25TH ANNIVERSARY VOLUME

A FAUSTIAN EXCHANGE: WHAT IS TO BE HUMAN IN THE ERA OF UBIQUITOUS TECHNOLOGY?

Artificial intelligence and society: a furtive transformation

Frederick Kile

Received: 15 September 2011 / Accepted: 6 January 2012 / Published online: 12 February 2012

� Springer-Verlag London Limited 2012

Abstract During the 1950s, there was a burst of enthu-

siasm about whether artificial intelligence might surpass

human intelligence. Since then, technology has changed

society so dramatically that the focus of study has shifted

toward society’s ability to adapt to technological change.

Technology and rapid communications weaken the capac-

ity of society to integrate into the broader social structure

those people who have had little or no access to education.

(Most of the recent use of communications by the excluded

has been disruptive, not integrative.) Interweaving of

socioeconomic activity and large-scale systems had a

dehumanizing effect on people excluded from social par-

ticipation by these trends. Jobs vanish at an accelerating

rate. Marketing creates demand for goods which stress the

global environment, even while the global environment no

longer yields readily accessible resources. Mining and

petroleum firms push into ever more challenging environ-

ments (e.g., deep mines and seabed mining) to meet

resource demands. These activities are expensive, and

resource prices rise rapidly, further excluding groups that

cannot pay for these resources. The impact of large-scale

systems on society leads to mass idleness, with the

accompanying threat of violent reaction as unemployed

masses seek to blame both people in power as well as the

broader social structure for their plight. Perhaps, the impact

of large-scale systems on society has already eroded

essential qualities of humanness. Humans, when they feel

‘‘socially useless,’’ are dehumanized. (At the same time,

machines (at any scale) seem incapable of emotion or

empathy.) Has the cost of technological progress been too

high to pay? These issues are addressed in this paper.

Keywords Automation �Artificial intelligence � Emotion �Global environment � Human � Large-scale systems �Machine-aided thinking � Society � Technology

1 Introduction

Alan Turing (1950) hypothesized that artificial intelligence

(AI) will be a reality when a human communicating with a

machine will not be able to distinguish the machine’s

response from a human’s response.

For decades, Turing’s brilliant observation has been a

hallmark of characterizing AI. However, advances in

hardware, communications, and software have moved

human interactions with machines in a direction which

could not have been anticipated by Turing or his

contemporaries.

In part, the development of communications followed

by emergence of new capabilities in the physical realm has

driven an alternative form of human–machine interaction

resembling AI in some ways.

World War 2 and its aftermath created unprecedented

human mobility, particularly in the United States. Move-

ment of people called for new forms of communication. As

recently as the 1950s, the Morse code and teletype formed

a backdrop for aviation.

With the junction transistor and integrated circuits,

mainframe computers were developed. Though a few ear-

lier computers resembling mainframes had been developed

using vacuum tubes, the failure rate of tubes was too high

for meaningful computing. Those early computers were

sufficiently powerful to illustrate the potential for reliable

F. Kile (&)

Appleton, WI, USA

e-mail: fkile@new.rr.com

123

AI & Soc (2013) 28:107–115

DOI 10.1007/s00146-012-0396-0

computing, given new forms of computer hardware not

subject to frequent failures.

2 Societal effects of automation and computing power

Early mainframe computers paved the way for machine-

aided thinking. As automation was developing on a par-

allel track, a new aspect of human–machine interaction

was beginning. Taken together, automation and machine-

aided thinking may be designated as AMAT. A steady

decline of less-skilled jobs began with automation.

Employment opportunities gradually declined around the

globe. Machine-aided thinking will continue eroding

employment opportunities at ever higher skill levels and

thus force people to accept longer periods of schooling or

low opportunities for employment. This has become

painfully evident in the situation facing college and uni-

versity graduates in the United State. There are parallel

developments in other nations. In some regions, even a

Ph.D in a highly technical field does not guarantee

employment.

Developments noted above suggest that ever increasing

numbers of people around the world will be unable to find

meaningful employment. If broad and unremitting under-

employment and unemployment (Kile 2003) become a

global norm, our societal system will confront a potential

for unrest never before seen at the global level. An exam-

ination of twentieth century history strongly suggests that

unemployment in Germany and other nations was a major

factor in triggering World War 2. We cannot at this point

describe the types of social unrest that might accompany

widespread global unemployment—particularly since that

problem is likely to continue to grow.

