Don’t Let Big Tech Outsource Our Humanity

A tech startup called Orchid recently went viral for all the wrong reasons. Its launch ad showed a boyfriend forgetting his anniversary, too busy playing video games to remember. His girlfriend texts the AI agent Orchid, which contacts him, books the restaurant, orders the flowers, and keeps her updated on his progress. When the couple finally arrives at their date, they both know who to thank.

The ad quickly racked up millions of views and hundreds of angry replies, with users calling it a product for “adult babies uninterested in the world they live in.”  That may be true. But that doesn’t mean the temptation Orchid represents, to outsource what makes us human for the ease of AI, is gone.

Last November, a startup called 2wai went viral with an ad showing a child growing up alongside an AI avatar of his deceased grandmother, talking to her on the walk home from school, telling her she’s about to become a great-grandmother. With the avatar, it’s like grandma never died. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has argued, without irony, that AI can solve America’s loneliness epidemic, especially once “the personalization loop kicks in.” He promises the company of someone perfectly molded to you. Meanwhile, across the country, students are using AI to draft their essays, couples are using AI to write their love notes, and bosses are using AI to outsource their needy human workers.

The problem isn’t AI in and of itself. Like any tool, AI can be used for good or evil. But its particular risk is that, unlike other technologies, AI imitates what we think of as distinctly human: our ability to reason, communicate, and make moral judgments. That imitation can blur the line between person and machine, making us feel like we’re interacting with something more human than it really is. When that is the case, people begin to use technology less as a productivity tool, and more as a replacement for people.

Look back at the Orchid ad. The boyfriend failed to remember their anniversary, didn’t sacrifice to demonstrate his care for his girlfriend, and took credit for an evening he did nothing to plan. But the girlfriend is at fault too. Instead of talking with her boyfriend about his forgetfulness and emotional absence, she decided to “solve the problem” of the missed anniversary with an AI agent’s help. In the end, both failed to love, the boyfriend by selfishly forgetting about his girlfriend, and the girlfriend by choosing the ease of a lie over the pain of honesty.

If love is willing the good of the other and being willing to sacrifice for someone else, their relationship was already loveless. But AI papered over the void; a lie perpetuated a relationship that neither side really wanted to put the effort into sustaining.

As a mother with children heading back to school this fall, I find the intrusion of AI into core human activities to be a real concern. If AI helps kids to write every paper, solve every problem, and generate every idea, maybe they will end up as AI super users, well prepared for our technological future. But like the Orchid couple that chose peaceful coexistence over real love, such students will be trained for efficiency without developing the habits of thinking that education is meant to cultivate.

The point of writing an essay isn’t to have a complete essay. It’s developing the power to think through complex arguments. The point of struggling through a difficult book isn’t to summarize the plot. It’s to empathize with the characters and uncover the mysterious truths about human life.

Because there is something mysterious about us. Ultimately, no matter how sophisticated AI becomes, it will always be reducible to physical processes and computational structures. The human person is not. We aren’t just biological machines processing information. We are rational, free, spiritual beings created in the image of God and made for communion with him and with one another.

That communion requires everything AI cannot give. AI can imitate conversation, but it can’t love. It can predict decisions, but it can’t freely choose the good. It can generate words, but it can’t mean them. It can optimize outcomes, but it can’t make a gift of itself. Those are uniquely human capacities, and they’re exactly what we risk handing over to technology.

The answer is not to surrender to AI or to reject it, but to keep it in its proper place. If we do that, we can use it as a tool to amplify what makes us human without it replacing our humanity.

Consider Carbon Robotics’ LaserWeeder, recently touted by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. This robot uses high-resolution cameras and AI to identify and eliminate weeds with laser precision, no herbicides, no chemical runoff, no toxins reaching our soil or our food. If this technology takes off, meals that are the center of human life could be freed from toxins, human health could improve, and farmers could be freed from chemicals to serve as better stewards of their land. Technology can help repair our relationships with each other and our relationship with nature at the same time.

AI systems being deployed to detect and prevent wildfires can help clear smoke from our air and save homes and businesses. Neonatal algorithms can identify early signs of sepsis in premature infants hours before human clinicians can, giving doctors time to act on behalf of the most vulnerable lives. Instantaneous AI translation can help missionaries, doctors, and aid workers serve those in poverty or struck by disaster whose language they do not speak.

Using AI to amplify our relationships, judgment, responsibility, stewardship, and love makes us more capable of being fully human. Because no matter how powerful AI becomes, what every person really needs is to know and be known, to love and be loved by other people.

***

Clare Ath is the Co-Founder and President of Vita et Terra, a conservative Catholic environmental nonprofit that champions care for creation.

This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.