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This week, I’m exploring a recent trend I’ve noticed in the commercials that our biggest technology companies are releasing. Taken together they paint a picture of some concerning directions that we might be heading and simultaneously reveal, by contrast, opportunities for innovation that are better aligned with human flourishing.
If you've been paying attention to the pitches for new generative AI-powered technology, you might notice a theme: the companies building these things don't have a good story to tell. As I see more and more of these ads coming out, I can't help but wonder what the conversations are like in the writers' room.
Here are just a few that have me scratching my head.
1. Apple's iPad "Crush"
Here we have a massive compactor ruthlessly crushing an array of beautiful art-making instruments into an iPad while Sonny & Cher cheerfully croon "All I Ever Need Is You" in the background. I guess the implication is that we don't need instruments to create music or art now that we can simulate the same sounds on an iPad. I wonder what Sonny & Cher would have to say about that.
2. Friend.com's Amulet
Feeling lonely? No worries, your creepy, big-brother-is-watching necklace just texted you. You feel better already, right? Right?!?
You'll notice that the title of the video includes the full URL to the friend.com website. That seems weird...until you realize that they spent $1.8 million dollars for that domain name. Payment plan or not, a short and snappy domain name a successful company does not make.
3. Google's Gemini Dear Sydney
What is more endearing than a little kid writing a letter to their childhood hero? I'll tell you one thing that isn't. Outsourcing that beautiful creative act to generative AI.
If Google has its way, these letters are about to take a hard turn toward "dad did my science fair project for me". In the vision of the future that Google is portraying here little girls everywhere will be tapping into generative AI to help them make it "just right". Even the dad is in on it, remarking that even though he's "pretty good with words" he thinks it's a good idea to let the faceless algorithm step in to help his daughter connect with her hero. Of all the places where generative AI might, and I do say might, have a place in helping to generate text, I'm struggling to find an application further down my list than this one.
4. Apple Intelligence Email Summary
Last but not least for today's roundup, another entry from Apple. This time it’s for their yet-to-be-released iOS 18.1 update which will feature Apple Intelligence. These guys used to be staunch defenders of artists and creators, right? Can we go back to the Mac of Mac vs. PC commercials?
Well enough for nostalgia for simpler times. Here’s the scene. You’re out to lunch with a friend and they ask you what you think about a recent idea they sent you. Only one problem, you have no idea what they’re talking about. Maybe you were super busy and missed it. Maybe it just didn’t look that important and you ignored it. At any rate, you have no idea what they're talking about.
Never fear, Apple Intelligence is here! Just whip out your iPhone, open up the forgotten email, and click the handy “Summarize” button to get the gist quickly. It’s so fast, that your friend won’t even realize that you never cared to read their email in the first place. How handy, right? Deceive your friend, appear competent, and move on with your life.
What if?
Listen, I realize I’m sounding a little very cranky this week, but really, is this the best we can do? I can’t even fathom the amount of money that went into making these ads. And these are not the first cut, rough draft versions. How many reviews and edits must these have gone through before they got released—posted on YouTube with comments disabled to avoid the ratio?
I’m not sure how I’m supposed to conclude anything but the obvious: they don’t have better stories to tell. If they did, they’d be telling them.
Instead, many of the companies building the tools for our future have set their sights on destroying—or at least disrupting—meaningful, if challenging, aspects of life. It is an unfortunate fact that there are increasingly few musical instruments being played in our homes. But what about giving them some new life instead of crushing them to a pulp to create more pieces of glowing glass? The Internet's ability to connect us is amazing. Why not snap a picture of a handwritten letter that your kid wrote to their hero and send that along? Instead, we're going to waste their time with an LLM-generated mad-lib (insert cliche here)? And don't even get me started on the necklace that texts you to help cure the loneliness crisis.
In all seriousness, we're suffering from a crisis of imagination. What if instead of using AI to replace our musical instruments, we used it to make them more accessible to us? What if we used AI to help surface existing music that we might not be aware of? Or to generate arrangements for specific instruments or skill levels that would enable even beginning students to play their favorite pieces at their skill level? How might generative AI give us on-ramps to pursue deep and meaningful art?
What if instead of imagining that the text message from a friend means anything at all divorced from the actual human on the other end of the line, we used AI to augment our ability to spend time together with friends in real life? What if we used AI to tap into our calendars to help us coordinate schedules, suggest possible hangout locations, and facilitate making in-person gatherings happen?
