Essay

Culture

Identity

29 May 2024

8 min read

Roll on AI, you'll make us more human

I’m not necessarily stupidly optimistic about AI, but there’s a tentative case to be so.

Daniel Kim

Daniel is an advertising strategist turned vicar-in-training.

An AI-generated image of a man folding a paper plan in a relaxed lounger, around him are creative tools and screens giving status updates are visible.

Nick Jones/Midjourney.ai.

I still come across people who insist that there are simply things that AI (artificial intelligence) can’t and will never be able to do. Humans will always have an edge. They tend to be journalists or editors who will insist that ChatGPT’s got nothing on their persuasive intentionality and honed command of nuance, wit, and word play. Of course, machines can replace the humans at supermarket check-out tills but not them. What they do is far too complex and requires such emotional precision and incisive insight into the audience psyche. Okay then. I nod, rolling my eyes into the back of my head.

At this point, it’s just naive to put a limiter on the capabilities of what AI can do. It’s not even been two years since ChatGPT3 was released into the wild and started this whole furore. It’s only been 18 months and OpenAI have just launched ChatGPT4 which can produce a whole persona who can listen, look, and talk back in such a natural and convincing voice that it may as well be a scene from the 2013 film, Her. A future where Joachim Phoenix falls in love with the sultry AI voice of Scarlet Johannsson doesn’t seem too far off. We have been terrible at predicting the speed at which generative AI has developed. AI video generation was one of the clearest examples of that in the last year. In 2023, we were lauding it over the AI models for generating this surreal, nightmarish scene of Will Smith eating spaghetti. “Silly AI! aren’t you cute.” we said. We swallowed our words earlier this year, when Open AI came out with Sora, their video generation model, which spat out photorealistic film trailers that would feel at home on the screens of Cannes.

There might be limits, but that ‘might’ gets smaller and smaller every single month, and we’re probably better off presuming that there is no ‘might’. We’ll be in for less surprises if we live from the presumption that there will be AIs that will make better newspaper editors, diagnostic radiologists, children’s book writers, and art-directors than most, if not all, humans.

With the mass reproduction and generation capabilities of AI, we may recognise that we crave the human touch not because it’s better but because it’s human.

I promised you a “stupidly optimising” take on this. So far, I’ve given you nothing but the bleak dystopian future where the labour market collapses and humans are dispossessed of all our technical, editorial, and creative skills. Where’s the good news?

Well, the stupidly optimistic take is this: the dispossession of all our human faculties by AI will force us to embrace the truest and most fundamental core of what makes us valuable - nothing other than simply our humanity. The value of humanity goes up if we presume that everything can be done better by AI.

In 1936, the German art critic, Walter Benjamin, prophesied the apocalyptic collapse of the art market in the essay: The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. It was at a time when photographic reproduction of paintings was becoming a mainstream technique and visitors to a gallery could buy a print of their favourite painting. He argued that the mass reproduction of paintings would devalue the original painting by stripping away the aura of work - its unique presence in space and cultural heritage; the je ne sais quoi of art that draws us to a place of encounter with it. Benjamin would gawp at the digital age where masterpieces would be reduced to default iPhone background screens, but he would also be surprised by the exponentially greater value the art market has placed on the original piece. The aura of the original is sought after, all the more, precisely because mechanical reproduction has become so cheap. Why? Because in a world of mass reproduction, we crave human authenticity and connection. With the mass reproduction and generation capabilities of AI, we may recognise that we crave the human touch not because it’s better but because it’s human. And for no other reason.

We continually place our identities in whatever talents we think make us uniquely worthwhile and value-creating for the world.

What are we to make of the AI trials happening in the NHS which spot cancer at rates significantly higher than any human doctor. The Royal College of Radiologists insists that “There is no question that real-life clinical radiologists are essential and irreplaceable”. But really? Apart from checking the AI’s work, what’s the “essential” and “irreplaceable” part? Well, it’s the human part. Somebody must deliver the bad news to the patient and that sure as hell shouldn’t be an AI. Even if an AI could emulate the trembling voice and calming tone of the most empathic consultant, it is the human-to-human interpersonal exchange that creates the space for grief, sorrow, and shock.