It seems almost unnecessary to cite examples of

machines displacing humans because new examples arise

almost daily. Two recent agricultural developments illus-

trate this point: (1) One manufacturer announced devel-

opment of a driverless tractor (The Independent 1997;

Elektor Academy 2011); (2) Some farms have attached a

chip to their cows. The chip monitors milk production,

quality, etc. (Cooper and Sigalla 1996; Sigalla 2000). The

cows remain in a pasture until they feel the urge to be

milked. At that point, each cow goes to a gate which then

opens and from that point on, every aspect of milking is

automated. It is possible for the ‘‘farmer’’ to sit in a high-

rise building at some remote location and arrange for

human intervention when the cow-machine system needs

attention. For thousands of years, farming has occupied the

vast majority of the world’s population. How will our

social structures adapt if most agricultural jobs become

automated?

As computing advanced, the need for workers per unit of

output declined, though initially output grew fast enough to

mask this phenomenon. This increase in total economic

output led to the depletion of readily available raw materials.

Most materials continue to be available. However, access to

new supplies of raw materials typically adds new monetary

costs as well as increasing damage to the environment.

An example of the effects of supply limitations: Though

the Yom Kippur War of 1973 was the proximate cause of

escalating global oil prices, the underlying driver of oil

prices was uneven distribution of oil reserves as well as

rising consumption of that resource.

3 Computing encroaches on human dominance

of society

Development of capable mainframe computers gave rise to

serious contemplation that possibly machines would not

merely augment human thought, but ultimately replace it.

The mainframe computer was followed by ‘‘supercom-

puters.’’ Supercomputers were followed by massively

parallel computing. This phenomenon created conditions in

which some tasks previously the sole province of people

began to migrate into the domain of machines.

During the era when mainframe computing first grew,

Turing’s conjecture was still unquestioned. Some observers

felt that Turing’s criterion for AI would never be reached.

At the time computing power was growing rapidly a

parallel and equally potent (from a social perspective),

nanotechnology was emerging. Perhaps, nanotechnology

lagged computer developments by a decade or more, but

that point is moot. Although nanotechnology has not yet

been exploited in the growth of new forms of AI, it cannot

be ruled out as an adjunct to the impact of computing on

society. Some analysts see nanotechnology as having a

more profound effect on society than computing, particu-

larly because self-replicating nanomachines may not be

controllable.

Consider what has happened beginning in the late 1980s

and the 20 years following 1990. Carefully programmed

computers have beaten the world’s greatest human chess

player. The world champion of chess is now a computer

and its associated software.

Airliners can now land in conditions of ‘‘ceiling zero’’

because computers and automation have capabilities not

possessed by even the finest human pilots. Not long ago, I

was on a flight from Chicago to Zurich which landed in

ceiling zero conditions. It was an eerie feeling to note that

we had touched down before I could see anything.

We are now at a point where many observers, when

asked ‘‘Will AI surpass human intelligence?’’ might

respond, ‘‘It’s not a question of ‘if,’ but of ‘when’.’’

108 AI & Soc (2013) 28:107–115

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A standard response to the threat of AI to society has

been, ‘‘We can always unplug the machines.’’

Some have asked, ‘‘Will computers decide they do not

need people and then ‘arrange events’ so that people are

annihilated?’’ This seems less likely than profound social

changes flowing from interlocked systems that comprise

human–machine interactions.

4 Humans and large-scale systems

We can no longer refer merely to human–machine inter-

actions because, increasingly, the interaction is between

humans (or computers) and large-scale systems (LSS).

The extent of LSS interlocking with what we call

‘‘society’’ was illustrated several times by massive power

outages, sometimes crossing international boundaries. How

far from the functions/malfunctions of rudimentary AI are

these events? Many now question what the term ‘‘bound-

ary,’’ or ‘‘nation state’’ means in today’s world. This

blurring of ‘‘nationality’’ has emerged during an era of

unprecedented mobility and the parallel maturing of LSS.

