Hi there Chris - first congratulations on delivering the address at AAR, and thank you so much for choosing to publish it here for all of us to read and access. This is my first preliminary and cursory response after reading it carefully *once* but will read it again. What I collect first from reading is an effort to link the beginning and end of the piece. In the first half of the essay, you address “the trouble with technology instrumentalism.” In the second half, you articulate a response from Kierkegaardian spirituality and the “single individual before God.”
The trouble with ChatGPT that you find through Ellul and Heidegger cuts much deeper than simply offering the diagnosis that AI in itself is neutral like any other tool, and that any problems with it stem from the human use of the neutral tool. Rather, the problem with AI is what Ellul refers to as “technique,” which if I am getting this right is the concomitant *ethos* of technology, the assumptions, prejudices, preunderstandings that “integrate the latter into every facet of human life.” Cutting deeper than the observation that ChatGPT as a tool can be used in any given instance for good or ill, recognizing the ethos that comes with and before and through ChatGPT takes issue with the fundamental assumption that the efficiency, convenience, productivity that make ChatGPT desirable amount to a “levelling up” at all. The “levelling up” phrase is a salient word choice, since Kierkegaard’s devastating critique of “levelling” recasts those same assumptions within the setting of characterless massification that ensues. Further, the problem with the technical ethos of productivity that Ellul names (and I don’t remember this appearing the same way in you prior book on THE QUESTION OF TECHNOLGOY) as its predilection toward militancy, the military application just waiting to be exploiting in every step toward greater efficiency, productivity, and convenience (AI robots doing the awful work of killing, say).
What I take then from you essay that you offer in response to this technical ethos is the Kierkegaardian ethos of the “single individual before God”: the incognito that follows (disappearing from the rewards of success and engagement that the technical ethos offers), the way of suffering, loss, difficulty that following and imitating Christ brings (not “productivity and convenience”) and a fundamental reorientation from *personal creativity* actualized by machine to the passion for God’s redemption and creation which can’t be technically harnessed in any way at all (if it is to be God’s creative redemption of a single life and not say, a technically produced ‘evangelism’ campaign marked by numerical success).
That’s my effort to summarize and I may be off on some points. The problem with AI is the intensification of the technical ethos that it brings which is not neutral but hostile (even malevolent in its levelling? ) to human being-before-God. Kierkegaard’s way of the single individual before God, with its incognito, imitation Christi, and inward passion hidden to the working of machines, is an alternative. But then… Chris… I can’t help but notice, at the very very end of your piece, you seem to still also accept the “what matters is the kind of use you make of it” approach to ChatGPT. In the end, using it for a dirty martini recipe is basically okay and probably harmless, as long as you don’t let yourself be deceived about the fundamental direction ChatGPT beckoning toward nihilism. In the end--- if I’m right, you, (perhaps as a speaker stopping short of making claims for a political response to limit technology, i.e. speaking “without [a claim to that kind of] authority” you offer your piece to all of us for each for our awareness as we each as individuals make a thoughtful limited use of our engagement with ChatGPT.
Ahhhh -- good catch Ole! And thanks for reading and commenting! So, what's interesting is that I omitted the last paragraph from my paper at AAR. Perhaps that was the right move! Lol And yet, as I ponder it, I also think that Heidegger is closer to the truth here: technology IS a tool; it's just not ONLY a tool. Thus we have to be constantly mindful of what it is in its essence (viz. a kind of worldview) and thus constantly on guard against the tyranny of the technical mode of "revealing" the world to us. I think my final paragraph, then, was a concession, perhaps not ideally expressed, to the fact that AI is both a tool and (to use your language) an "ethos." The former is not going anywhere, barring a Unabomber-type retreat from 21st Century civilization. But the latter -- the "-ism," the ethos, the worldview, the reductionistic mode of perception -- the latter can and must be resisted if humanity is to carry on. That's my initial response, anyway!
Okay, sensing that we'll have to keep it limited here for sake of each other's time, I'll just add this. One of my big influences is Gadamer, REASON IN THE AGE OF SCIENCE and when G thematizes the question of technological nihilism, in the essay "What is Practice? The Conditions of Social Reason," Gadamer as I understand what's to make the point and I'm paraphrasing *if the problem with technological nihilism is a problem of destruction of ethos* then, concomitantly, the way to deal with the problem is also a matter of rhetoric, persuasion, action, the polis. Kierkegaard's "retreat" from the political, if I may say it that way, can only get us so far. Ultimately there has to be something like an effort in rhetoric and action in the polis to curb technology to meet the nihilism in its own essence (essentially a threat to the polis). That's where I'm trying to go with my comment that in the end you seem to note that individual curbs and individual cultivation of an ethos is the "resting point" to address the problem. Here I have to wait to read your Statecraft book to see where you go....
ALSO thank you so very much for introducing me to the lines from William Wordsworth quoted in the AAR essay.
"f the problem with technological nihilism is a problem of destruction of ethos* then, concomitantly, the way to deal with the problem is also a matter of rhetoric, persuasion, action, the polis. Kierkegaard's "retreat" from the political, if I may say it that way, can only get us so far. Ultimately there has to be something like an effort in rhetoric and action in the polis to curb technology" -- Many thanks again Ole! IMHO, this is a reasonable but also unnerving suggestion. I'm not sure if it would get us out of the technical ethos--after all, it seems to call for a technical means of persuading others, which, as Ellul argues, will inevitably drift into propaganda--but it also would place a great deal of power in the hands of political authorities. Following Heidegger, I think it may be that technological nihilism is our cultural "destiny" (Geschick) and, following Kierkegaard, I think we may only be able to (Christianly) resist technological nihilism as single individuals before God.
