For a long time—from the Palaeolithic cave residents in Lascaux, France until, well today—the most striking feature of being human is our capacity to think for ourselves. We observe and explore our world with a desire to understand. The arts, literature, philosophy, and the sciences are expressions of curiosity, our desire to demystify, and control the natural world. The search for knowledge requires our willingness to take risks, and oftentimes we find ourselves in ethical quandaries.

The theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the “father of the atomic bomb” well understood the ethical responsibility of those developing transformative technologies and the irreversible nature of that work. His lectures, given in Japan in September, 1960, at the invitation of the Japan Committee for Intellectual Interchange (JCII), provide insight into his moral struggle with the development of atomic weapons.

At a conference in Osaka, he stated, “Indeed, even in pure science with no thoughts of weapons or immediate change in life, a great discovery is a source of terror.”

He warned in an address titled ‘The Future of Civilization.’ “We have seen many improvements, but we have also lived through profound moral retrogression. We must remember the two sides, science as it is for the pursuit of truth, to understand nature, to understand ourselves as a part of nature, and science as a source of technology and power to alter the world, to meet human needs, real or artificial.”

In another lecture, he observed, “The legend of the Tree of Knowledge, of Adam, and the legend of Prometheus—they both attest to the danger of going beyond the familiar compass of human life.”

Today, sixty-six years later, humanity finds itself entering a new period “beyond the familiar compass of human life.” Artificial Intelligence is redefining the human experience. The Roman Catholic theologian Ilia Delio, a Franciscan Sister, writes that “…the human person is never finished: That’s what evolution tells us. We’re always creating ourselves.” She continues:

Because we’re already past the individual human we knew 100 years ago. Since the ‘60s, we have become increasingly cyborgized, not only the extended self into our devices, but everything from eyeglasses to hearing aids to pacemakers are all hybrids of mechanical biological life. And posthuman life is about thinking of that cyborgian life or machinic interaction as a new matrix for human becoming. It resituates the individual within this web of relationships, including machine relationships. That is part of the next wave of human evolution.

The question is whether we have adequately examined the ethical quandaries and risks associated with this “next wave of human evolution” through artificially intelligent paradigms.

From an economic perspective, speculation in AI is limiting our investment in other sectors of the economy: energy infrastructure, housing, strategic value networks, logistics, and business innovation.  Too many land, water, and energy resources are being diverted for the construction of data centers. This comes at the cost of citizen consumers.

As Delio observes, “These are trillion-dollar companies. That kind of excess wealth—when a third of the planet lacks water and necessities—is really questionable. And the fact is every single person condones this wealth, because we’re all buying into it; we’re making this wealth possible for these companies, which is something that’s not being addressed.”  

Politically, the absence of government regulation and oversight of AI developers places decision-making for AI applications in the hands of a select few—the innovators themselves. Should these companies self-regulate? Do we want political influence concentrated in corporate boardrooms? We should be asking questions about what policies we want enacted by elected officials to govern AI for the benefit of economic development, to address employment, affordability, environmental issues, education, medical research, and advanced manufacturing.

Tyler Austin Harper states in a recent The Atlantic article, “Many AI critics who write from a secular perspective, by contrast, tend to speak about artificial intelligence in utilitarian terms. Technology journalists, academic experts, and activists typically emphasize the AI industry’s prodigious environmental toll, its reliance on intellectual-property theft, its exacerbation of racialized algorithmic bias, its use in dangerous autonomous weapons systems, its role in warrantless surveillance, its exploitation of cheap foreign-labor markets, its upending of the domestic labor market at home, and the like.”

As valid as our societal concerns are, and they need to be raised, the underlying issue needs to be addressed. How far do we go in the cyborgianization of human life?

Theologically and philosophically, are Jews and Christians asking the right questions about the theoretical values behind companies like Anthropic, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, and other developers?

Most notably, Pope Leo XIV , in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, and Presbyterian theologian Carl Trueman, in his book The Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity, are challenging us with the question, “What does it mean to be a human being?”  In his encyclical, Pope Leo asks, “Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?”

Jewish and Christian theologians, as well as secular humanists and individual persons, have given inadequate attention to the ethical issues they need to grapple with in the current environment. Our current atmosphere is unhealthy psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. What defines the future of humanity begins with the individual and their relationship to the human community. We need to reconnect ourselves with other people. We need to reexamine and articulate our concepts of human dignity.

The Robber Barons of Silicon Valley, the corporations that profit from the new technologies, institutions like the University of Michigan and the Los Alamos labs (their expansion agreement that excluded public debate and interests), are undermining our societal bonds and our local, state, and federal laws. Their behind closed door deals undermine our democracy.

We continue to live in a time of moral retrogression as we dehumanize ourselves. Once our humanity is lost, there will be nothing left.

To cope with our sorrows, to limit and make noble our joys, to understand what is happening to us, to talk to one another, to relate one thing to another, to find the great themes which organize our experience and give it meaning, it is what makes us human.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

Image:

Kitty and Robert Oppenheimer meet Kiyokata and Tsuya Kusaka in Osaka, Japan. The Kusakas were the parents of Shuichi Kusaka, a physicist who had worked with Oppenheimer. Credit to: Kitty Oppenheimer and the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Committee