Think utopian with me for a moment. (I know, very counter-intuitive for us). In a society where all our technical skills are superseded, the most valuable skills that a human could possess might be the interpersonal ones. Empathy, compassion, intentionality, love even! The midwife who can hold the hand of a suffering first-time mother could be a more respected member of society than the editor of an edgy magazine or newspaper. As they should be! That’s a tantalising and stupidly optimistic vision of an AI future, but it’s a vision that aligns with what we know to be the true about ourselves. In our personal and spiritual lives, we already recognise that the most valuable aspects of our lives are our human relationships and the state of our inner selves. People on their death beds reflect on what kind of person they’ve been and reach out for the hands of their loved ones - not for their Q4, 2011 balance sheet. Our identities are shaped most deeply by our relationships and our character, and yet, we continually place our identities in whatever talents we think make us uniquely worthwhile and value-creating for the world. It’s good to create value, it’s nice to be good at something, and it’s meaningful to leave a lasting impact, but it is delusional to think that those things make us valuable. Our dispossession by AI might be the dispelling of these delusions!

In a few decades, there may be nothing that humans can do better than AI, other than simply being human in the world.

At least on a philosophical and spiritual level, being stripped of our human exceptionalism might be the most liberating experience for a society that has devalued and instrumentalised humanity to being glorified calculators. Being dispossessed is the truest thing about all of us. We are all being dispossessed daily by the slow march of time. The truest thing about us is that we will, one day, be wholly dispossessed by death itself. That was Heidegger’s fundamental insight into the human condition and this feeling of dispossession is the root of our anxiety and fear in the world. This might be part of the anxiety and ick we feel towards AI. Being dispossessed of our creativity and technical ability is a kind of violence and death against ourselves which we rage against. We can rage against it politically, socially, and economically, but there might be something helpful about resisting the rage from a psychological and spiritual point of view. Experiencing this dispossession might be the key to unlocking an authentic human existence in a world that we can’t control.

I believe in human creativity. I believe that what we make is valuable. I believe in the mesmerising aura of art, cinema, music, and every other beautiful thing that we get up to in the world. I believe in the unique connection between artist and audience and the power of blood, sweat, and tears. I believe in the beautiful and tortuous self-violence of creativity to make something that will make my heart tremble and transport me to places never imagined. I believe in the intuitions of an editor to make the cut at precisely the right moment that suspends the tension and has me gripping the seat. I believe in the bedroom teenagers recording their first demos on Garageband, or the gospel choir taking their congregations to heaven and back. Now, more than ever, I believe in these miracles.

But my belief is not anchored in any unique technical excellence, or some hubris about our exceptionalist mastery of craft. It is rooted in the profound humanity of it all, which radiates, however dimly, with the image of the divine. Writing poetry, humming a new melody, baking a cake or, even discovering a new mathematical conjecture can feel like “divine inspiration” as the leading mathematician, Thomas Fink, asserts. Or as the Romantic German theologian, Schleiermacher, so rhapsodically expressed, it can feel like the soul being “ignited from an ethereal fire, and the magic thunder of a charmed speech’" from above. This transcendent human experience is something that AI can’t usurp or supersede.

In a few decades, there may be nothing that humans can do better than AI, other than simply being human in the world. However, Once we are stripped of everything, we won’t find ourselves naked in the dark, or at least, we don’t have to. We can stand before the world and God with the works of our hands - finite, flawed, and dispossessed - and yet, inestimably valuable and worthwhile for the simple fact of our mere humanity.

*This article was something of a thought experiment. It’s far more natural to take a sandwich-board, bullhorn-wielding apocalyptic take on the rise of AI. The powers-to-be at Microsoft and OpenAI have their own ideological agendas, and it’s not unlikely that in this technological cycle, we’ll live through a profoundly destabilising labour market. We are right to fear the consolidation of wealth to supreme tech feudal lords with their companies of AI employees who cost a fraction of real humans. Civilisational collapse! What I wanted to suggest here is that there might be a unique spiritual and philosophical opportunity afforded to us as we continue to experience the break-neck development of AI and its encroachment into everything we once held as uniquely human skills.*

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Article

Belief

Digital

28 August 2024

8 min read

When tech holds us captive, here’s how to find liberation

The last of a three-part series exploring the implications of technology.