Society is likely past the point at which it became

irretrievably interwoven with large-scale systems. When

did this begin? Though it is not possible to select a moment

in history at which this interweaving began, we would

conjecture that the era of tightly coupled interweaving of

LSS and society began with the World Wide Web (WWW,

which we will refer to as the ‘‘web’’).

5 Beyond Turing

We are now moving beyond Turing’s observation—not

because Turing was wrong—but because assumptions

underlying his observation are no longer fully applicable.

Does any serious participant in our current society

believe we can ‘‘unplug’’ the web? It seems to be too late to

say that we are independent of technology.

People ‘‘free’’ of the web live in traditional societies,

which are rapidly yielding to global urbanization. Some

traditional societies, which lack electrical service and have

little access to safe drinking water, are rapidly being linked

to the larger, global society by cell phones and software

systems (Facebook and other means of interconnection).

Does that suggest that many ‘‘traditional’’ societies are also

participants in the interaction of humans and large-scale

systems (whether strictly technological or, in part, subject

to human intervention? Examples of human intervention

include the temporary shutdown of cell phones and the

internet during the Arab uprisings in early 2011; other

forms of human intervention in the functioning of LSS

include censorship (especially when a defensive

government threatens to close a gateway to the web per-

manently, thereby depriving companies of large invest-

ments), as well as ‘‘hacking,’’ which often cannot be traced.

Hackers are essentially always humans or software systems

designed by humans who wish to disrupt LSS.

If Turing’s observation becomes a reality in the strict

sense of interaction between machines and humans, we will

confront a deeper question: Will machines experience

emotions? We might brush this question aside by answer-

ing that machines could readily simulate emotions. How-

ever, this would be to dodge the real issue, which is, ‘‘Will

machines truly feel emotions—either through interaction

with specific people—or possibly between pairs or sub-

societies of individual machines?’’ This question remains

for the future. As we are six decades removed from Tur-

ing’s observation—and still have no agreement on his

conjecture—we can speculate that the question of emotions

in machines (or, even more telling—in LSS) may not be

resolved for decades, perhaps centuries.

Are computers and LSS threats to society? Responses of

particular interest are:

1. Will systems initiate malevolent LSS and AI actions

against society?

2. Are we so dependent on LSS and AMAT that

unintentional malfunctioning of these systems might

cause social breakdown or unintended wars? Example:

Several decades ago, the United States, fearing a

possible missile attack from the USSR, cooperated

with Canada in building an early warning system in the

Canadian North. It was conjectured that a massive,

unanswered attack might disable the US in such a way

that the doctrine of ‘‘mutually assured destruction’’

(MAD) might not hold under certain circumstances.

During that era, a completely unwarranted US

response almost occurred. The early warning system

returned a signal that radar had detected a full-scale

Soviet missile launch. There were, at most, minutes

during which a missile response from the US would be

effective. Fortunately for the entire human race, the

team manning the warning system was able to

determine that the US/Canadian radars had not

detected a massive Soviet missile launch. After serious

consideration of astronomical phenomena and the

unusual positions of sunrise and moonrise in the high

arctic, they determined that the radars were receiving

return signals from the moon, which was rising in the

same relative position from which a Soviet missile

strike might have come.

3. A highly automated system would have launched

American missiles and brought an end to society as we

then knew it. However, a highly automated system that

would be possible today could well have moonrise

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parameters incorporated in the system. The system

could then alert the commanding officers and suggests

that the apparent attack was not a cause for concern.

Alternatively, if a potential enemy understood those

parameters, that enemy would have a unique oppor-

tunity to attack, not necessarily the US, but any enemy

nation.

New developments whose societal implications are yet

unknown are being initiated on a nearly daily basis. The

‘‘Arab Spring’’ of 2011 was enabled because large per-

centages of the population had access to Facebook, internet

messaging, Twitter, Linked-In, cell-phone communica-

tions, and the ability to send photos as well as videos.

These new technical developments can easily lead to the

formation of ‘‘flash mobs,’’ some benign and some

malevolent.

Many groups who were initially encouraged by the

unusual and rapid social uprisings in North Africa are now

of the opinion that the outcome of those uprisings is

already undesirable. Persecution of the Christian minority

of seven to ten million people in Egypt escalated rapidly

just months after the Arab Spring in Egypt. Long-standing

stability agreements in the Sinai Peninsula (which was

based on a settlement of events of the 1973 Yom Kippur

War) were questioned soon after the successful uprising in

Egypt.

