Tim Suffield thinks so. You can read his reasoning here. Now, the first thing to note is that there is a little bit of the Cretan dilemma with engaging Tim’s post. Remember how Paul quoted the Cretan who said that “all Cretans are liars”. If he was speaking the truth, then all Cretans really were liars but that surely meant that he too was a liar. Could we then be sure that he was not lying. If he was lying, then maybe all Cretans were not liars.
Tim tells us that when we engage with technology, it moulds us. However, to tell us this, he has used technology to communicate. He knowledge of the subject has been gleaned through technology, he has used the same technology to order, shape and disseminate his thoughts. We’ve used the same technology to read his thoughts. Our interactions are presumably being shaped by them.
This would mean that the lenses he mentions are all coming in to play. This is perhaps a little concerting when you consider his third “spiritual lens.” As it happens, I’m not quite convinced by his theology of the spiritual lens and demonic but that’s for another day.
I want to engage a little further with other aspects of what he writes here, to think about what technology is and does and to think about what humans are and what this means for something being dehumanising. In the recent debate, especially among Christians I think that we’ve failed to engage deeply enough with both of these questions.
So, first of all, it is worth recapping on the technology bit. The big category error consistently made is to think that there is this completely separate technological entity called AI that has suddenly shown up. There are two problems with this. First, whilst there are differences between these new tools and older IT, there is also continuity. Secondly, as I’ve mentioned many times before, AI doesn’t function independently of humans. It isn’t artificial intelligence in that sense at all. It’s human intelligence.
What you get with AI is the pooled knowledge, experience and skills of others. When I worked in industry, we needed some pretty advanced statistical analysis skills to help us get the best solutions to problems. It would have taken me hours, with pen and paper to do this and my results would not have been brilliant because in terms of mathematical processing I’m not that great. However, we had a tool designed by academics, the leaders in the field which did all the processing number crunching and chart drawing for us. It speeded things up, guaranteed accuracy, drew on the knowledge of the top brains and enabled me to focus on what I was good at, the final analysis and decision making.
When we engage with technology, including and perhaps especially so called AI, we are engaging with other human beings. The AI thinks their thoughts after them. This means that our thoughts, feelings, actions are being shaped by other humans. I would therefore be very cautious about pronouncing the thing to be dehumanising. Indeed, we risk dehumanising the very people who create and who use AI. What we can observe is that the thoughts, feelings, actions of those humans are not and never are neutral. We should perhaps be more concerned about how we are shaped by them.
What I’ve not said so much about before is about how we function as human beings. There’s a myth that has developed in recent years which goes along the lines that the development of technology, of TVs, computers, games and smartphones has shortened our attention spans and turned us into more visual processors.
Of course, myths tends to develop by observing reality and so there’s truth in them. Yes, it does seem that short attention spans and visual engagement are dominating. Yes, technology has played its part in that. However, what I would suggest is that the tech has highlighted and focused on one aspect of how humans function.
There are times when the best way to engage and understand is through verbal processing. Some of us are better at thinking and communicating in words. There are also times when we need to focus and concentrate on one person or one thing for a great length of time. Some of us are particularly adapt to this.
However, there are also people who have always tended to be more visual communicators. There are also times when this is the best way to communicate. Similarly, there are also times when what is required is less focus and attention on one thing and more ability to take in everything around us. Sometimes divergent thinking is needed. Sometimes, we need to move between lots of different things quickly. In fact, if we didn’t have that ability to function with short attention spans, it could even be dangerous.
As a side note, it is worth observing that just as some forms of technology appear to work best with short attention spans, a lot of other aspects, especially gaming require the user to have a long attention span. That perhaps is the point. There is tech geared up to all the ways we think and act. Tim observes that he likes the cold take approach to sharing his thoughts. It is possible for him to do this because technology has developed so that he can write down, store and then later edit his thoughts to share the cold take rather than having to immediately communicate what has come to mind. Meanwhile social media such as X/Twitter makes it much easier for us to communicate our hot takes.
When we suggest that AI and technology is dehumanising, the risk is, especially with neurodiversity that we miss the very human ways of thinking and feeling that the technology highlights and emphasises. So, does AI dehumanise? No, it doesn’t. Does this mean that we can engage with it uncritically and without concern? No. We live in a fallen world and so with any bit of human creativity we are going to find both good in it, a reflection of the reflection if you like, an imago of the Imago Dei. However, sin is going to shape those things too. So, like any aspect of life it seems that the injunction to be in the world but not of the world should apply.
Faithroots 