A better future for Artificial Intelligence

The latest fruit of the information technology revolution, Artificial Intelligence (AI), has rapidly invaded our lives, and stimulated a wide debate. While it clearly has great potential as a tool to analyse masses of data for significant information, such as medical imagery and in environmental surveillance, there are many other uses that are more controversial. As a support for written and verbal communication, it is a ready replacement for human skills, threatening many kinds of routine employment. The effort to create artificial general intelligence controlling robots could easily render much of the human race redundant. Where human labour is seen as expensive and inefficient, its replacement can be seen to increase profitability. In an economic paradigm where profitability and increasing wealth, whether for corporations or nationally through rising GDP, are the end goal and purpose, it is logical to pursue this technological path. This is even more the case when the technology requires massive investments, and the intellectual property is held by a few private corporations in monopoly positions.

Challenging this positive view of AI are two critical questions. The first is practical. AI tools need to be trained on masses of data, which may be exploited without regard to who produced them, whether it infringes on rights to privacy, or the fact that the sources may reflect cultural biases or prejudices. The algorithms are opaque so there is no way of knowing how a result is obtained. There is no new creativity, only reflecting what is already known. And most fundamentally, there is no ethical judgement or moral responsibility behind the results. There is also the environmental impact of the high energy consumption of data centres.

The second question is more fundamental. Any technology can be used for good or bad ends. Nuclear technology enables power plants and bombs. AI can be used to advance civilisation for human wellbeing, or to capture, control, manipulate and if necessary exterminate people in a dictatorship. At present, it is primarily used to increase the wealth of a few extremely rich and powerful men. All the benefits of science and technology need to be used in moderation and for the common good. A major concern is the threat that AI will create massive unemployment as much of the human workforce is made redundant.

To address this question, we need to ask what is the place of work in human life. Is it just to generate wealth for economic entities, in which case replacing people by more efficient technology makes sense, or does work have a more fundamental role in achieving a higher human purpose to refine our characters and give us a role and acceptance in society? Is it not reasonable to consider that individual fulfilment includes making a social contribution by performing some service to the common good? Every single human being should have a right to meaningful employment. Idleness is not happiness.

From this perspective, labour-saving technologies can be seen as freeing us from back-breaking physical work or repetitive and boring activities to enable us to contribute to society in more rewarding and productive ways. When work is seen not as a burden but as an opportunity for personal growth and public service, then everyone will want to work, and should have the opportunity to do so. The wealth created through such technologies should be shared for the benefit of all, so that no one is left wanting. Our economic systems should be redesigned to achieve those ends.

In this context, there is a very enlightening quotation from a conversation that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, then leader of the Bahá’í Faith, had in 1907 while still a prisoner in Palestine. It refers to the labour-saving technologies of the industrial revolution, but it would seem to apply equally well to information technologies like AI.

That all mankind might have opportunity, it was necessary to shorten the hours of labour so that the work of the world could be completed without such demand of strain and effort, and all human beings would have leisure to think and develop individual capacity.

The labour saving machines were given to create leisure for all mankind. The first decided shortening of the hours will appear, when a legal working day of eight hours is established. But this working day of eight hours is only the beginning. Soon there will be a six hour day, a five hour, a three hour day, even less than that, and the worker must be paid more for this management of machines, than he ever received for the exercise of his two hands alone.

You cannot understand now, how the labour saving machines can produce leisure for mankind because at present they are all in the hands of the financiers and are used only to increase profits, but that will not continue. The workers will come into their due benefit from the machine that is the divine intention, and one cannot continue to violate the law of God. So with the assurance of a comfortable income from his work, and ample leisure for each one, poverty will be banished and each community will create comfort and opportunity for its citizens. Education will then be universal at the cost of the state, and no person will be deprived of its opportunity.
(‘Abdu’l-Bahá, 1907, in Mary Hanford Ford, “An interview with ‘Abdu’l-Baha”, The Baha’i Magazine, July 1933, pp. 106-107.)

See how this redefines the purpose of work and the economy, not to benefit financiers but to give everyone a comfortable income, ample leisure, and opportunity for education. The civilisation that could emerge might moderate material consumption within sustainable limits while enabling the building of strong communities, social relationships, science, art, culture and beauty, as well as spiritual qualities for each and all. Information technologies and artificial intelligence could be one tool to facilitate both human enrichment and social integration, supporting unity in diversity across the world.