Welcome to the 26th TV Tuesday!
Two parts of a recent Ezra Klein show episode got me thinking about Evangelical Christians and AI. And they highlighted what I think is a fundamental contradiction between human specialness and the Protestant Work Ethic that I think is interesting and may impact how Evangelicals adopt and grapple with AI.
The show addressed what, if anything, makes humans “special.” Why do we deserve more rights, for example, or why are we more valuable than, say robots or animals?
I remember the first time I really grappled with this question. It wasn’t growing up, obviously, since I was raised Evangelical. Humans were special because God made us special. It was while I was deconstructing, dating The Scientist, and he asked me why humans deserve more rights than animals. I was indignant. The answer was obvious. But I wasn’t justifying all my positions with “God says so” anymore. And without that, I had to concede that there was no reason other than aesthetics or convenience to give humans more rights than animals.
I feel the same way about robots. Essentially, a person can only honestly answer whether humans are special by appealing to one of three authorities: convenience, aesthetics, or a higher power.
Another part of the interview touched on how humans get a lot of their self-worth from their productivity. What happens when AI is way more productive than we are?
The last time I went to church the sermon was on Paul’s “If a man doesn’t work he shall not eat.” Which is just a perfect encapsulation of the Evangelical Protestant Work Ethic plus the tendency to want to identify the “deserving” poor.
The Evangelical worldview on poverty is that trying to helping the undeserving poor is just enabling their laziness and bad choices. Evangelicals love to quote “The poor you will always have with you.” But they never seem to remember “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. No one is exempt from the call to feed the hungry, God calls us to meet the needs of even those we might call 'enemies.’” Notice Jesus never mentions means testing.
If you combine Jesus telling his followers to feed the hungry with “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” and a decent grasp of the evidence you might end up fucking around and supporting a functional social safety net. But of course Evangelicalism arose in cooperation with a military power elite that was hell bent on defeating anything that looked even vaguely like communism. Plus, a functional social safety net would erode Evangelical power. Because currently Evangelical churches provide material support that allows them to essentially bribe marginalized people into behaving in accordance with their beliefs.
So what happens when AI outworks every Evangelical? What happens when humans, as a whole, become the undeserving poor by Evangelicals’ own definition?
The Evangelical social hierarchy is supposedly based on merit. The people at the top worked smarter and harder and deserve to be there. Will Evangelicals accept a social hierarchy where the smartest and hardest workers aren’t humans?
But of course that was never true. The fact that the people at the top are overwhelmingly white and male and come from wealthy, well-connected families is less an indication that those kinds of people work smarter and harder and more an indication that nearly every institution in US society is and always has been geared toward promoting that kind of person.
The Evangelical hierarchy’s best buttress against new realities is never having been moored to reality in the first place. At the end of the day, they’ll likely just maintain that humans are special and cishet white men are at the top because God said so and just stop talking about the whole merit and deserving versus undeserving thing.
But that still leaves open how Evangelicals will retain power after AI obviates human labor.
https://twitter.com/brynntannehill/status/1670051684490395649?s=46&t=mzC3hPIZqViNIMyjrws4XA
Here, I actually see a major opportunity for Evangelicals, and religion in general.
For decades now the US has been secularizing. There are many reasons, but three trends are salient.
1. Organized religion requires organizers, who are disproportionately high-income and high-education. These people have in the past few decades increasingly left their hometowns for better jobs in big cities. People in the hinterlands aren’t going to church because everyone competent enough to make it worthwhile has left.
2. Automation has made the jobs in the top half of the income distribution far more interesting and fun than they were 50 years ago.
3. People in cities aren’t going to church because they’re finding their networks and meaning in these fun, interesting jobs.
Once most of the most competent people can no longer find meaning and connection in paid labor, we may see a widespread revival of religious fervor. They’re going to put their energy somewhere. They’re going to need to get their meaning and connection somehow.
Religion is, traditionally, where most of humanity got that stuff most of the time.
There are signs, as well, that Evangelicals are using AI. According to this podcast, a Catholic priest has given a sermon written by AI and people are creating Christian Alexa skills. From the printing press to radio to television to the internet, Evangelicals have long been technological early adopters.
My feelings on this are mixed. Meaning and connection (but I repeat myself) are essential to human flourishing. We need to get them somehow.
On the one hand, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with using religion to find meaning and connection. But having grown up Evangelical, Evangelicalism is a flaming hot mess of bullshit which I do not want to see get any more powerful or popular than it already is.
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