The West faces a series of serious economic challenges: a demographic collapse that undermines growth; a welfare state that sucks money from the future and dispenses it in the present; a regulatory structure that focuses more on redistributionism and top-down control than on innovation. But, we are told, there is one enormous hope for the future of the global economy: artificial intelligence. AI will skyrocket economic productivity; it will provide us both information and innovation; it will solve insoluble problems and shrink timeframes to the infinitesimal. Marc Andreessen, investor extraordinaire, sums up the vision: "We believe we are poised for an intelligence takeoff that will expand our capabilities to unimagined heights. We believe Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher's Stone -- we are literally making sand think."
By the available evidence, Andreessen is right: AI will be extraordinary. Already, AI can write better than most writers, think better than most professors and innovate better than most businesspeople. The question is: What comes next? For Andreessen, the answer is simple: whatever we want. "Material abundance from markets and technology," he says, "opens the space for religion, for politics, and for choices of how to live, socially and individually."
This is indeed an inspiring vision. And yet an antagonistic strain has emerged amid this generalized optimism. That strain takes two forms -- one economic, the other spiritual.
The economic strain suggests that AI will rob us of our jobs, reducing us to dependence on the welfare state. Historically speaking, this is unlikely: There will always be things that humans can do that AI can't. The computer revolution didn't destroy American jobs, and neither did the automotive revolution. And if AI becomes all-encompassing in its capacity, as Andreessen explains, that would imply such an unprecedented level of prosperity that scarcity itself would become a thing of the past.
The spiritual strain of the anti-AI argument is different: It suggests that better technology will not solve our spiritual problems. If AI is better than we are at everything -- if we suddenly find ourselves with hours more of free time and nothing to occupy it; if our skills are so diminished next to those of AI that any effort seems enervating; if AI makes it so easy to answer our questions that we never have to expend effort at all -- then what do we do with our lives?
The reality is that this line of argumentation isn't wrong, so far as it goes. It just doesn't go very far. AI, like any other technological development, shouldn't bring us happiness; it should reduce misery. These aren't the same thing. It's obviously far more difficult to be happy when we're experiencing misery -- if you have cancer, that's a serious challenge to happiness -- but alleviation of misery doesn't guarantee happiness. In other words, the spiritual criticism of AI is misguided: AI is designed to alleviate pain and suffering, not to maximize our happiness. And asking it to maximize our happiness is like trying to dry one's hair with a hammer: We're using the wrong tool.
None of which is to say that AI won't increase misery in the short term for many people. AI certainly raises challenges in every field from parenting to business to art. But our true societal challenges aren't with AI; they're with us. And they're the same problems that have always been with us: the problem of individualism and community; the problem of purpose and meaning. And those problems are solvable. In an increasingly atomized age, it's easy to blame the machines for our spiritual failures. But we are responsible for our own fulfillment and happiness. We could start by encouraging more people to fill their lives with the non-material things that matter: church and family, predominantly. The alternative -- stopping technological progress in its tracks -- risks increasing misery without increasing happiness.
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