The Reconstructed

You have options. One isn’t feasible as I write this. Not use it at all. I wish I could not use it at all. I wish I wouldn’t see it, but it is a prayer unanswered. If you use the internet, it’s unavoidable, inevitable, and in many circles completely embraced for its efficiency. I probably will inadvertently use AI to put out this blog. I cannot deny some of its amazing benefits and achievements. I question and have questioned the past two years mostly through writing fiction whether or not it will actually contribute to human flourishing or contribute to a greater gap fueling human greed often at the expense of the many. We’ll get there.

The other thing to do is to probably invest in it. Because my degrees are in International Relations, Theology, and Creative Writing, I have largely chosen a life path that has meant, I’ve studied things that don’t pay you well or often overlook you despite your degrees. I understand it. I’ve applied for jobs with mediocre pay that require long essays in order to complete applications for which I often hear nothing back. I could have saved abundant time having an AI write my essays certainly. The dehumanization in applying for jobs is sad and has become an inevitable, sometimes fruitless endeavor, and this prior to AI, now, perhaps even more.

I will celebrate something. I had a highly respectful and humanizing experience interviewing with Christ Church Anglican in Mount Pleasant. I feel like humanizing experiences should be celebrated. I wish I could say this is common. It’s not, even among Christian institutions. 

But why do I say invest in AI corporations? I made $12,000 in the month of May alone investing in AMD, NVD and Marvel Technologies, more than I made working 4 months doing private security. This is not a boast. This was my desperate attempt to find a way to make money to pay rent as I apply for jobs I feel I am qualified for. I made more money investing in something I’m actively writing against because it was my best option for work/to make money as I apply for ministry and teaching jobs, historically low paying jobs, jobs that I often wonder about regarding what they are becoming and their usefulness in the world we live. I’m grieved by this. Theoretically investing in publicly traded companies, gives you a say in shareholder votes. But investing frequently means you are fueling the machine, but how else can you speak to those with power other than by being a shareholder? 

In some ways this post no matter how thorough I’d try to make it will feel half baked. The Pope has written thoroughly about AI in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. “Disarm it,” he says.

Bernie Sanders wants public profit sharing to be built into AI companies for its growth through human means, likely because he does not believe it can be disarmed, but rather it should arm those that have themselves been disarmed or will potentially be disarmed by it. Using it as a means not an end, used to create jobs, used for human flourishing and dignity.

If the goal for its invention and use, was common god, it would have started as part of the process. It exists to serve few, benefit few, and the people that argue that data centers be built at great environmental cost to benefit all are lying to you. They use fear mongering or the promise of the cost of energy not going up as a way to strong arm humans to bow down so the excess of wealth can continue to flood the already wealthy and powerful. This desire for greed for more and to confound those that don’t embrace it is evil, often sugar coated to signal some theoretical benefit as it replaces humanity.

The things it fuels have historically not made us more human. Social media has not made humanity more social or compassionate. I wish people would look back and see and admit the world did at one time felt more free, more attentive, more compassionate. It was also a time when we had access to less information and required us to be more neighborly. 

Here are the questions I think we should be asking at every turn:

Is AI right now being used to help the poorest human being you know? How? Is AI being used to ensure the sustainable flouring in nature and the earth? How? Is AI helping you engage with meaningful connection more with people or less? 

I won’t even dare ask Christian questions regarding is it helping it spread the gospel, because Good News that is not Good News for the poor, is not good news. The gospel like AI can has for a longer amount of time been used to fuel the greed for wealth and power of self serving individuals and institutions. The Catholic Church has been there before.

If those prior questions don’t have emphatic answers, why are we so insistent on using it, promoting it? In the name of efficiency? In the name of making the wealthy richer? 

These are not important things. If they are not encouraging engaging in collaboration, if they are self serving or serving a few. We don’t need better ways of marketing or stealing people’s attention away to the digital space. We don’t need an even more homogenized algorithm. What I need is to see my neighbor and yes for my neighbor to see me. I don’t need an AI to make me sound less like myself or more like something else, as everything looks and feels the same or even perfectly polished. I don’t want to live in a world spending more time and money seeking after the “most” efficient, the “most” convenient, the “most” profitable at the expense of soul, at the expense of loving neighbor and enemy. Jesus warned of gaining everything in the world at the expense of soul.

Here is what makes me the most sad though. I’m fortunate in that I have studied replaceable things and worked replaceable jobs. I have had more vocations than most people reading this, unless my mom reads this. I have become increasingly adaptable and have had more changes in salaries than anyone I know. I have weathered storms of despair. But there are plenty of people who are either silent or are for AI because it has not yet touched their doorstep. 

And it’s hard because I am not into fear mongering, but I do fear that once it begins to touch down on people’s doors or vocations, and corporations lay off “unessential” positions then what? If upper middle class positions are cut, do we expect people to behave in kind and with human dignity? To adapt extremely quickly? 

What historically happens when class expectations and financial disturbances happen is civil unrest, violence, war. If corporations remain consistent recognize this unrest and do everything in their power to protect their self interest and profit margins, they could start to fund private militias, then what kind of dystopian world are we entering into, perhaps signing up for?

Maybe, it all ends well. AI doesn’t cause wider scale complications for humanity. Maybe there is hope yet to find peace and wholeness in the smallness of a contented life or utopian dream where work becomes easier so we can love each other better because AI has made an easier world.

Maybe we won’t continue to abandon what’s human in us all. I’m thankful for the Catholic Church, for leading the charge to really wrestle with these questions.

If you want to continue the conversation or even better for me, connect me with an agent or publisher that wants to engage with these conversations in a fictional space to ask questions about AI in my novel “Voice of a Human,” please lets keep the conversation going.”