James Lawrence

James is Canon Missioner at Blackburn Cathedral. He researches technology and theology at Oxford University.

A person wearing a heavy backpack of tech, connected by tangled cables to other technology behind him, walks towards a simpler space.

In my previous article, I outlined Heidegger’s suspicions about the technological age in which we live. We noticed that Heidegger saw a ‘way of being’ which lay underneath all the tech that fills our lives and that as members of a technological society, we have been shaped, or you could say ‘discipled’, to live in a certain way. This ‘way of being’, the essence of technology, is to see everything in the world primarily as a collection of tools and resources to be extracted as and when they are needed.

In contrast with the technology optimists that we looked at in the first article, Heidegger wants us to see that modern technology is not made up of neutral tools to be used for good or bad, nor is it simply a natural extension of human activity that we have been doing since the stone age. Modern technology has shaped a technological society and the members of that society, so that we position everything in the natural world (including ourselves and our neighbours) into resources to be mined.

So, if that is Heidegger’s diagnosis of modern technology – which he dubbed Gestell, what can we do about it? What is Heidegger’s solution to the problem that he identified? Is there a way to live free of the Gestell of modern technology? However, before we get to that question we first have to ask if it’s actually possible to do anything. Because, if Heidegger’s view of modern technology is correct and our thinking and being in the world have been so shaped by the essence of technology, we might be stuck within a way of thinking that has shaped us with no way to change.

A method or technique is simply a technology of self-transformation and therefore keeps us entrapped within the technological essence.

There are two reasons why we might not be able to fix the problem of technology that Heidegger has revealed to us.

Firstly, the problem of being trapped within a system that has formed our thinking: How could we think our way out of this technological age if we have already been shaped by that age’s way of being in the world? If the technological system is as totalising and has so powerfully shaped the minds of people within the society in the way that Heidegger suggests it would seem almost impossible to think beyond or around the system and therefore break out of it.

Secondly, there is the problem of using technological thinking to solve the problem of technological thinking. This second point is a natural extension of the first: within a technological society it will feel most natural to devise a series of techniques or methods that could be used to set people free from the technological age but, because they are techniques, they would do nothing more than reinforce the problems of technological thinking. Or to put it another way, we need a new way of thinking and being in the world that does not lead to just another method. A method or technique is simply a technology of self-transformation and therefore keeps us entrapped within the technological essence. Self-help books are the most obvious example of this. As Brian Brock says, “What must at all costs be avoided is trying to meet the problems raised by technological thinking using yet another technological or formalist decision-making method. The problem of technology lies in its addiction to methods of thinking and perceiving.”

Heidegger’s solution to the problem of Gestell is to invite members of a technological society to live open-handedly rather than grasping at the natural world.

Heidegger’s proposed solution to Gestell lies in another German word: Gelassenheit. If Gestell was about ‘positionality’, or ‘enframing’ then Gelassenheit refers to ‘releasement’, ‘tranquility’ or ‘letting things be for themselves’.

Heidegger develops the term Gelassenheit by inviting his readers to reject the desire that they find within themselves to force the natural world to conform to their needs. Secondly, and similarly, to invite the world around to present itself to the person rather than for the person. Heidegger’s solution to the problem of Gestell is to invite members of a technological society to live open-handedly rather than grasping at the natural world. The solution he offers is at the level of desire rather than activity. This is Heidegger’s only option given the diagnosis, if he were to offer a step-by-step solution to the problem of Gestell or a set of activities he would only be enframing the problem of enframing: one cannot use techniques to solve the problems of a technological age.

As Christopher Merwin says, “Heidegger’s account of releasement is neither a wholly active not, a wholly passive disposition… Heidegger is not a Neo-Luddite, and he does not think we can or should entirely abandon technology. Gelassenheit is not meant to overcome technology, but to place in check the tendency of technology to render everything into an object for use and production… Gelassenheit releases us from the danger of technology and opens us to alternative ways of relating to reality.”

