This perspective is very interesting. Especially the theme of necessary sacrifices, which is often underestimated. P.S. I also have a trip to NYC planned, I hope to find less cloudy weather!
Thanks Riccardo, I'm curious to hear how the idea of sacrifice lands with folks.
Hope you have a wonderful trip to NYC and get better weather than I did! Unsolicited recommendation: if you have any time while you're in the city, check out the High Line Park. https://www.thehighline.org/
Thanks Josh, honestly, I hadn't thought about High Line Park (super valuable advice)!
On the topic of sacrifice, it is interesting because it is also emerging in an interdisciplinary way in other studies, such as related to consumer behavior and consumption ethics. Here is a paper published very recently that defined the "consumption sacrifice": https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jcpy.1404
Josh, you frame this intriguing essay as moving beyond ethics. But another way to describe this movement would be to re-expand our definition of ethics--which has been whittled down in the modern era. In the western philosophical tradition, the first great work of ethics comes from Aristotle, and that book doesn't present ethics in the way that people use that term today (and the way you use it here), as ensuring we do the right thing in different contexts. Aristotle begins his argument by noting that humans seek happiness (or what we might better translate as a well-lived or flourishing life); the point of ethics is to create a flourishing life. Ethics thus moves well beyond making decisions about rules; it is intimately tied to our vision of a good life.
Hi Jim, thanks for the thoughtful comment. I always appreciate your gentle and insightful pushback.
You make an excellent point. In some sense, one "yes, and" to your comment would be to restore the deeper, truer meaning of ethics instead of creating a new category and relegating "ethical" to play the role of a line separating the exploitative and redemptive.
I also like this framing because it highlights that there really is not a neutral point between the exploitative and redemptive. The breakeven, win-win idea embedded in our modern-day connotation of "ethical" is not true. We're either moving in a direction toward flourishing or away from it, there's no truly neutral middle ground.
I image the servers that run and train AI consume vast amounts of energy. The ethical way should be to ensure that we can power these data centres with renewable energy before we fire them up to produce deepfake porn, filter our spam, or manage our calendars, without cooking the planet for future generations of beings on this planet. All else is moot!
Thanks Duncan, you make a good point. Right now any ethical or redemptive applications of AI rely on addressing the current infrastructure issues around energy use and ethical training data.
Nice essay Josh, I appreciate you bringing in your faith explicitly. As I write and think about nineteenth century writers who used Christian language of struggle and redemption, it is important for me to stay grounded in the way religious thinking continues to inform the ways we make sense of social and technological change. I would argue such grounding is important for anyone who aims to create and extend communities working for the common good for humanity.
Thanks for your comment, Rob. I hope that folks read it as an invitation to conversation and an opportunity to build partnerships even if we may not answer some of the fundamental philosophical questions in the same way. There are many more opportunities to build on common ground than folks may think from the distorted picture we see from most of our interactions online.
Interesting. I am not sure about your thesis on redemption as a goal of AI. Who is to determine what is broken and what is not? What if you believe that I am broken because I am not a Christian or a Hindu? A good topic for discussion for sure. Thank you for writing.
Thanks David. You're right that discussion is needed here to find what the common ground is for redemptive applications and what exactly that means. To get there, I think a good first move is to build consensus around identifying exploitative and ethical applications. Then, from that foundation there is an opportunity to discuss the ways that AI might help to close gaps and be uniquely valuable for repairing brokenness.
I would be curious to hear what types of applications or ideas come to mind for you when you think about the redemptive way from a perspective outside my way of seeing it as a Christian.
Agree Josh - first get the ethical thing buttoned down. Your question is a good one. I am a pragmatist, so my thought is that anything that promotes pragmatism - which is really admitting that you do not own the ultimate truth but will continue to search for it with an open mind based on scientific observation rather than faith - would be good. I would very much be opposed to anything in AI that was faith based rather than evidence based.
Sorry, but there is no such thing as ethical AI. AI is guaranteed to do more harm that good. It replaces human beings at tasks that the human mind is well-suited for, and is an affront to our creativity in its very design. It is an ideological statement that intelligence is a resource to be exploited, and it destroys communities and the hard work of individuals. (To some extent, much other technology is like this also.)
AI is the apex technology of the greedy, and it is prime force of the next generation of global capitalism. It confuses the human mind with its propaganda to an extent never dreamt of by previous generations.
The only ethical stance is a zero-tolerance anti-AI policy. To be on the fence is to be co-opted by the global and greedy capitalistic system that brought about its existence in the first place.
