Artificial Intelligence and Human Imagination
Beyond agency and ambition
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“The task of prophetic ministry is to nurture, nourish, and evoke a consciousness and perception alternative to the consciousness and perception of the dominant culture around us.”
Walter Brueggeman in The Prophetic Imagination
Most people are still not fully aware of just how widespread the impact of AI coding tools like Claude Code will be. One common misconception is that these tools just write software. If you take comfort that this will limit the impact of these tools, think again.
When most people think of software, they think of apps. While apps like those accessed by clicking the small rectangles on your iPhone are certainly software products, the reach of software is much broader. It includes not just those apps that you see, but a whole collection of digital infrastructure that hides mostly out of sight and makes the world go round. Most of the time, these systems are completely invisible to us, until something (goes wrong).
Software reaches far beyond the digital realm. Software is the glue that drives physical interfaces. It is everywhere, not just in the “smart” stuff in your house like your thermostat or security cameras, but in your refrigerator, washing machine, coffee maker, oven, and dishwasher.
Not only is software behind the scenes of most of the things we touch every day, but it also plays a significant role in bringing even non-digital devices into existence.
The suite of CAD tools that is used to design the objects all around your house? Software.
The machines that manufactured almost everything you touch? Powered by software.
The infrastructure that enabled you to purchase them and that delivered them to your house? Software.
The tools that facilitated the memos, slide decks, meetings, and decisions that brought all those artifacts to life? Software.
The point is that software is everywhere, and you don’t see most of it. Sam Altman said last year that the world wants 1000x more software. I tend to agree with him.
Actually, there are limitations
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the second half of this tweet from Vercel co-founder and CEO, Guillermo Rauch. But the first half is worth examining as well. This is by no means the only tweet like this. In fact, my X timeline is filled with variations on this theme.
Caveats out of the way, it’s interesting to me that Rauch identified agency and ambition as the “only” limiting factors. Besides the fact that there are obviously more limiting factors (time and attention anyone?), highlighting agency and ambition hints at the force motivating the desire to build.
Even though Rauch’s tweet is slightly incoherent—he says “there are no limits anymore” and then immediately identifies two of them just four words later in the same paragraph—I resonate with the general vibe. For the reasons I mentioned earlier, the power of AI coding tools will extend far beyond the reaches of what most people think. Digital products are just the lowest-hanging fruit.
These tools will be useful for making lots of things, whether by writing code to help build it or by helping you learn how to make it. But given this newfound power, I’d challenge us to think bigger than where agency and ambition might point us. What if we considered how these tools might help to empower a redemptive imagination: attending to what is broken around us and using the leverage provided by generative AI tools to take a crack at addressing some of those issues?
Two Roads Diverged
The kind of things we build by leaning into agency and ambition are likely to give us more of what we already have. It will simply pour gasoline on efforts to make what people want, building products that cater to our desires. Desires that, by the way, will be increasingly mediated and manipulated by AI systems through our social media feeds and personalized digital advertising systems.
But this kind of future is not the only option. Multiple future realities are possible. The person holding the tools matters. The same tools can be used to build more of what people want or more of what the world needs.
Generative AI tools give you leverage. Not just for writing software, but for doing a whole host of different things. All of this means, borrowing the words from the awesome Anthropic ad from a few months ago, that there’s “never been a better time to have a problem.”
I love this attitude. Our world is filled with problems that need to be solved. But it’s not just about the problems being solved, it’s about what problems are being solved and which ones are being ignored. It’s about how those problems are being solved and who is being considered (or overlooked) in the process. It’s about why the problems are being solved, and what the motivation is for success.
It’s inevitable that there will be people who see new technology as a way to do the same thing we have always done more efficiently. But if this newfound technological power is going to help humanity to flourish, we’re going to need to celebrate more than just agency and ambition. Let’s consider cultivating redemptive imagination instead.
Got a thought? Leave a comment below.
Reading Recommendations
Ursula K. Le Guin’s rant about “technology” is a must read. (h/t Deb Chachra via L. M. Sacasas).
Its technology is how a society copes with physical reality: how people get and keep and cook food, how they clothe themselves, what their power sources are (animal? human? water? wind? electricity? other?) what they build with and what they build, their medicine — and so on and on. Perhaps very ethereal people aren’t interested in these mundane, bodily matters, but I’m fascinated by them, and I think most of my readers are too.
Technology is the active human interface with the material world.
Speaking of Mike, I finally got around to reading his latest post from a few weeks ago, “Waiting Is a Revelation.”
[A] moment of waiting is not necessarily wasted time; it is a moment of potential. To seize and capture a moment for waiting against the imperatives of efficiency and time-saving is to secure a space of psychic liberation in which the virtues of patience and loving attention can be cultivated.
No organization has done more to shape my thinking on imagination over the last few years than Praxis. Their idea of a Redemptive Quest is exactly the sort of lens that I hope we can all can consider.
A Redemptive Quest is
the good, hard work of
creative restoration through sacrifice,
compelled by love,
that invites us to re-risk
our reputation and resources.
An excellent post from Marc Watkins this week on what we give up when we let AI decide.
The Book Nook
At the end of my off-site with the Praxis Media team last week, we were all asked to share a piece of art that has been speaking to us. As I normally do in these situations, I turned to a children’s book. This time, it was Mo Willems and Amber Ren’s Because.
It’s a beautiful story about imagination and the often winding and unpredictable paths that we all walk and that make us who we are.
The Professor Is In
The spring semester is upon us! I’m excited to have the first meeting with the group of fellows who joined my newly minted Lab for Imaginative Prototyping with AI (and our new official HMC subdomain: https://ipai.hmc.edu/).
Leisure Line
A story in four photos. Happened on a treasure-hunt deal at Costco last week and finally landed the 16-inch Ooni that I’ve been on the lookout for.
Still Life
My new Praxis beanie came in handy on the ice last week (also featuring my limited-edition Costco hoodie). If you know me, you know I’m big on the branded merch.