Category: Fresno Bee Religion and Ethics Columns

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Artificial Intelligence and Human Morality

Fresno Bee, June 4, 2023

Is artificial intelligence going to kill us? It all depends on who is using it and why

Experts warn that artificial intelligence may kill us. A declaration signed by a number of luminaries states: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

I’m sympathetic to the worry. But when you think about the other problems mentioned here — nuclear war and pandemics — it might be that we need AI to save us from our own incompetence. Could AI have responded better to Covid than we humans did?

It all depends on what we do with AI, and who is using it. A crazed dictator with AI is scary. But a scientist assisted by AI, not so much.

Geoffrey Hinton is one of the signatories of the new AI warning, and an expert in the field. In a recent interview, Hinton warns that AI may grow smarter than its human creators within five to 20 years.

One of the things that freaked him out recently was when he asked an AI to explain a joke. Hinton did not expect AI to understand humor. But it did.

That got me curious, so I asked ChatGPT (an online AI), “Why did the chicken cross the road?” Immediately, it said, “To get to the other side.” And then, without prompting, it explained the joke as a play on words. It said, “It’s a simple and often unexpected answer that plays on the double meaning of ‘the other side.’” It explained the joke as a “philosophical statement on the nature of life and death.”

This surprised me. The AI recognized that I was asking a joke. I had actually forgotten that the joke was about chicken suicide. But the AI went straight to the heart of the matter.

But is this an existential risk? I depends on how we use AI. If we use AI to explain jokes, we won’t risk much. Philosophy, and comedy, assisted by AI, might be fun and informative. But if we weave AI into the systems that govern our lives, we might end up in a strange dystopia.

One obvious concern is the stock market. AI can analyze data and make trades in nanoseconds. This may not lead to extinction. But it may cause bubbles and panics, and enrich those fortunate enough to have an AI broker. Or, maybe AI could be used beneficially to even things out, preventing panics and bubbles. Again, it depends on what we do with it, and what safeguards we program into the system.

A darker possibility is if AI took control of military systems, including nuclear weapons. What if AI were put in charge in the hope of automating and streamlining the decision procedures involved in nuclear war? Maybe nuclear-armed AI will lead to Armageddon. Or, again, maybe AI will better control our most deadly weapons.

It’s worth asking whether human beings are really trustworthy custodians of weapons, or wealth. Some crazed Dr. Strangelove could launch a nuclear war. And rapacious financiers like Bernie Madoff ruin people’s lives. Perhaps AI is more trustworthy than humans in this regard. AI won’t get angry, greedy, envious, or hateful.

And here is where things get really weird and dystopian. What if a smart AI figures out that humans — with all of our ignorance, spite, and greed — should not be trusted with nukes or with billion-dollar deals? In science fiction, the AI might seize control — for our own good!

But AI will only take control, if we put it in charge. Human beings are always looking for shortcuts and quick fixes to complex problems (as I discussed in my column last week). We invent tools to make things easier. But ultimately, we are responsible for the tools we create, including nuclear weapons, the stock market and AI.

We are also responsible for the greed, spite, and ignorance that afflict the world. These are human problems. Tools can magnify these ugly traits, or they can help us control our worst impulses. In the end, the choice of crossing the road to get to the other side belongs to us. This choice is ultimately about ethics and the human spirit. If AI leads to our extinction, the fault will not be in the tool but within the human soul.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article275991471.html#storylink=cpy

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On the wisdom of the grasshopper

Elon Musk wants you to be the ant. But make room for the grasshopper, too

Fresno Bee, May 29, 2023

Elon Musk recently suggested it is “morally wrong” to work remotely. He said it wasn’t fair for “the laptop class” to work outside the office while others toil in the factory. In the same interview, Musk said that he works seven days a week, sleeps six hours a day, and only takes a couple of days off per year.

A workaholic boss is not the best source of wisdom about the morality of work. Is there a virtue in toil? Or is the laptop class wise to phone it in?

The fable of the ant and the grasshopper comes to mind. This allegory can help us clarify our intuitions about the morality of work. The grasshopper spends the summer fiddling, while the ant labors under the hot sun. When winter comes, the anthill is stocked with food. And all the grasshopper has is memories of the music of summer.

