Christian Business Review 2018: Kingdom Business in the Brave New World (Issue 7)

artificial intelligence
cbr articles
within the workplace, without the restraints and edifying
vision of the Transcendent can rob workers of their sense
of purpose and the workplace of its sanctity.
Future workplace expert Jeanne Meister sees a direct
impact by AI on a corporate culture that embraces the idea
of vocation, and not merely occupation. “For many, work is
more than a job; it’s a higher calling, … So it is important
that the company communicate a common purpose, be
it through corporate philanthropy or service to the community.”
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The human must not be absorbed into the
machine
The dream of immortality has seeped into the cyberworld.
Kurzweil, for example, thinks, that by the end of the
twenty-first
century, humans
will be
able to upload
their brains
into computers.
There
would even be
an automatic
update with
every advance
of computer
technology, assuring us a kind of eternal life. “Our immortality
will be a matter of being sufficiently careful to make
frequent backups.” 17
While that future “paradise” is still in the future, there
is already the danger of human beings being swallowed
up in the computerized workplace. There, cyber-development
becomes more important than human resource
development.
Idealism must not cloud reality
Western thought and civilization have passed through the
Classical Age, into the Age of Barbarism, into the Medieval
period, Renaissance, Enlightenment, Age of Reason,
Romanticism, Modernism, and Postmodernism. Some
would say we are now in a period of post-post modernism
in which there is a strange union of the technological and
the mystic-spiritual.
Romantic idealism is a new danger haunting the development
and deployment of artificial intelligence. Weizenbaum
provides an example of this, when he says that
“the computer programmer is a creator of universes for
which be alone is the lawgiver…” 18 Intended or not, Weizenbaum
warns against the hubris that clouds outcomes
in the minds of many who develop and program artificial
intelligence machines.
Herzfeld, quoting Dreyfus, opined that “Wishful thinking
has probably always complicated our relations with
technology ... However, it is safe to assert that before the
computer, and before the bomb, the complications weren’t
as dangerous as they are today. Nor was the wishful thinking
as fantastic.” 19
But it was perhaps French theologian-philosopherlawyer
Jacques Ellul who best captured the subtle portents
of the technology that is producing AI not only for jobs,
but for all fields of human endeavor. Writing in 1990, Ellul
expressed concern for the “optimism” of technicians who
are driven by “an absolute belief in unlimited progress.”
In the face of every problem, they live by a faith creed that
“technical progress will deal with it.” This, says Ellul, is “an
absolute form of the technological bluff.” 20 The “bluff,” of
course, is in the failure of the article of faith. In the case
of the workplace the stunning “technical progress” of AI
has dealt with the consequences of “unlimited progress,”
but, in the process,
has created
The human, the Imago Dei, is not to
turn over his or her authority to the
machine, imago hominis. And because
work is inherent in the original purpose
of the human being, work must
not be abandoned to the machine.
new problems.
The hope is that
in the quest for
solutions to those
difficulties, there
will be an advance
of learning that
will benefit those
hurt the most.
However, this will
never happen if there is not a realistic assessment of the
negative impacts that must be resolved.
Human telos (ultimate purpose) must not
be sublimated to cyber expediency and
utility
God’s initial call on the human being is expressed in Genesis
1:27-28:
“God created man in His own image, in the image
of God He created Him; male and female He created
them. God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be
fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue
it...”
Genesis 2:15 reveals how the human is to carry out
the assignment. “Then the Lord took the man and put him
into the Garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep it” (Italics
added). Thus the “Dominion Mandate” of Genesis 1:27-
28 is not about exploitation and mastery, but about the
care expressed in the ideas of “cultivating” and “keeping.”
Further, the Garden of Eden is the prime Old Testament
type of the Kingdom of God. The world will return to that
pristine state when Christ returns at the end of finite time
(kronos) and the world undergoes a restoration to its
original, “mint” condition. (Acts 3:19-21)
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CHRISTIAN BUSINESS REVIEW Fall 2018