The subsequent revolution in Libya turned to revenge-

oriented purges, of perceived enemies before the rebels had

successfully eliminated the last pockets of forces loyal to

Ghadafi.

6 Marketing, the web, and shifting societal behavior

Society does not properly understand the new tools and

systems which are growing at a rate surpassing our

capacity for social adaptation.

The communications era offers a large window for

marketing. Twenty-first century marketing creates illusory

‘‘needs.’’ Financial publications and glossy magazines

advertise themes implying that what you buy defines who

you are. Advertisements for high-end products may simply

have a single phrase (subtly worded in the imperative),

‘‘Know who you are!’’ The marketer’s featured product is

the backdrop for a beautiful woman or well-dressed,

fashionable ‘‘businessman,’’ who may be a fashion model

incapable of holding a serious position in the business

world.

Marketing focuses both on people ‘‘on the way up’’ and

on poor people. Both groups can easily be led to make a

series of poor choices. People ‘‘on the way up’’ find

themselves strangled by debts so large that they cannot

escape. The poor and the ‘‘near-poor’’ become captive to a

cycle of poor choices which virtually ‘‘chain’’ them to their

current socioeconomic status. They spend on what they do

not have–having heard repeated messages advising them

that they ‘‘must have’’ a new telephone or web-oriented

wireless device, at the cost of investing in education and

health care for themselves and their children.

Growing numbers of charitable organizations now chase

people for money—often using morally flawed approaches

(using their own definitions of ‘‘moral’’) designed to sway

the ‘‘affluent.’’ When people face an unremitting chorus of

real or imaginary ‘‘needs,’’ they may succumb to ‘‘donor

fatigue.’’ Some donors abandon charitable giving because

they can no longer discern who is ‘‘worthy’’ and who is

‘‘unworthy.’’

Marketers offer charities new approaches to fund raising

using methods once employed primarily on a very affluent

layer of society. In some instances, these new approaches

to funding undermine the moral convictions of charitable

organizations. Organizations are trapped by fund raising

methods that are hostile to their fundamental goals. The

quest for funds can change their goals from ‘‘mission’’ to

money.

Have some charitable and religious bastions of our

society lost their claim for moral authority? Almost every

aspect of life in the twenty-first century is affected by

marketing. Marketing that brings about social transforma-

tion is enabled by web and related tools.

Will human society ‘‘pass the baton’’ to large-scale

systems before we realize we have done so?

7 New genres of cybercrime

Some years ago, I sketched a nightmare scenario in which a

bedridden hospital patient used a service robot which the

patient could control by thought alone. That hypothetical

patient then committed a crime using his personal robot.

This hypothetical scenario is now on the immediate verge

of becoming possible. It has been reported in the web that a

patient is now able to control a robot arm through thought

alone (The Guardian 2000; Carey 2005). Will it be long

before some horrendous robot-based acts are performed by

people whose intents are malevolent and who have no

physical link to the robot?

For those who doubt the believability of a nightmare

scenario described above, we should remember that the

web was an outgrowth of DARPA (Defense Advanced

Research Project Agency). In today’s world of hacking

computing systems, the technology which was to aid the

U.S. Defense Department is now subject to compromise by

criminals or national enemies.

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8 Large-scale systems and mass idleness

Reliable mainframe computers (primarily in the 1970s and

1980s) gave rise to the notion that machines would not

merely augment human thought, but ultimately replace it.

We now realize that automation and machine-aided

thinking (AMAT) together with advancing research into AI

are changing society so rapidly that no observers fully

understand what is occurring. Multiple technologies coa-

lesce into large-scale systems scarcely understood by

scholars. The social impact of large-scale systems eludes

analysis, in part because it has remained ‘‘beneath the

radar,’’ to use a common idiom.

With expanding AMAT and computing power, the need

for workers per unit of output declined. Rapid economic

growth masked this phenomenon for several decades.

Recently, slowing economic growth has led to growing

long-term underemployment and unemployment. Under-

employment is no longer ‘‘beneath the radar.’’ Social dis-

locations are widespread. Large global economic output

has reduced our supply of readily available raw materials.

