Is AI a Threat to Human Flourishing?

Will AI generate more human flourishing?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I would say yes, it absolutely will.

But I would also say that it will also cause more human misery as well.

And I think both of those things will happen regardless of how fast or how slow the technology is adopted.

The nature of how humans interact with technology is both of those things.

A sword, for example, is a piece of technology and it's used for both offense and defense.

It promotes human flourishing and protecting the innocent, but also promotes human misery and killing the innocent.

And I view AI very similarly.

It will create more flourishing, but also more misery.

Yeah, I think that, I mean, it's the right question to be asking.

I think the Amish ask the same question whenever they're considering a new technology.

Will this help us, you know, love God, love neighbor better, human flourishing, if you define it as those kinds of relationships, whether it's good for humans is in terms of whether it helps those relationships, you know, do better or do worse.

And I think it can do better.

As AI is like a megaphone, right? You can, whatever you say into it, it's going to amplify it.

And so if you're saying negative things, the outcomes will be negative.

But if you can use it for good, which you can, then there can be some measure of flourishing as well.

I think the results that we see from AI are going to depend immensely on the right use of this technology.

But that right use is complicated by the shape and purpose of AI.

I think AI is fundamentally made in order to replace human work.

So it raises a whole lot of other questions about if AI can do these tasks that previously I did or other people did, well, what exactly am I supposed to do? And it raises other questions that are particularly pertinent to the education world about the way that work often forms us.

And so if that work is supposed to form us, but we now outsource that formative work to AI, what happens to people who were previously formed by the work that they no longer do?