The best way to future-proof Future Around & Find Out is to become a paid subscriber. Please consider it. Thanks!
There’s a turn-and-face-the-camera moment in the Pope’s encyclical on AI, where he issues a “a special appeal to those who develop artificial intelligence.” Pope Leo writes that developers “bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility, for every design choice reflects a vision of humanity.”
This moment comes as the Pope is imploring his audience to “disarm” AI.
Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of “armed” competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern.
In other words, builders need to think carefully about the future we’re building and resist the “race” (against China, other AI companies, to achieve AGI, pick your race condition…) and to ask whether we’re building a future we want, because:
AI, threatens to normalize an anti-human vision. In that vision, the fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty and exerting total control. When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion.
Kwaku and I dig into these and a few more choice parts of the encyclical on the latest FAFO Friday. We also discuss the calls to use AI more deliberately (or not at all) in schools. This week, the American Federation of Teachers called for a drastic reduction in the availability of screens and AI chatbots in schools and UC Berkeley’s law school banned nearly all uses of AI. The blanket ban (which I think goes too far) was born of exasperation and, as one the professors involved told Reuters, “I’m nervous about the policy. I’m not sure it’s going to work. But I also know it’s not possible to just ignore the problem.”
Meanwhile, echoing the Pope’s call to keep our humanity, Wharton’s Ethan Mollick wrote great piece, Choosing to Stay Human, about if/when/how to employ AI and the risk of "cognitive surrender,” something he says he’s seeing as people reflexively turn to AI, even when they know they ought to struggling — learning! — a bit.
The point isn't to avoid AI but to be intentional about it by making a conscious choice about AI use, rather than reflexive dependence or reflexive avoidance. […] The most important thing we can do is keep asking what to hand over and what to keep for ourselves… and not expect anyone, including the AI, to answer that for us.
Just some of what Kwaku and I get into on the latest FAFO Friday. Enjoy!
Future on…
~ Dan
If you don’t already get Future Around & Find Out emails, go ahead: