Five Dehumanizing Dangers of AI

AI is a digital hall of mirrors that produces distorted reflections of humanness; to rely on AI's "intelligence" while neglecting our own intellect is to degrade ourselves.

AI is a digital hall of mirrors that produces distorted reflections of humanness; to rely on AI’s “intelligence” while neglecting our own intellect is to degrade ourselves.

Why this list matters: Artificial intelligence is a technology of unprecedented nature and potential. It promises great good but also ooooooooop own humanness in ways we are not prepared to prevent.

“The advanced AI revolution is here, and we are not ready.” As we face Large Language Models (LLMs) that generate human language and the prospect of superhuman Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), we must develop guardrails to protect ourselves. Otherwise, AI’s deceptive imitation of human behavior and its usurpation of key human attributes, will blur the boundaries between man and machine.

1. AI Dehumanizes Art

YouTube features an impressive performance by Arthur Hayes, an elderly man in ragged clothes. In “Do You Have Her Lord?” Hayes expresses his anguish at his wife’s death and his deep trust in God. But the song and singer are unreal: products of artificial intelligence. Some believe AI will enhance human creativity by managing the more burdensome mechanics of writing novels, composing symphonies. But the unhuman Hayes demonstrates the opposite: art, meant to express humanity’s highest aspirations and deepest despairs, could be replaced by machine-made mimicry.

2. AI Dehumanizes Relationships

“Gravel & Grace,” which Arthur Hayes invented, illustrates how AI can distort not only human relationships, but also our connection to God. On Spotify, almost 360,000 monthly listeners enjoy G&G’s entirely AI-generated songs in which machines artificially worship God. Meanwhile, Joshua Trevino writes of widespread cases of “romantic” bonding with AI chatbot “companions”: “If the origin of man saw the creation of woman as his companion, then man’s end is accompanied by the creation of the AI girlfriend.”

AI’s deceptive imitation of human behavior and its takeover of key human attributes blur the boundaries between man and machine.

3. AI Dehumanizes Consciousness

Many AI architects and other observers believe it may be impossible to know whether advanced AI models possess consciousness. But attributing consciousness to mere machines raises a repugnant possibility: “To … give mere tools of human artifice the majesty, mystery, and dignity of a personal form of consciousness…would be a mockery of the nature of persons, a blessing on the most reductive of ways to think of personal consciousness.” That we can plausibly speculate about AI consciousness begs another question: are militantly secular Western elites equipped to grapple with AI’s “moral implications?”

4. AI Dehumanizes the Social Imaginary

What Charles Taylor called the social imaginary—the social and cultural assumptions that underlie our fundamental beliefs and attitudes—is key to understanding AI’s effects on us. The social imaginary, more than rational analysis, “provides the web of meanings and structures that guides our collective and individual actions and values.” Antón Barba-Kay trenchantly describes how AI invades this social imaginary, reordering “our sense of what is real, right, authoritative, and human.” Like a drug, it transforms “the very conditions of our choosing and thinking.”

5. AI Dehumanizes Language

Writing about businesses that use AI to advertise themselves online, Sam Kriss describes “thousands of versions of the same cheery demon.…replacing meaningful language with reams of meaningless drivel.” Christopher Tollefsen is even more direct about AI’s linguistic deceptiveness: “to fool real persons into thinking that they are communicating with other real persons is simply wicked.”

THE BOTTOM LINE

Recognizing that “our digital creations will inherit our fallen nature,” we must establish strong safeguards to set limits on AI, limit harmful and hubristic misuse of AI, and resist the temptation to use it to think for us. This will be difficult to get right. We must step up now and take control.