Hi there Chris - first congratulations on delivering the address at AAR, and thank you so much for choosing to publish it here for all of us to read and access. This is my first preliminary and cursory response after reading it carefully *once* but will read it again. What I collect first from reading is an effort to link the beginning and end of the piece. In the first half of the essay, you address “the trouble with technology instrumentalism.” In the second half, you articulate a response from Kierkegaardian spirituality and the “single individual before God.”
The trouble with ChatGPT that you find through Ellul and Heidegger cuts much deeper than simply offering the diagnosis that AI in itself is neutral like any other tool, and that any problems with it stem from the human use of the neutral tool. Rather, the problem with AI is what Ellul refers to as “technique,” which if I am getting this right is the concomitant *ethos* of technology, the assumptions, prejudices, preunderstandings that “integrate the latter into every facet of human life.” Cutting deeper than the observation that ChatGPT as a tool can be used in any given instance for good or ill, recognizing the ethos that comes with and before and through ChatGPT takes issue with the fundamental assumption that the efficiency, convenience, productivity that make ChatGPT desirable amount to a “levelling up” at all. The “levelling up” phrase is a salient word choice, since Kierkegaard’s devastating critique of “levelling” recasts those same assumptions within the setting of characterless massification that ensues. Further, the problem with the technical ethos of productivity that Ellul names (and I don’t remember this appearing the same way in you prior book on THE QUESTION OF TECHNOLGOY) as its predilection toward militancy, the military application just waiting to be exploiting in every step toward greater efficiency, productivity, and convenience (AI robots doing the awful work of killing, say).
What I take then from you essay that you offer in response to this technical ethos is the Kierkegaardian ethos of the “single individual before God”: the incognito that follows (disappearing from the rewards of success and engagement that the technical ethos offers), the way of suffering, loss, difficulty that following and imitating Christ brings (not “productivity and convenience”) and a fundamental reorientation from *personal creativity* actualized by machine to the passion for God’s redemption and creation which can’t be technically harnessed in any way at all (if it is to be God’s creative redemption of a single life and not say, a technically produced ‘evangelism’ campaign marked by numerical success).
That’s my effort to summarize and I may be off on some points. The problem with AI is the intensification of the technical ethos that it brings which is not neutral but hostile (even malevolent in its levelling? ) to human being-before-God. Kierkegaard’s way of the single individual before God, with its incognito, imitation Christi, and inward passion hidden to the working of machines, is an alternative. But then… Chris… I can’t help but notice, at the very very end of your piece, you seem to still also accept the “what matters is the kind of use you make of it” approach to ChatGPT. In the end, using it for a dirty martini recipe is basically okay and probably harmless, as long as you don’t let yourself be deceived about the fundamental direction ChatGPT beckoning toward nihilism. In the end--- if I’m right, you, (perhaps as a speaker stopping short of making claims for a political response to limit technology, i.e. speaking “without [a claim to that kind of] authority” you offer your piece to all of us for each for our awareness as we each as individuals make a thoughtful limited use of our engagement with ChatGPT.
-Ole Schenk
Ahhhh -- good catch Ole! And thanks for reading and commenting! So, what's interesting is that I omitted the last paragraph from my paper at AAR. Perhaps that was the right move! Lol And yet, as I ponder it, I also think that Heidegger is closer to the truth here: technology IS a tool; it's just not ONLY a tool. Thus we have to be constantly mindful of what it is in its essence (viz. a kind of worldview) and thus constantly on guard against the tyranny of the technical mode of "revealing" the world to us. I think my final paragraph, then, was a concession, perhaps not ideally expressed, to the fact that AI is both a tool and (to use your language) an "ethos." The former is not going anywhere, barring a Unabomber-type retreat from 21st Century civilization. But the latter -- the "-ism," the ethos, the worldview, the reductionistic mode of perception -- the latter can and must be resisted if humanity is to carry on. That's my initial response, anyway!
Okay, sensing that we'll have to keep it limited here for sake of each other's time, I'll just add this. One of my big influences is Gadamer, REASON IN THE AGE OF SCIENCE and when G thematizes the question of technological nihilism, in the essay "What is Practice? The Conditions of Social Reason," Gadamer as I understand what's to make the point and I'm paraphrasing *if the problem with technological nihilism is a problem of destruction of ethos* then, concomitantly, the way to deal with the problem is also a matter of rhetoric, persuasion, action, the polis. Kierkegaard's "retreat" from the political, if I may say it that way, can only get us so far. Ultimately there has to be something like an effort in rhetoric and action in the polis to curb technology to meet the nihilism in its own essence (essentially a threat to the polis). That's where I'm trying to go with my comment that in the end you seem to note that individual curbs and individual cultivation of an ethos is the "resting point" to address the problem. Here I have to wait to read your Statecraft book to see where you go....
ALSO thank you so very much for introducing me to the lines from William Wordsworth quoted in the AAR essay.
"f the problem with technological nihilism is a problem of destruction of ethos* then, concomitantly, the way to deal with the problem is also a matter of rhetoric, persuasion, action, the polis. Kierkegaard's "retreat" from the political, if I may say it that way, can only get us so far. Ultimately there has to be something like an effort in rhetoric and action in the polis to curb technology" -- Many thanks again Ole! IMHO, this is a reasonable but also unnerving suggestion. I'm not sure if it would get us out of the technical ethos--after all, it seems to call for a technical means of persuading others, which, as Ellul argues, will inevitably drift into propaganda--but it also would place a great deal of power in the hands of political authorities. Following Heidegger, I think it may be that technological nihilism is our cultural "destiny" (Geschick) and, following Kierkegaard, I think we may only be able to (Christianly) resist technological nihilism as single individuals before God.
All considered with respect my friend. For now, let me turn to the Babylon Bee: https://www.instagram.com/p/DRdX4S5khn8/
😂😂😂