This perspective is very interesting. Especially the theme of necessary sacrifices, which is often underestimated. P.S. I also have a trip to NYC planned, I hope to find less cloudy weather!
Thanks Riccardo, I'm curious to hear how the idea of sacrifice lands with folks.
Hope you have a wonderful trip to NYC and get better weather than I did! Unsolicited recommendation: if you have any time while you're in the city, check out the High Line Park. https://www.thehighline.org/
Thanks Josh, honestly, I hadn't thought about High Line Park (super valuable advice)!
On the topic of sacrifice, it is interesting because it is also emerging in an interdisciplinary way in other studies, such as related to consumer behavior and consumption ethics. Here is a paper published very recently that defined the "consumption sacrifice": https://myscp.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jcpy.1404
Thanks for sharing the paper, I'll take a look!
Josh, you frame this intriguing essay as moving beyond ethics. But another way to describe this movement would be to re-expand our definition of ethics--which has been whittled down in the modern era. In the western philosophical tradition, the first great work of ethics comes from Aristotle, and that book doesn't present ethics in the way that people use that term today (and the way you use it here), as ensuring we do the right thing in different contexts. Aristotle begins his argument by noting that humans seek happiness (or what we might better translate as a well-lived or flourishing life); the point of ethics is to create a flourishing life. Ethics thus moves well beyond making decisions about rules; it is intimately tied to our vision of a good life.
Hi Jim, thanks for the thoughtful comment. I always appreciate your gentle and insightful pushback.
You make an excellent point. In some sense, one "yes, and" to your comment would be to restore the deeper, truer meaning of ethics instead of creating a new category and relegating "ethical" to play the role of a line separating the exploitative and redemptive.
I also like this framing because it highlights that there really is not a neutral point between the exploitative and redemptive. The breakeven, win-win idea embedded in our modern-day connotation of "ethical" is not true. We're either moving in a direction toward flourishing or away from it, there's no truly neutral middle ground.
I image the servers that run and train AI consume vast amounts of energy. The ethical way should be to ensure that we can power these data centres with renewable energy before we fire them up to produce deepfake porn, filter our spam, or manage our calendars, without cooking the planet for future generations of beings on this planet. All else is moot!
Thanks Duncan, you make a good point. Right now any ethical or redemptive applications of AI rely on addressing the current infrastructure issues around energy use and ethical training data.
Nice essay Josh, I appreciate you bringing in your faith explicitly. As I write and think about nineteenth century writers who used Christian language of struggle and redemption, it is important for me to stay grounded in the way religious thinking continues to inform the ways we make sense of social and technological change. I would argue such grounding is important for anyone who aims to create and extend communities working for the common good for humanity.
Thanks for your comment, Rob. I hope that folks read it as an invitation to conversation and an opportunity to build partnerships even if we may not answer some of the fundamental philosophical questions in the same way. There are many more opportunities to build on common ground than folks may think from the distorted picture we see from most of our interactions online.
Thank you so much for sharing my work!
Thanks for writing it, Elle!
Interesting. I am not sure about your thesis on redemption as a goal of AI. Who is to determine what is broken and what is not? What if you believe that I am broken because I am not a Christian or a Hindu? A good topic for discussion for sure. Thank you for writing.
Thanks David. You're right that discussion is needed here to find what the common ground is for redemptive applications and what exactly that means. To get there, I think a good first move is to build consensus around identifying exploitative and ethical applications. Then, from that foundation there is an opportunity to discuss the ways that AI might help to close gaps and be uniquely valuable for repairing brokenness.
I would be curious to hear what types of applications or ideas come to mind for you when you think about the redemptive way from a perspective outside my way of seeing it as a Christian.
Agree Josh - first get the ethical thing buttoned down. Your question is a good one. I am a pragmatist, so my thought is that anything that promotes pragmatism - which is really admitting that you do not own the ultimate truth but will continue to search for it with an open mind based on scientific observation rather than faith - would be good. I would very much be opposed to anything in AI that was faith based rather than evidence based.
Sorry, but there is no such thing as ethical AI. AI is guaranteed to do more harm that good. It replaces human beings at tasks that the human mind is well-suited for, and is an affront to our creativity in its very design. It is an ideological statement that intelligence is a resource to be exploited, and it destroys communities and the hard work of individuals. (To some extent, much other technology is like this also.)
AI is the apex technology of the greedy, and it is prime force of the next generation of global capitalism. It confuses the human mind with its propaganda to an extent never dreamt of by previous generations.
The only ethical stance is a zero-tolerance anti-AI policy. To be on the fence is to be co-opted by the global and greedy capitalistic system that brought about its existence in the first place.