A recent letter signed by more than 200 musical artists calls “AI developers, technology companies, platforms and digital music services to cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists.” Though the letter acknowledges that “when used responsibly, AI has enormous potential to advance human creativity,” it argues that irresponsible uses pose “enormous threats to our ability to protect our privacy, our identities, our music and our livelihoods.” AI, in other words, will upset the status quo.
The letter is representative of the sorts of objections we consistently face when we consider the negative consequences of AI. It addresses issues of economics, identity, privacy, and the erosion of “values” (e.g., human creativity expressed through music). In addition to mirroring the concerns many of us have about AI in other domains and fields, the letter illustrates a flaw in the way we think about AI. In particular, identifying “responsible” and “irresponsible” uses of AI is unhelpful because it masks an underlying set of trade-offs we are making even when our use of AI is “responsible.”
AI will change the world. As it does so, it will have varied effects on all of us. AI will define some new “normal” to which all of us will need to adjust. When we define certain uses of AI as irresponsible, we will tend to neglect responsible uses of AI that have negative consequences for various members of the population. Rather than considering “responsible” and “irresponsible” uses of AI, we need to decide what we are unwilling to give up regardless of the benefits AI promises to provide for some or most of us. AI’s benefits are enticing, but every change involves loss. We need to seriously consider that loss.
While we often think of technology as a means of progress, without some stable understanding of what it means to be human, we can’t be sure whether we are moving forward or backward… only that we are moving. Progress can’t just mean that we have invented some new device that has a specific set of benefits. It also has to mean that we arrange our individual and collective lives to privilege ideas like human creativity (or certain expressions of it), however difficult they may be to define, because we recognize them as valuable to our humanity. So, why might we decide that we care about human creativity?
Useful to God and President of D. L. Moody Center. His newest book titled Serpents and Doves: Christians, Politics, and the Art of Bearing Witness is available on amazon.com. He previously published Christian Resistance: Learning to Defy the World and Follow Jesus, Useful to God: Eight Lessons from the Life of D. L. Moody, Thinking Christian: Essays on Testimony, Accountability, and the Christian Mind, as well as co-authoring Trajectories: A Gospel-Centered Introduction to Old Testament Theology.
Image: Jérémy Barande
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