In a previous post I wrote how early on biologists tried to check developments in genetic engineering and how the recent calls for restraint in AI research and application echoes those attempts. Those early warnings, however, did not succeed in putting a halt to bio-engineering research into areas that would have much graver consequences for humankind. And this provides a lesson as we enter the early phases of AI research and development.
In its early stages genetic engineering had achieved only the modification of genetic characteristics in plants and animals by introducing qualities from the DNA of other species. Despite the voices of caution and apprehension, scientists continued their inroads into genetic research and in 2012 a new powerful technique of gene editing, called CRISPR, was laid out. This technique could edit human embryos for the purpose of either conferring specific traits exclusive to the newborn or, more dramatically and consequentially, passing inheritable genes down the line of its offspring. In his book AS GODS Matthew Cobb describes the upheaval and flurry of activism that followed as biologists tried to check and control the proliferation of both new research on human editing as well as its publication in scientific journals.
But neither the admonition or opposition of individual scientists (including the pioneers of gene editing) nor guidelines by scientific organizations stemmed the flow of new research discoveries. In November 2018, the news came from China that the discoveries were turned into application. A scientist, He Jiankui, had used CRISPR to edit the genes of two female embryos. The reaction was swift and severe. He was denounced by the international scientific community, his Chinese university fired him, and the Chinese authorities prosecuted him and sentenced him to a jail term. However, the dam had burst.
Cobb writes that reliance on self-regulation and pronouncements by individual scientists and scientific organizations were not enough to stop an ambitious scientist from applying gene editing on human embryos. Expectations and assumptions about self-restraint and the efficacy of rather abstract guidelines proved to be wrong. This is exactly what could happen with AI. Bio-engineering and AI are not lacking in potential for beneficial applications. The problem is that research that empowers beneficial applications can also empower questionable, unethical, and devastating applications. The conundrum we face is how we deal with the dictum “Just because we can do something does not mean that we should.”
So, who should have a say on what we are allowed to do? To their credit, many biotech scientists recognized that their research and its applications had implications for all humanity. Therefore, the public should have a seat at the table of such momentous decisions.
The calls for the public to set boundaries whether in bio-engineering or AI, requires however that we have a public that is capable to appreciate the consequences of applications on human life. This does not mean knowledge of the technical aspects only. More importantly, it means an understanding of the of human experience and condition that only an education in the humanities (literature, philosophy, sociology) can offer. To channel students into technical fields we call STEM (for science, technology, engineering, mathematics) without a decent exposure in the humanities deprives them of the ability to appreciate what their work means for the future of humankind.
In her inimitable style, Maureen Dowd (NYT, 5/27/2023) wrote “We can’t deal with artificial intelligence unless we cultivate and educate the non-artificial intelligence that we already have.” And “Without humanities, humanity and humaneness, we won’t be imbuing society with wisdom, just creating owner’s manuals.” Technology can dazzle us so much that we often blindly follow it with very little reflection as to what we have to lose. Therefore, we need to ask what is the education we need in order to protect us from ourselves?”
Pierre Hadot, a French academic, goes further and express skepticism as to whether the modern educational system prepares men and women for, as he puts it, “careers as human beings.” Instead, in his opinion, the system controlled by the state or corporations and often with the blessing of religious institutions prefers to trains us for occupational careers and, I would add, for unexamined lives. As such we are destined for a life that marches to the drumbeat of daily chores in the interest of performative tasks dictated from outside without the time or capacity to reflect on our humanness.
A core lesson of an education in the humanities is to impart a modicum of wisdom so that we learn how to act so as not to harm ourselves or others. This is not, however, what we see in the contemporary world. Instead, lack of moderation and desire for self-gratification is what sets the tone in this era of the “sovereign self” as the historian Francis Fukuyama calls it. The sovereign self is the extreme manifestation of the liberal world order, divorced from personal responsibility. Without wisdom and temperance, the individual is practically unarmed in fighting the excesses of individual choice. That applies to the average citizen as well as to the ambitious scientist or technologist.
So how do we edit the cell of the sovereign self with the traits of wisdom and temperance? David Brooks, the well-known columnist of The New York Times has something to say in this regard in a piece for The Atlantic. He argues that the autonomy-based liberalism should be replaced by the gifts-based liberalism. These gifts include the gift of life and the gift of knowledge we have received from those that preceded us. Therefore, “our individual choices take place within the framework of the gifts we have received, and the responsibilities to others that those gifts entail.”
It seems therefore, that in order to contemplate our human future and steer it down a path that preserves our fundamental humanness we need to train individual citizens in the art of wise living and reset our liberal world order so that it balances the freedom of individual choice with the responsibility toward preserving our human nature. This is how we can instill agency in all of us so that we can take control of our human future.
On the other end, stand the voices of those who want to make us believe that whatever future we happen upon is the inevitable outcome of how the world works. But these voices are either misguided or wish to escape responsibility. Which innovations prevail, which technologies are adopted, which ways of life are stamped on us are not necessarily the result of nature-based inevitability. They are rather the results of choices we make with less or more or even no consent under the influence of competing interests, political dynamics, and cultural diversions that keep us away from any liberating introspection. No wonder then that the liberating power of the humanities must be suppressed.
It seems to me that any future human dystopias, if they come, will come only if we cease to have agency as responsible citizens.
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