An example may suffice: early in the twentieth century, an

enormous open pit mining complex met much of the

world’s demand for copper. In recent years, copper miners

work in deep underground mines to extract copper, which

formerly seemed almost a ‘‘free’’ resource.

The extent of LSS interlocking with what we call

‘‘society’’ has been illustrated several times by massive

electrical power outages, which sometimes cross interna-

tional boundaries. Are these events signs of our inevitable

dependence on LSS? Some analysts question what

‘‘boundary’’ or ‘‘nation state’’ means in today’s world. This

questioning of ‘‘nationality’’ has emerged during this era of

unprecedented mobility and the parallel maturing of LSS.

We have passed the juncture at which society and LSS

became irretrievably interwoven. When did this tight-

coupling begin? We cannot select a date when this phe-

nomenon was born, but we may conjecture that the era of

tightly coupled interweaving of technology with society

began with the World Wide Web (WWW, which we refer

to as the ‘‘web’’).

Does any serious participant in our current society

believe we can ‘‘unplug’’ the web? It is too late for people

to say that we are independent of technology. The only

people ‘‘free’’ of the web live in traditional societies, and

they are rapidly being affected by rapidly growing global

urbanization. Some traditional societies lack electrical

service and have little access to safe drinking water, but

they are already linked to global society by cell phones and

software systems (Facebook and other means of intercon-

nection). Consider the excitement generated in the ‘‘West’’

when the Egyptian uprising of early 2011 began. Likewise,

consider the sense of outrage when the Egyptian

government (and shortly other governments) blocked

public access to the web and its nexus of interconnections.

Nations cannot control what happens within their own

borders. Some in the West now question whether their

enthusiasm for that revolution was warranted. Persecution

of the Christian minority in Egypt has become a serious

problem in months following the ‘‘Arab Spring.’’

We have already yielded partial control to large-scale

systems. History reveals that humans never were fully in

charge of massive governmental systems and military

capacities. For centuries, nations stumbled into ‘‘accidental

wars’’ and other social tragedies.

New developments, whose societal implications are yet

unknown, are initiated on a nearly daily basis. The ‘‘Arab

Spring’’ of 2011 was enabled because a large percentage of

the population had access to Facebook, internet messaging,

Twitter, Linked-In, and cell-phone communications,

including the ability to send pictures and videos. These

technologies have enabled ‘‘flash mobs,’’ some benign, some

deadly.

9 Remote warfare

In the ancient world, combat involved seeing—perhaps

even touching—an enemy soldier. The battle of Agincourt

introduced the West to a newer form of warfare, the

longbow. The triumph of the longbow did not end direct

contact with engaged. Battles involving the longbow still

involved using a dagger to end the misery of each wounded

soldier. The next major step in distancing the soldier from

his dead foe arose with the introduction of artillery, when a

soldier first saw a dead or wounded enemy as the soldier

advanced on the battlefield. That was followed by waves of

bombers destroying entire cities (nuclear weapons exten-

ded that concept). In air war, the crew of a bomber never

saw their victims. Each escalation of technology in warfare

removed the victor farther from the vanquished. Up to and

including Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aircrews had some

concept of what their weapons did to cities they bombed.

Introduction of remote warfare locates the technologi-

cally trained operator of a remotely piloted aircraft thou-

sands of miles from the victims of his/her ‘‘bombing

mission.’’ That technological ‘‘warrior’’ may never have

seen the actual weapon and certainly never saw a victim.

One further step remains—completely removing people

from the control loop in warfare, placing all tactical deci-

sions under the control of technology.

This two-thousand year development in the gradual sepa-

ration of victor from victim is a telling example of the

depersonalization of society through technology. Human

suffering from warfare has become ‘‘just one of those things.’’

It is almost completely discounted because it is not seen.

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10 Confronting mass idleness

It is not yet widely recognized that mass idleness must be

confronted. Employment opportunities will continue to

diminish because automation and machine-aided thinking

(AMAT) as well large-scale systems (LSS) will continue to

displace human labor: manual, management, as well as

scientists working in advanced research. Scientists will

continue to be major actors in the development of advanced

systems as well as in biological research. Developments in

AMAT and LSS will, ironically, enable fewer scientists to

accomplish more difficult tasks as the results of earlier

research become embedded in LSS.