What if, instead of using machines to write for us or to summarize messages from our friends, we used them to help us better understand the way that our words might be received by others? What if AI could help us to understand ourselves better and help us think twice before we say something in haste that we might regret? What if our AI tools could push us to be more and not less invested in the real-life interactions that bring us true joy and fulfillment?
Despite how this might read, I'm not a techno-pessimist. Creating technology is a worthwhile and valuable activity that helps to support and unlock greater human flourishing. But it requires that we start with a correct definition of the problem. If we want to have any chance of solving the real problems that ail us, we've got to start by making sure we've defined them properly.
If the recent storytelling around AI is any indication, we’re in desperate need of a renewed imagination.
Reading Recommendations
In an essay for the Octet Collaborative, associate director and senior theologian Nathan Barczi writes about a central question that has guided him in his work for at least two decades: what does it mean to be human? Drawing from the Christian tradition, Nathan suggests that the answer is rooted in rationality, relationship, and vocation.
[T]o say that humanity is made in God’s image is to draw attention to the fact that women and men are rational animals (able to reason, will, and love), inherently designed to live in relationship, and called to a common vocation as stewards of God’s creation. We might note further that these three depend on one another: our capacities are given in service to our vocation and to our relationships; living in relationship with one another is necessary for us to serve our vocation.
A brilliant reflection from
on the ways we should order our loves this school year.[T]rue education is the formation of loving the right things in the right way (sources: Plato and St. Augustine)…We can wish it were otherwise, or we can write this off as hoity-toity or too lofty an ideal, but it doesn’t make it not true (because what’s true is simply what is; our belief or lack thereof doesn’t make it so). Bad education orders our loves poorly. Good education orders our loves rightly.
In “Being Human in the Age of AI”,
writes about how faculty at Wheaton College are grappling with AI. I appreciated her thoughtful exploration of some of the core themes of the discussion.“We are not only interested in turning out glistening products,” said Gibson. “Many of the questions we ask students are ultimate questions that have been answered before. The liberal arts tradition has always held as its principal question: What does it mean to be human? Each particular child of God must ask and answer the question for herself. We’re not expecting a novel answer. What matters to us is that our students have thought their answers through.”
I’ll have to keep my eyes out for Daniel Treier’s forthcoming monograph exploring the work of Jacques Ellul, Wendell Berry, Albert Borgmann, and the Neo-Calvinists on technology.
The Book Nook
I’m still working my way through Borgmann, but I’m also dipping my toe into some Ivan Illich. This week I picked up Tools for Conviviality. I’m finding Illich to be the most biting and pessimistic of the recent critics of technology I’ve been reading, but appreciate his critiques.
The Professor Is In
Last week I had the opportunity to visit California Baptist University in Riverside, CA to give a talk on my research in biophotonics and share how my imagination has been captivated by the idea of redemptive quests. It was a treat to visit and engage with the faculty and students and to tour their engineering building.
Leisure Line
For book club the other week I decided to make this NY Times skillet chocolate chip cookie recipe. It wasn’t the first time I made it and it won’t be the last. Very simple and super delicious. Highly recommend!
Still Life
This video is not still life, but I thought it still fit the spirit of this section. Last weekend at Descanso I managed to catch this hummingbird feeding from some of the bushes.
This advertising is an interesting example of the chasm between how Silicon Valley companies and their customers understand the cultural meaning of their products. It is fascinating on its own terms, but then add the context that these companies are not just wealthy, but mobilizing their wealth to project political and social power. That's quite frightening.
Illich is an old friend, though I've not picked him up in decades. Borgmann is in the "not gotten there yet" pile, so hoping you'll be writing about him sometime.
I am very curious why you chose to articulate “I am not a techno-pessimist?”
It feels from the outside that you may be asking the very same question, as many of us are who think broadly, “Can his possibly be why we are here on earth,” and suspecting that technology may be deeply reactionary and detrimental to human-ness. So why are you resisting?
I find that antipathy toward tech these days is considered too radical, like being antenatal or wondering whether an incestuous relationship post-menopause is actually a bad thing. Our culture wants and depends on tech so much that to deny it is to risk being thought a pastoral romantic or someone simping for the “Noble Savage.”
I want to give you permission to be not ok with tech. Not that this permission has value from me, but that it has value from the human perspective. Being a deep thinker means being willing to go beneath the shibboleths, and tech is the greatest one of our age.
Free your mind, you are so close.