Is Worthless the New Priceless?

Revaluing and Devaluing Humanity

The post is the first in a series that will examine how rapid changes in our culture will interrogate classical Christian forms of self-understanding, and create new understandings of what it means to be human. 

One part of the greatest shift in human culture since the enlightenment is the emergence of the 2nd Machine Age. Alongside the rapid degradation of the eco-systems on which human life depends, new concepts of what it means to live in time, and the reformation of scientific epistemology it will permanently change our perception of what it means to be human. 

The 2nd Machine Age is already creating disruptions in the economy from which new forms of human empowerment emerging, even as it challenges traditional sources of human security and meaning. But most importantly the 2nd Machine Age will challenge current understandings of what it means to be human and offer new possibilities for self-understanding.

The 2nd machine age will complete a process that began with the emergence of modernity and the rise of efficient modern social structures in Europe. The genesis of such efficiency, and the value placed on it, has its own history, but it represents a continuation of structures created by the Roman Empire and perpetuated and refined by the Roman Catholic Church even as the Empire crumbled. 

The near endless wars inaugurated by the Reformation would lead more directly to the increasingly efficient social organizations necessary to gather and distribute resources to support victorious armies. The maintenance of the colonial enterprises that soon followed led to the further refinement of such structures, even as gradually enhanced communication on a global scale both demanded and allowed further efficiencies. By the 19th century the industrial revolution provided both a model and an impetus for a modern society: the machine. 

A kind of synergy developed. The machine isn't merely a thing. It is an idea: a means by which processes can be organized for maximum production with minimum cost. Its core value is efficiency. And efficiency isn’t merely a core value for machines. It becomes the core value for the society that the machines serve. Human society could and would be reordered to serve the needs of machines, which would more efficiently serve society. (And the capacity to make war, it must be noted, drove both.)

There were profound implications for human self-understanding and self-valuing. Heretofore humans (at least in the Christian West) understood their unique value primarily in terms of moral agency and unique intellectual capacity. Made in the image of God, humans had a unique capacity for righteousness and understanding of both themselves and divine. In the first machine age the capacity for production, for creating wealth, would be added to these two and eclipse them. 

The church was fully complicit in these changes. Indeed the church, particularly the Protestant Church re-defined itself away from the worship and praise of God to the production of disciples. In order to “make disciples for the transformation of the world” churches would become evangelistic machines whose product, disciples, would become the workers in either making more disciples or moving down the assembly line become part of a social transformation machine. Even worship was called into the process of production. Rather than being an end in itself worship became a critical gateway into discipleship. Both pastors and congregations would be judged by their output, their production of disciples.

Humans might be made in the image of God, but the church quickly affirmed that they were also made into the image of the machine. They were producers. 

And this is what will change in the 2nd machine age.

First, with the rise of artificial intelligence machines will become increasingly capable and will no longer need human servants. They will take over more and more of the tasks now carried out by humans. This goes far beyond robots taking over manual labor. Already artificial intelligences replace receptionists, customer service professionals, bookkeepers, accountants, lawyers, medical professionals, and computer programmers. More deeply AI will, as it already does, play an increasingly role in guiding all forms of human interaction in the realm of the internet and social media.

Examples. A mere year ago (2018) it took a trained human radiologist to formulate a report on a routine echocardiogram on my heart. A day or more would pass before a second appointment could be made for my cardiologist to examine the report and formulate treatments. This year (2019) the machine used to create the echocardiogram constantly compared it to the previous year’s echocardiogram and within minutes generated a diagnostic report. I could see my cardiologist within the hour. And someone lost a job. And to the extent that my cardiologist examines such reports, performs a rational analysis according to fixed rubric, and prescribes a treatment one wonders how long it is before she is replaced. 

Or consider the use by churches of web sites as portals through the internet, and videos for preaching, teaching, and evangelism. It is likely that AI designed templates based on large scale data analysis of those colors and themes more attractive to consumers were used to create most current church websites. It is equally likely that videos were produced with heavy design input from similar AI analysis and templates. How long before your web designer just loses a job? 

Moreover it is well within the reach of current artificial intelligence to write a sermon crafted to tug on the heartstrings and empty the wallet. Even more within the range of AI (already demonstrated at a conference I attended in Nov. 2018) is creating a full range of worship music in a variety of styles and performing that music on synthesizers. Given the highly mannered leadership styles of both traditional and contemporary worship it will be relatively simple for AI to both create and lead, in robotic form, a worship service. 

Second, machines will become more autonomous, with self-driving cars being the most obvious case. They will increasingly become moral agents, making decisions of the type heretofore limited to humans. We have already seen the extent to which computer controlled flight systems are tended  to rather than controlled by pilots. Such machine based decision-making will interrogate the uniqueness of humans as moral agents, and indeed will place humans in the position of creating moral agents. 

Third, machines will increasingly take over the intellectual tasks that were markers of human distinctiveness. The now popularized shift in the mid-20th century from computers as people to computers as machines was simply the leading edge of this. Artificial intelligences are now beginning to direct the activity of computers, determining productive research directions rather than merely serving human masters. And it is predictable if not inevitable that they will inaugurate research, at first under the guidance of goals set by humans, but possibly guided by their own emerging values. 

Finally, the rise of AI will inexorably concentrate wealth in the hands of the minuscule elite that owns them and has the majority claim on what they produce. The growing gap between the ultra rich and everyone else will only grow in the coming decades. Churches will experience something similar. Those which most effectively use the tools of the 2nd machine age in marketing and worship production will capture a growing share of the religion market, while others will fall into a devalued obscurity. Indeed we have seen this in the UMC for the last two decades as both pastors and congregations that failed to “produce” disciples have been subject to either constant intervention to make them more "productive" or failing that, treated as toxic or incompetent pariahs. 

These changes will send a clear message to humans who have come to value themselves and understand their humanity in terms of moral agency, intellectualization, and particularly production, whether of material wealth or Christian disciples. The distinctiveness of humans as moral agents and intellects will diminish or disappear, and humans as producers will have a steadily decreasing value.

In short, critical parts of human self-understanding, the self-understanding ratified by Protestant theological anthropology, will disappear or be completely devalued in the 2nd machine age. A prayer in the UM liturgy asks that humans be “spared from grinding toil that destroys the fullness of life.” In the coming age humans may actually beg for grinding toil just so they have an opportunity to affirm to themselves their value. 

There is another possibility for human self-understanding, but it will require a radical reworking of contemporary Christian understandings of what it means to be human. We will need to recognize that the unique human vocation, for which humans are uniquely fitted, is the capacity for the worship of God, building human community, and participation in the ongoing creation of the world.  These will be the subject of the next several posts. 

(Those interested in these developments might wish to read: The Second Machine Age by Brynjolfsson or 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Harari.)