I don’t know about you, but I take inordinate pleasure out of all the reports I here about AI lying, screwing up, or just generally being inadequate to the task set before it. Here is a good one from the National Catholic Register. My colleagues have been lied to by AI on multiple occasions; I don’t think it’s all a matter of databases that haven’t been updated.
In AI’s unreliability, perhaps, lies the hope of our humanity.
That’s a pretty flippant take, I know. Which is why I’m so pleased that Creed & Culture will publish, next fall, political philosopher Mark T. Mitchell’s much more profound exploration of the new digital world’s meaning and consequences—and what our survival strategies might be.
Mark, who cofounded the localist webzine Front Porch Republic, is the author of a few excellent books, including Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing, The Limits of Liberalism: Tradition, Individualism, and the Crisis of Freedom, and Plutocratic Socialism: The Future of Private Property and the Fate of the Middle Class.
Here’s how we are currently describing (and titling) his next one:
Digital technology is hijacking our attention, colonizing our consciousness, harvesting our personal data, fragmenting reality, and destroying our souls. We have become a nation of addicts, unable to turn away from the glowing light of those digital devices which enchant and possess us. Furthermore, our disease is facilitating the greatest concentration of power in history—except this time our Tower of Babel is taking the form of a web composed of silicon and electricity, a captivating and ubiquitous presence from which there is apparently no escape.
Yet, Mark T. Mitchell argues in Breaking Babel: Artificial Intelligence, Apocalypse, and the Revenge of Reality, just as the biblical Babel toppled, collapsing under the weight of its own hubris, the attempt to overcome human limits is fated to fail. Techno-optimists’ fever dreams of immortality and unparalleled power will ultimately be frustrated. Although we are bound to experience a period of intense chaos and confusion, reality will not be cheated. Mitchell offers practical advice for holding fast to the truly human in this troubling moment.
A profound and illuminating analysis of the terrifying technological project on which our world has embarked, Breaking Babel is essential reading for anyone who wishes to stay sane in an era of increasing madness.
You can read a related Mitchell article here, at the Touchstone website. It will give you a good sense of where Breaking Babel is likely to go—and it is a very different direction than the complacent attitude toward AI that we currently encounter, even within the faith-oriented intellectual space.
Don’t forget to join Creed & Culture’s email list to get updates on Mitchell’s book, special discount codes, and other special comms!
Image courtesy mikemacmarketing, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
