Humanity & AI
Turns out, churches have been helpful in catalyzing something for me about AI, the US, and the approach to tech we need now.
I was sitting in a psychedelically painted church in the artist village and “cultural free port” Ruigoord outside Amsterdam the other week during Katapult Future Fest when something clicked for me about what’s missing in the debate about how to meet AI and the moment we are in.
Indy Johar laid out his reading of the USA’s quest for AGI in terms of an essential, existential quest, something Europe couldn’t and shouldn’t seek to compete with on those same terms. It kicked off a very fruitful conversation among the panel and audience about the need for more than investing in the governance, security and ethics layers ignored by much of the US based AI / tech industry. Somebody quipped that there are more Ph.D’s in AI governance in Europe than AI Ph.D.’s, suggesting that Europe is underinvesting in the building of the humanity-first technology innovation that it might be uniquely poised to advance.
Indy’s observation runs deeper and more eloquent than I can reproduce here, but his point about not putting more hope into a different state apparatus than the US particularly resonated—a different set of state actors doesn’t make technology inherently safer, more humane, and / or more sovereign. This is where non-state actors can step in, and advance a humanity-first AI stack, leveraging the community, capital, and culture that has been driving economic and social development into a real alternative to the US way of life for some time now. A Europe that’s less a political construct and super-state, and more a collection of people and places like Ruigoord, islands of coherence in these chaotic, future-shaping times.
That existential quest has a name, ad the current US administration can be relied on to say the quiet parts out loud these days. To wit, from the US Department of Defense website:
AI is America's next Manifest Destiny, and we're ensuring that we dominate this new frontier.
Not coincidentally, this Manifest Destiny 2.0 tramples the same people and places that were displaced in the OG version, with data centers springing up in rural places including those inhabited by Native Americans, and tech bros citing the inevitability of their creation to justify the blatant disregard for the data sovereignty and (intellectual) property of so many people whose creative products feed the models.
Of course, Columbia (that scantily clad representation of the march of progress in Gast’s painting, bearing telephone wires and sundry other symbols of the pioneer era) would be a tradwife today, home schooling the kids on her farm while making jams and producing aesthetically pleasing content for social media. 🙄 But I digress.
Europe, as the cradle of the colonialism that overran the world, is now in the interesting position of being a safe harbor against this new manifestation of it—not least for self-preservation purposes, since the American gaze is turning in its direction for techno-utopian occupation. Later that day I met Sharrif Simmons, a multi-modal artist from the US who had just received his Dutch residence card, part of a new creative migration, as he coined it, that’s posting up in Europe. I think there is room for technologists as part of this creative migration, and that’s what’s been shaping up in my mind between the Ruigoord church session and the Pope’s encyclical, the need for sanctuary for technologists and the products / services they are creating that are actively centering humanity.
In the church session, I reminded the audience that there are plenty of us in the US who are building technology on very different principles than the tech bros and billionaires, something I think of dissident tech, especially when it pertains to the tech we need to advance solutions to the wicked social, economic and ecological problems of our time. I wrote about this last year:
There are plenty of technologists who identify as zebras rather than unicorn, seeking to balance profit and purpose. They have been quietly building far outside the venturepalooza of Silicon Valley, where a disproportionate amount of funding goes to the people who look like younger carbon copies of the current tech bro billionaires that are running the country. There are people building open source AI projects for accountability, security, and privacy funded by stalwarts of the open-source movement like Mozilla, which now has a venture fund to foster more of that type of innovation. There are indigenous technologists building AI tools that preserve language, advance economic development, protect the environment and generally model what digital self-determination looks like. There are companies in global majority countries, building voice interfaces for dumb phones that allow farmers to tap into expert systems and contemporary AI bots in their native language, and get real time actionable information.
As Rumman Chowdhury pointed on in a session on catalyzing systemic investing for a pro-human AI stack, interventions are possible at every layer of that stack, from the data center and cloud infrastructure needed to run the models; to the data layer; to the development / engineering layer; to the application layer, and to the user experience layer—the latter being where we are seeing so many toxic side effects of AI show up. Issues of ownership, governance, accountability, architecture and good design come into play at all of them, but most impact investors are still narrowly focused on the application layer—looking for AI augmentation in their favorite social or environmental problem domains.
All of us would benefit from sanctuary, our own creative migration, to these islands of coherence created and supported by European philanthropy and civic leaders. I sincerely hope they come to fruition! And, how wild would it be if the Vatican became one of the islands? That may be a step too far, though chapter 3 of the Pope’s recent encyclical Magnifica Humanitas lays out a surprisingly clear and actionable roadmap for how to ensure AI serves humanity, and not the other way around.