There are growing needs in biological research, partic-

ularly in two major areas: human health and perhaps more

importantly on health of the global ecosystem. Human

survival becomes more problematic with each significant

decline in the global ecosystem. Changes in climate,

whether caused by human activity or by interaction among

natural inputs, will continue. (It is clear that human activity

has caused most of the rapidly accelerating deforestation.

Deforestation is a major variable in the poorly understood

causes of climate change. Some researchers suggest that

destruction of tropical rainforests may be the most pow-

erful human contribution to climate change.) There is

human survival most threatened? Among the most dan-

gerous threats to human survival:

1. Large populations in unstable regions (deserts, flood

plains, low-lying islands, which are becoming unin-

habitable as sea levels rise)

2. Growth of enormous megacities with weak or nonex-

istent infrastructure.

3. Outbreaks of disease stemming from crowding and

mutations of microorganisms

4. Conflict among population groups for resources and

related migrations straining social and governmental

institutions beyond their capacity to adapt.

As threats to human survival multiply, large masses of

idle people will further threaten social stability because

they could easily succumb to demagoguery.

11 An ecological dilemma

During the 1980s, research models of ocean fisheries showed

that short-term trade-offs would result in fishing various

species to extinction. This problematic approach to our global

ecosystem (species by species, whether plant or animal)

suggests that the most menacing threat to human survival may

be our inability to protect the global system that sustains

human life. This global environment on which our human life

is superimposed is subject to abuses both behavioral and

economic. Society has not yet confronted its role in ecological

change—in other words—its role in overloading the natural

system on which we depend for life itself.

Human consumption accelerates ecological change,

whether or not humanity has played a significant role in

global warming. Consider the massive deforestation that

has gone on for centuries. Some environmentalists believe

that human reliance on grazing animals resulted in defor-

estation in Central Asia during the Stone Age. Much later

humans deforested vast tracts of land in Australia as well as

in the Upper Midwest region of what is now the United

States. Deforested regions include much of what Michigan,

Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

Enormous tracts of forests are disappearing in the

Amazon Basin and Indonesia. One salient example of

deforestation and its costs is the current situation in Haiti.

A century ago, Haiti was 99% forested (cf. 1911 Ency-

clopedia Britannica). Today, it is estimated remaining

forests in Haiti cover perhaps 2% of that nation.

Similarly, major deserts, including the Sahara in Africa

and the Gobi in China, are expanding.

Humanity is caught in a dilemma:

1. Applied technology increases per worker production

each year, leading to mass idleness on a global scale.

The effect of technology on the global labor pool is

further exacerbated as the labor pool grows each year.

2. To increase employment in this growing labor pool

requires increasing total global production. As noted,

the global environment is weakening at present levels

of production. Increasing global production would lead

to accelerated destruction of the global ecosystem

which supports human life.

We noted that masses of idle people can lead to strife,

rebellion, and wars. Perhaps, the most workable alternative

to large-scale disorder in the face of mass underemploy-

ment is to begin rethinking how humans will be supported

and retain a feeling of personal worth is to redefine what

our humanity—moving beyond ‘‘occupation or work’’ to

describe the central core of our humanity.

12 On being human

Our social systems are not compatible with the new

capabilities and large-scale systems that are evolving faster

than social systems can adapt. In the current clamor for

politicians to offer ‘‘solutions now,’’ no one understands

the long-term impact of tools and systems seen as ‘‘solu-

tions now?’’ Our understanding of our macro-societal

actions lags ever further behind changes we are making. In

effect, we are ‘‘blundering our way’’ into a very uncertain

future.

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A penultimate question may be phrased in this way,

‘‘Will human society effectively ‘pass the baton’ to Large-

Scale Systems before we realize we have done so?’’

Finally, how can we define ‘‘human’’ in the current

scientific and secular milieu? Is a ‘‘person’’ simply a

unique array of genes? What role does the maturation

process of a person play in shaping the behavior of this

unique array of genes?

Is a person a being which recognizes a higher being (we

know this higher being as God)?

If a fully secular mindset should displace our under-

standing of God, how can we create an ethical society?

Does it matter if we create an ethical society if we have no

external criterion against which to measure what is ethical?