Of course, human beings are not insects. We invent technologies to make work easier and more efficient. Repetitive tasks are mechanized. Robots do the heavy lifting. Computers and AI will make it possible for us to have even more free time.

Almost a hundred years ago, the philosopher Bertrand Russell proposed that human beings should work about four hours per day. Some work is necessary. But Russell argued that work is not an end-in-itself. The higher goods of civilization such as music, art and science are products of leisure. Russell said that only a “foolish asceticism” would make anyone insist on working in “excessive quantities.”

We should also question the distribution of leisure, income, and wealth. The mechanization revolution is uneven and unfair. While the laptop class sits at home, calloused human hands pick our food, and millionaires live off interest income. The hardest manual labor is often paid the least. The ants and grasshoppers of modern capitalism show us unfairness in the system.

Forcing folks to return to the office won’t solve the fairness problem. But the shift away from the office does create other economic problems. There are empty office buildings. And the ancillary workforce of janitors, parking attendants and coffee shop workers will lose jobs. But if office work is not necessary, we could repurpose those empty buildings, and find other jobs for those workers.

Another concern is about the social aspect of work. Laptop laborers don’t chat at the proverbial water cooler. Nor do they care about office parties or lunch meetings. There is some value in those informal chats. But the technology revolution now allows creative conversations to occur on Zoom or email.

The biggest question here is about the value of work in our conception of a good life. This takes us back to Elon Musk’s own work life. Even before his recent interview, Musk bragged about how hard he works, often sleeping at his Tesla factories. When he acquired Twitter, he slept in the office there, as well.

Some entrepreneurs may see Musk as a model to be emulated. But his life seems sad, frankly. What about family life? Or taking a hike in nature? Or a day at the beach, or a weekend music festival? And what about a summer afternoon lounging by the pool with a good book? Most of the best of human life occurs outside of work, in our free time.

Ants build impressive anthills. But the work of the creative imagination is done by grasshoppers. Humans play and sing. We don’t aspire to the drudgery of the anthill. Our playful, creative spirit gives us architecture, art, literature, music and a sense of justice. These human goods are leisure activities. It is in our free time that we are most fully human.

When the mind wanders and explores, we dream of a world beyond the anthill. These dreams led human beings to invent technologies that make life and work easier. We also imagine a world that is fairer, and more humane.

As summer approaches, it’s worth considering the value of play and free time. There is no sense in working for the sake of work. And while the workaholic bosses in the anthill may warn against the idleness of the grasshoppers, it’s worth pointing out that human beings are not insects, and that human life is richer than work.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article275806896.html#storylink=cpy

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The gift of being born: Reflecting on natality and gratitude on Mother’s Day

Fresno Bee, May 14, 2023

Mother’s Day is for gratitude. Our mothers nurtured and supported us. We thank them for the fact of our own births. We should also thank our mothers for modeling the art of kindness, and the power of love.

Life is precious, rare and interconnected. It’s not accidental that we speak of Mother Earth and Mother Nature. There is no other planet that supports life. And life on this planet unfolds through a long chain of mothers, extending back into prehistory.

That process of generation and birth shows us the depth of our interconnected existence. We are not born alone. And life is not only a struggle for survival. It is also a warm embrace that pays itself forward. The nurturing arms that received us into this world show us the sustaining power of lovingkindness.

The Dalai Lama once said, “When we’re born, our mothers show us compassion. This is a natural response that has nothing to do with spiritual practice. Without that kindness we wouldn’t survive. So, our lives start with an experience of kindness and compassion.”

Philosophers have directed our attention to the importance of birth and being born. This is the idea of our “natality,” which is the opposite of mortality. We are mortal beings who die. But we are also interdependent beings who were born, and who give birth. Every human being emerges from the body of another, who literally carried us within her. Remembering this strange mammalian fact can make us humble, grateful and kind.

The concept of natality was brought to light by Hannah Arendt. Arendt was a German Jew who escaped from Nazi-occupied Europe. She arrived as a refugee in New York. She wrote extensively about totalitarianism and evil. The world is not all sweetness and light. And some people are born with cruel mothers, or their mothers are cruelly taken from them.