There is a lot in here, but here are some of my favorite passages:
What we build is a choice
[90] As technological development rapidly transforms languages, relationships, institutions and forms of power, we believers must and can choose which projects to work on and in what manner, so as to safeguard and value the grandeur of humanity that has been given to us as a gift. This is a choice not only for our future but also for our present, since artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies are already part of our daily lives.
He’s speaking to individual believers but the message also applies to the societal level of the collective we, and the technology we want to exist.
It’s just statistics, not real learning
[99] It is not possible to provide a single, comprehensive definition of AI. What can be stated, however, is that we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of “intelligence” with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields. Yet this power remains entirely tied to data processing. So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. Even when these tools are described as capable of “learning,” their way of doing so is different from that of a human person. It is not the experience of those who allow themselves to be shaped by life and grow over time through choices, mistakes, forgiveness and fidelity. Rather, it is a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback, which can be very effective, but does not imply inner growth.
I really love this collision of the Pope’s math background (in the form of his undergrad degree and teaching experience) and moral reasoning.
The assumptions are embedded in the design
[104] we cannot consider AI to be morally neutral. In reality, every technical tool embodies choices and priorities through what it measures, ignores and optimizes, and how it classifies people and situations. If a system is designed or used in a way that treats some lives as less worthy, or excludes them without the possibility of appeal, then it is not merely a tool “to be used well,” since it has already introduced criteria that contradict the inalienable dignity of the human person. For this reason, ethical discernment cannot be limited to asking whether we are using a system for good or bad purposes; it must also examine how that system is designed and what vision of the human person and society is embedded in the data and models that guide it.
Love the clarity with which he calls for discernment and interrogation of the AI tools we use at every level.
AI is exacerbating the inequalities and injustices in the world
[108] In fact, as with every major technological shift, AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise and access to data. In light of the common good and the universal destination of goods, this raises serious concerns, since small but highly influential groups can shape information and consumption patterns, influence democratic processes and steer economic dynamics to their own advantage, undermining social justice and solidarity among peoples. For this reason, it is essential that the use of AI, especially when it touches on public goods and fundamental rights, be guided by clear criteria and effective oversight, grounded in participation and subsidiarity. Communities and intermediary organizations must not be reduced to passive recipients of decisions made elsewhere; they must be able to contribute to discernment and oversight. Moreover, ownership of data cannot be left solely in private hands but must be appropriately regulated. Data is the product of many contributors and should not be treated as something to be sold off or entrusted to a select few. It is necessary to think creatively in order to manage data as a common or shared good, in a spirit of participation, as Saint John Paul II already suggested regarding collective goods. [128]
Someone I was speaking with today reminded me that there are two resources that grow by sharing: Love and Knowledge. And here we are, looking at one of the largest enclosure of human knowledge that’s about to create a few thousand billionaires and millionaires when OpenAI and Anthropic go public starting later this week—at the expense of our collective human knowledge as captured on the internet. What a colossal appropriation of resources, that the Pope then goes on, in the rest of the encyclical, to compare to modern day slavery, a new form of colonialism, and monopolies over data as the new oil.
There was an interesting and encouraging convergence of question the Pope posted, whether AI makes life on earth more human in every aspect of that life,1 and the conversation in the church: an outline began to take shape for an initiative that would actively nurture, and give sanctuary to, humanity-first technology and the technologists who build it. I’m curious to see where it’ll lead.
[129] Christian humanism does not reject science or technology, but embraces them with gratitude and realism, and grounds them within a higher vocation. The creative intelligence of humanity is a gift that can alleviate suffering and open up new possibilities, but it must remain ordered toward the common good, justice, the care of the vulnerable and creation. In this sense, the true alternative is not between enthusiasm and fear, but between two paths of development: a progress that serves individuals and peoples, or a progress that subjects them to the mentality of power. Ultimately, the key question remains the one posed by Saint John Paul II: does AI “make human life on earth ‘more human’ in every aspect of that life? Does it make it more worthy of man?” [138] If the answer is yes, then we can recognize it as an opportunity to be embraced responsibly, on a path of patient, shared reconstruction, akin to the rebuilding of Jerusalem narrated in the Book of Nehemiah. If, however, power grows while the heart withers and human bonds fray, then we are faced with a new form of Babel — a construction that is grandiose, yet fundamentally dehumanizing.