Should we care at all about ethics or is society merely

the brutal tooth and fang existence described in Hobbes’

‘‘Leviathan?’’

Plato wrestled with many of these issues 24 centuries

ago. Plato occasionally used the terms ‘‘god’’ and ‘‘gods.’’

Lao Tzu in China also raised issues about humanness,

albeit in a different context and with a mystical approach

different from that found in Plato.

If we do not pay attention to the great works of antiquity

(including the Bible or other works that point to a personal

and caring God), is there a purpose in human existence?

Are we born to consume and then to die?

13 On expressing our humanness

The last question in the prior paragraph bears repeating:

‘‘Are we born to consume and then die?’’

If that is our only role on this planet, we are truly to be

pitied. If this is the meaning of our lives, are we really no

more than the grazing animals in the field?

Consider a spectrum of humanness:

1. Would we be at the animal end of the spectrum of

humanness, if all we did following birth would be to

consume and then to die? When you pass by a field of

cattle grazing in a field, it does not take much imagination

to see the cattle as exactly that—animals whose lives are

spent consuming. Most grazing animals consume within

the bounds of human supervision. Grazing animals are

unaware that their end is to be consumed by people.

2. Would we be at the mechanistic limit of humanness if

our primary focus in life would be to consume

‘‘products’’ spewed forth from LSS and then marketed

to us as ‘‘necessities’’ which draw attention to our

ability to acquire products transformed from human

ingenuity or technology—that is would we be captives

to a larger system which views us as vehicles for

consumption? If so, how different would we be from

cattle grazing in a field?

We can escape the unpleasant regions of the spectrum of

consumption. We can decide for ourselves what we want

represent—both to our contemporaries and to posterity.

Our desire to escape animal-like behaviors and mechanistic

behaviors requires us to make serious choices in our lives.

In our interaction with technology, especially large-

scale systems we must confront the question, ‘‘What is it to

be human?’’

One can, at first thought, envy the disappearing cyclical

agricultural societies of the great grain growing regions of

the world, especially in regions where climate is seasonal

but very stable from year to year. The cyclical life of the

people is supported by traditions handed down, from gen-

eration to generation for centuries. One can also describe

their life as ‘‘being born, toiling, and dying.’’

The people of those societies benefitted from the regu-

larity of the seasons, not needing, nor imagining that they

needed the ‘‘conveniences’’ and interconnections to which

the ‘‘developed world’’ is beholden.

Is there a model for humanness based on how each

individual lives his or her life? This notion might describe a

fundamental description of humanness?

A few spiritual leaders—including Lao Tzu and Socra-

tes, as depicted by Plato—provide a backdrop for our

definition of humanness.

In some Eastern religious traditions, life consists of an

endless cycle of rebirths and attendant unending suffering.

The only hope in those traditions consists of ending the

long cycle of painful rebirths accompanying each individ-

ual until that soul escapes the painful cycle.

Still other traditions seek to appease ever-menacing

spirits, which must be placated by repetitious acts in order

to avoid ‘‘bad luck’’ attendant to overlooking those spirits.

Other traditions began with conquest and continue a

militaristic goal of domination over all people. Some of

these traditions treat women as chattel; I have personally

witnessed groups of women performing manual labor in the

blazing sun while under the supervision of a man sitting in

the shade and drinking tea.

These views of the goal of life suggest that it is difficult

to locate more than a few historical figures who modeled

‘‘human-ness.’’

The Judeo-Christian heritage offers a few prophets

(including Jesus of Nazareth) who lived as models of

humanness. Their witness essentially created Western

views of faith, for example, life as focused on an individual

and his/her connection with family and neighbors rather

than on structured hierarchies governed by laws and tra-

ditions. In the Western heritage, calls and responses con-

nect each person with a sense of transcendence through

challenges like: ‘‘Follow me’’ or ‘‘Here I am, send me.’’

This paper is written from within the Judeo-Christian

tradition—thus reflecting Western models of humanness.

AI & Soc (2013) 28:107–115 113

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These views may not be transferable to regions in which

the Western view of humanness is absent. The mismatch of

viewpoints from one cultural region to another makes it

truly difficult to assess the impact of advanced technology

on society.

Finally, there are officially atheistic and fully secular

social contexts.

