Socialist AI? Societal Use, Economic Implementation, and the Tensions of Applied Computer Science in Late Socialist GDR
Martin Schmitt · IEEE Annals of the History of Computing · 2023
AI research and development in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) can be seen as paradigmatic for the phase of late socialism. The imperatives of the socialist project and its economic ramifications in the endgame of the Cold War left a distinct imprint on AI. The GDR adopted a pragmatic approach to AI, which this article examines. It highlights the various strands and applications of late socialist AI research, encompassing both everyday applications and advanced scientific endeavors. Moving beyond the prevailing focus on U.S. research within the military-industrial complex, this article situates AI research within the broader history of the GDR, Central, and Eastern Europe. This study employs methods from science and technology studies to analyze AI objects, particularly chess computers, as indicators of the proliferation of AI within the everyday practices of the GDR. Through a thorough examination of a widely circulated computer magazine, this overview illustrates the diverse range of AI applications in the GDR, spanning areas such as planning, industrial management, state administration, science, public health, and pervasive surveillance. In this context, high-tech solutions were deployed alongside decaying industrial infrastructure, while utopian visions of intelligent machines intersected with ideological exhaustion, and health care applications were juxtaposed with fleeing doctors. These ambivalences reflect the complex state of the GDR in late socialism. Nevertheless, researchers and engineers worked on prototypes for image recognition, language processing, automatic reasoning and basic AI technologies, including programming languages and specialized hardware.