And yet, hope appears in the concept of natality, and the fact of our interdependence. Arendt celebrated the possibility of new birth and new beginnings. “The miracle that saves the world,” Arendt explained in 1958, “is ultimately the fact of natality.” When cruelty, stupidity and violence threaten to tear things apart, we can hope that new humans will be born and better ideas will arise. The terror of death is real. But so too is the promise of birth.

Natality involves hospitality. In some extreme cases, hospitality rescues refugees from cruelty and death, as in the case of those fleeing a genocide. But even in ordinary circumstances, we make the world better by welcoming strangers. Indeed, our mothers welcomed us into their bodies. They received us into the world, suckled us, nurtured us, and devoted themselves to us. That welcoming and receptive aspect of maternity is a central feature of our humanity.

This is not exclusively female. Men can welcome and receive. And fathers can be loving and kind. But there is humbling wisdom to be learned in the mysterious unfolding of maternity and birth.

Even the strongest king came into this world naked and defenseless. The first moment of every human life is an act of welcome. To be human is to be received, as a gift. We exist because our mothers loved us first.

Christianity makes natality a central part of the cosmic story. Each person is created in God’s image. And even the savior was born of a woman. The story also tells us that the savior and his mother fled persecution after his birth. The gospel of love grows out of the story of a refugee and his mother.

One need not be a Christian to understand this. It is discovered deep in the milk of human kindness. But we forget our interdependence. Too often, we refuse to welcome strangers. We build up our defenses, and exclude those who need our kindness. Maybe we are trying to fend off death. Perhaps we hope that in defending our turf, we might live forever. But death comes to us all. Mortality is a fact.

Yet natality is also a fact. Tomorrow, a new generation will be born. Our task is to welcome those newcomers, as our mothers welcomed us; to love our neighbors, as our mothers loved us.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article275327426.html#storylink=cpy

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The war on drag and the art of authenticity

Fresno Bee, May 7, 2023

The war on drag is like the war on drugs. It is a wedge issue that riles some folks up, while hurting the vulnerable. But most Americans have a live-and-let-live attitude. As long as no one is violating my freedom, why should I care if others dress in drag?

The commotion over drag is oddly melodramatic. And drag is often a campy kind of schtick. The villain in the current comedy appears as a mustache-twirling baddy, tying a drag queen to the railroad tracks. This would be funny, if it weren’t the tip of an authoritarian iceberg of homophobia.

Now, I don’t find drag entertaining. But I don’t go to strip clubs, either. I find cos-play mostly ridiculous, whether it is the moaning and groaning of pornography, or the fancy feathers of drag. The same goes for folks who dress up like superheroes for “Comic con.” That’s not my cup of tea.

But if cos-play is fun for you, why should anyone stop you? And in a sense, most of life is cos-play. We cut and shave our hair. We put braces on crooked teeth. We dress up for work and for family photos.

And every spring, college professors put on robes and silly hats for the graduation parade. That’s also a kind of campy performance art. I don’t like it very much. But every year, I don my goofy hat and play along. And if someone wants to wear a wig and a dress for a drag parade, who am I to judge?

I understand the worry of the drag critics who are concerned that kids in our culture are exposed to unhealthy ideas about sex, love, and standards of beauty. But in this regard, pornography is more dangerous than drag, since drag announces itself as parody, while porn does not. And in a free country, bans and prohibitions seem, well, un-American.

Education about love, sex, and beauty is a better solution. We need to promote healthy, loving sexual relationships, and realistic standards of beauty. And we should celebrate virtues like honesty and authenticity.

But authenticity is a tricky thing when it comes to gender and beauty. Drag makes fun of authenticity. When a drag queen dresses up like a buxom bleach-blond woman with fake eyelashes and ruby red lips, it makes you wonder about the authenticity of women with breast implants, fake eyelashes, and ruby red lipstick.

Drag exposes gender as an external performance. It reduces femininity to hair, breasts, and clothing. But those superficial externalities hide the authentic human person, who exists in a world of spirit that is distinct from the body.

And yet we might well wonder whether there really is an authentic self beneath the wigs and the clothes? Christians claim that we are made in the image of God. And the existentialists encourage us to become our authentic self. But what then should we do about our crooked teeth, and those hairs growing in weird places? Can we fix up our broken, fragile bodies? Or must we accept the body as given, warts and all?