Mass idleness in the near future will be a reality. Finding

a way to cope with mass idleness may not offer a unified

approach which is acceptable throughout global human

society. Example: historically, some societies have

exposed infants for a variety of reasons, including popu-

lation control. This practice is rejected in Western society,

which sees this measure as harsh and inhuman.

We can easily grasp the gulf between cultures by

observing treatment of criminals. Some societies are not as

harsh on criminals as is Western society. Other societies

are much harsher, employing methods such as stoning

people to death for behaviors tolerated in Western society.

This cultural gulf illustrates the challenge of dealing with

mass idleness on a global scale—particularly if one accepts

the view that mass idleness leads to crime and social

unrest.

In sum, there is probably no single, workable approach

to mass idleness. Nevertheless, society must achieve a

workable level of common understanding regarding mass

idleness. We can already see the effects of nationalistic

approaches to mass idleness: nations adjust wages, control

currencies, and use other economic means to ‘‘export’’

idleness. This approach is, at the very best, a zero-sum

game, and at worst, it sows the seeds for possible wars,

which would readily cross national and ultimately cultural

boundaries. We can scarcely imagine the consequences of

that type of scenario.

History has demonstrated that mass idleness can create

enormous outbreaks of crime or wars. These behaviors,

especially war, are capable of destroying society across

the globe, particularly because there has been a prolifer-

ation of weapons of mass destruction. These weapons

have clearly been a product of technologically based

society: nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, and bio-

logical weapons.

This unfortunate confluence of events flowing from

technological society has given rise to an ironic pairing of

possible societal futures:

1. An explosion of mass idleness flowing from the

encroachment of technology on society;

2. Use by large groups of idle and dissatisfied people of

weapons provided by technology.

If this occurs, human society will be on its way to ful-

filling Einstein’s macabre warning, ‘‘Word War 4 will be

fought with sticks and stones.’’

14 Our challenge: to remain human

Whatever we concede to machines, we are challenged to

retain our humanness. This may become increasingly dif-

ficult as the instrumental enticements of machine-enabled

or even machine-driven simplifications of daily living

permit us to relinquish ever more of our self-dependence to

the accoutrements of ‘‘the system.’’

One indispensable aspect of humanness is to accept that

each person will die.

It is sheer fiction to believe that technology alone can

bring anyone immortality on this earth. The notion of

crowding ourselves beyond our psychological and social

capacity to adapt to this development is contrary to the

basis of every serious human society. (If one imagines

cloning as a possibility, we may ask, will the cloned being

willingly give up its own existence for the sake of the

person whose clone he/she is? The obvious answer is,

‘‘No!’’) Conflicts resulting from any of a variety of sce-

narios relevant to cloning offer a series of human horror

stories. If scientists could clone Person A and raise that

new being from infancy to adulthood, the new adult (Per-

son B) would have had an entire lifetime of experiences not

comparable to the experiences of Person A. It does not

matter how we construct scenarios based on human clon-

ing. No scenario provides an acceptable outcome.

We must not permit the siren calls of marketing and

instrumental technology to rob us of our humanness.

What qualities have humans possessed from the begin-

ning of recorded history?

Humans have shared (an incomplete list):

1. Friendship

2. Love

3. Emotion

4. The quality of loyalty

5. A desire to become organized with those close to

us—to form cities, nations, alliances

6. Loyalty to family

7. Loyalty to a group or nation

8. Willingness to accept a religion or an ideology—

often without understanding what they accept

9. Dislike for some people. Though this quality may be

deplorable, it is human.

10. Uneasiness in the face of death

11. Pain (both physical and emotional); we empathize with

people’s pains, even if we do not suffer those pains.

12. A search for meaning beyond day-to-day experience,

many thoroughly secular people look to the cosmos

instead of to God; they are nevertheless seeking that

which is beyond the repetitive patterns of experience

There are perhaps countless other qualities that describe

our humanness, and each reader will almost undoubtedly

114 AI & Soc (2013) 28:107–115

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feel that there are serious omissions in this brief list of

human qualities. How many centuries will pass before

machines and large-scale systems attain the qualities listed

above? Will LSS ever reach a basic level of humanness,

even if they surpass our human intelligence?

If we overlook these issues, why should we bother

analyzing and writing about AI?

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