By Jordan J. Ballor and Erik W. Matson, Public Discourse. (Image: Unsplash)
Abuse is no argument against proper use. But AI’s challenges and opportunities are bound up with identifying the scale and scope of proper use as well as the consequences of abuse, and how to distinguish one from another.
The technical economic issues and questions surrounding artificial intelligence are myriad. Perhaps the most fundamental set of issues, however, relates to the implications of AI for our work. If AI lives up to the most optimistic forecasts and does at least some of what the most enthusiastic analysts hope it will do, what impact will that have on the human condition here on earth as relates to work?
The relationship between human beings and work is complex. Questions surrounding human labor and its significance turn on basic convictions regarding the nature of the human person. From a Christian theological perspective, the mandate to work is seen as foundational to the biblical account of the creation of human beings, from the rendition of humanity created in the image of God (imago Dei) in Genesis 1:26-28 to the specific commands to Adam placed in the garden of Eden to “work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). After man’s fall into sin, the mandate to work continued, albeit in a different context as Adam’s work became toilsome and troublesome. As God relates to Adam in Genesis:
… cursed is the ground because of you;
in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread,
till you return to the ground,
for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust,
and to dust you shall return.
(Gen. 3:17-19)
And after the Flood, God’s covenant with Noah reiterates the primal mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 9:1).