These are the deeper conversations prompted by the drag war. What is the true self? What is the difference between artifice and authenticity? And should a freedom-loving people censor any of the arts?

Drag shows are, after all, performance art. One conservative critic of drag, Darel E Paul, traces what he calls “the queering of mainstream American culture” back to Oscar Wilde. Paul sees drag — and what he calls “queerness” — as an “anti-natural work of art.”

But art is always anti-natural. Art improves upon nature. No real woman has the breasts of the women in porn. And none of us look like the filtered images on Instagram. And yet, we model our own bodies on the images we see in art, pornography, and advertising.

This is what Oscar Wilde meant when he famously said, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” When we shave and primp and dress up, we model ourselves on some ideal we’ve seen in art or advertising. And if there is no way to distinguish the authentic from the artificial, then why not let people play dress up, and have a little fun?

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article275068041.html#storylink=cpy

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Social inertia and hero worship in the Trump-Biden era

Fresno Bee, April 30, 2023

Is any person indispensable? The answer is no. But individuals tend to cling to power and position. And we tend to project our hopes and dreams onto our heroes. This is natural. But the result is unenlightened and undemocratic.

Wisdom teaches that we are all mortal, fallible and replaceable. And the “great man” view of the world tends toward authoritarianism. In democracies, “We, the people” are in charge, not any individual. Hero worship turns mere mortals into idols. And often we are stuck with our champions, unable to free ourselves from their grip on power.

This leads to suboptimal outcomes. For example, the 2024 presidential race will likely see a rematch of Trump v. Biden. This is not very exciting. Each is flawed. Each is replaceable. But our political system fixates on individuals, allowing faded heroes to cling to power.

Related examples include the question of California’s senior senator, Diane Feinstein, and her age, and the ethics scandals plaguing Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas and Feinstein are not indispensable. The country would be better off if they would resign. Talented others are waiting in the wings.

But Supreme Court justices have lifetime tenure. And in the U.S. Senate, there is de facto lifetime tenure. There are reasons for tenure. But tenure works best when the tenured folks are wise and virtuous, and do not cling to power.

A rule of physics says an object in motion will stay in motion, unless acted upon by some external force. A similar rule appears to be true of society. Social inertia means that a person in power will tend to stay in power, until someone pushes them out.

This is also true in entertainment and the news media. That’s why it was surprising when Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon were canned. We get used to familiar voices droning on the TV. They become part of the furniture, until something shoves them out of the room.

Once someone gets a foot in the door, they mostly never go away. Those insiders keep getting gigs because the marketing teams prefer predictable has-beens, rather than the risk of investing in new talent. Social inertia means we stick with the devil we know, as that old saying goes.

And let’s face it, true genius is exceedingly rare. For every Mozart, Shakespeare or Lincoln there are thousands of wannabes. Most of us are mediocre. And the individuals in power are mostly schmoes like us. We are, all of us, functionaries of larger systems. We got our jobs because of the luck of being in the right place at the right time. And we stick around because of the inertia of social life.

That doesn’t mean that the mediocre masses are not useful worker bees. But we are, for the most part, replaceable. The same is true of the powerful schmoes who run the world.

Maybe it is our own mediocrity that causes us to fall in love with heroes and worship them. We long to rise above the crowd. And so, we project our dreams onto those who seem superior. But love is a dangerous emotion, especially in politics.

In the 19th century, hero worship was rationalized. Thomas Carlyle gave us the great man theory of history and politics. He suggested that the history of the world is the biography of great men. One version of this idea holds that certain exceptional individuals have charisma, talent, and genius which they use to influence the course of history. A related theory offered by Hegel holds that some “world-historical individuals” embody the “spirit of the age.”

But this view of history is undemocratic and authoritarian. Every human hero has feet of clay and an expiration date. When the great man of the moment is finally shoved aside, the masses will move on and we will find new icons to attach our dreams to.

This may be a deflating way to look at the world. But it is also liberating. It should free up the parties and the corporations to take risks and encourage new talent. It’s true that there are few geniuses. But each of us has the capacity to contribute something. And there are new heroes waiting to rise to the occasion, if they are only given the chance.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article274808881.html#storylink=cpy