Social media turns the human beings who use it into the content that it sells, we have become the resource that the machine is mining.

As a Christian and a priest in the Church of England, there is a lot about Heidegger’s analysis of our technological age that I find very compelling. I instinctively resonate with his existential description of the essence of modern technology as Gestell. When I observe my own habits, and when I listen to the stories of my parishioners, I see example after example of the technology in our lives training our sensibilities to treat the natural world as nothing more than a resource to be plundered for our needs and pleasures.

I think Heidegger’s concept of Gestell gives a real insight into why we are so far failing to curb our use of fossil fuels despite the near universal consensus that it would be a good and right thing to do. As a society, we have become conditioned to see nature as nothing more than a source of fuel to be harnessed. Our societal addiction to hydrocarbons begins with the assumption that oil is there for our use. It is only the Gestell mindset of a technological age which would make that assumption: oil isn’t there to be for itself but is instead positioned within the inventory as a useful and therefore valuable commodity to be harvested and deployed.

Beyond the natural resources of the creation within which we live, I see Heidegger’s analysis of Gestell at work in the attitudes of people to one another. It is becoming increasingly hard not to treat other human beings as nothing more than resources to be used or discarded depending on whether they fulfil their purpose or not. The ‘intention’ of the social media algorithm (obviously, this is an anthropomorphism: algorithms don’t have intentions) is to turn each of its users into content creators. We are encouraged to post, like, and share and we often fail to notice that the content we are ‘creating’ is ourselves. Social media turns the human beings who use it into the content that it sells, we have become the resource that the machine is mining. And while social media provides a stark example of human beings becoming little more than resources to be harvested, the effects of this technological mindset are not restricted to the virtual environment. When I fail to notice to person across the counter from me in the coffee shop, or the Uber driver, or the sales assistant, I am slipping into the Gestell mindset which characterises the problem of technology.

While I think Heidegger articulates the problem of technology more clearly and insightfully than almost anyone else in the modern era, I think his solution would benefit from deeper reflection on the Christian tradition.

Here we find a person through whom our minds can be transformed, who can set us free from the patterns of thinking of this world, who can reshape our desires.

Firstly, within the Christian tradition, there has long been the recognition of competing forces of discipleship. In the Christian worldview there is no neutral space of existence, our attitudes and desires are always being trained by one thing or another. In his letter to the church in Rome, Paul puts it like this: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” Paul tells us that ‘the world’, or in our case ‘the essence of modern technology’, is constantly pulling our thinking into conformity with it. But Paul goes on to point us to something that Heidegger cannot, the voice from outside the system. In the face of a totalising and all-compassing technological society which en-fames everything as a resource waiting to be used, Heidegger’s encouragement is Gelassenheit, to, by force of will, release yourself and the world from the drive to Gestell. Heidegger has no other hope than the willpower of the individual to liberate themselves from the system because he has no other site of hope, nothing outside the system. Paul on the other hand points us to God. A source of transformation and life that is not conformed to the world and is not dependent on the world for existence but nevertheless, by an act of grace, has chosen to reveal himself within the world for the sake of the world. Here we find a person through whom our minds can be transformed, who can set us free from the patterns of thinking of this world, who can reshape our desires. This is the gift of prayer, a space to be and to allow God and the world to be. For many Christians, the experience of prayer is that through sheer inactivity and silence, they are (slowly, sometimes imperceptibly) transformed.

However, Heidegger alerted us to a significant difficulty in finding our way out of the technological mindset. Am I suggesting that we turn God into a method for transforming our minds so that we might escape the pitfalls of modern technological thinking? I hope not. While it is certainly possible to attempt to turn prayer into a technique for getting God to give you what you want, that is not what I’m suggesting here. I’m aiming instead of the sort of prayer that Mother Teresa famously described when she was once asked in an interview, "What do you say when you pray?" She replied, "Nothing, I just listen." The reporter then asked, "Well then, what does God say to you?" To which she answered: "Nothing much, He listens too."