explore how such disruption manifests across diverse cultural and ethical frameworks. For this panel, I will address this gap by advocating for the necessity of a framework that includes "intercultural disruption." I will do so by focusing on the concept of privacy as it is understood in both “Western” and African (Ubuntu or Afro-communitarian) systems of thought. I will illustrate that disruption occurs interculturally through different levels of disruption. Firstly, I will consider how the conceptual schemes in which Privacy is embedded are disrupted. Secondly, disruption also affects conceptual clusters as disruptions may be triggered in related concepts. For instance, Privacy is often conceived of in relation to concepts such as Autonomy, Freedom and Individual Rights in more Western systems of thought. In Afro-communitarian systems, however, the disruption of privacy triggers related concepts like social good, dignity and relationality. The final level of conceptual disruption affects individual concepts, or in the case of privacy, how AI disrupts the concept of Privacy. I will briefly consider how privacy concerns related to AI, such as data collection, predictive analytics, inference of information, etc. further shape disruption interculturally. By exploring how disruption occurs both on different levels as well as between different cultural frameworks, I will illustrate the necessity of broadening current conceptions of disruption to include intercultural disruption.

Part of the panel Rethinking AI Ethics in, for and from sub-Saharan Africa