Artificial Intelligence for the Artificially Intelligent

Why would someone pay thousands of dollars for a genuine Rolex when near-perfect replicas exist for a fraction of the cost? What is the value in Amish furniture when machines can create smoother surfaces and more evenly finished pieces that save both time and money? We might pose the same question regarding art and soon, music. To extend into a more personal area, why do we insist on flesh and blood teachers who are emotional, fallible, and often lacking in knowledge when AI makes the possibility of a custom-tailored solution to every student? Such questions provoke discussions of craftsmanship, authenticity, and value.

Rediscovering the common arts forces us to consider the things that are truly important and truly human. If one were to explore earlier furniture, he would find tool marks all over the surfaces. The insides of cases would have the scalloped cuts of the jack plane; undersides of drawers may still show saw marks; dovetails were irregular and often nailed. If you examined the piece with a ± .001” straight edge, you would find it quite out of flat (by machinist standards). Yet criticizing the furniture on these grounds would be an exercise in missing the point. Wood is not plastic or metal and the desk, chair, or table was not made for machines; it was made for humans. The act of creation was a human endeavor in design, methods, and use.

Now, power saws and planers have revolutionized the craft. Furniture is made to more exacting standards, treating the wood as if it were an artificial material. Every surface becomes a reference surface–they all must be perfectly coplanar and dimensioned. rather than bringing the tool to the work and letting material dictate methods, we force nature through a machine. Power tools do offer one benefit: they are faster. But what if that were not the only consideration?

A key difference between the industrial model and traditional woodworking is that the former exhibits what David Pye would describe as the workmanship of certainty. The workmanship of certainty is risk-free. The tool is so jigged that no saw wanders or plane digs too deep. The mortise is perfectly replicated every-time—no slop in the walls or depth. A novice may make the same cut a hundred times without variation.

In contrast, the workmanship of risk encompasses those activities so that at any moment a lapse of concentration or skill could ruin everything. Striking the chisel too hard will drive the split further than desired. Not observing the grain direction moves the knifewall back a 1/32” of an inch. The saw tracks off course degree by degree. Producing a pleasing and aesthetic result depends upon the attention, diligence, and care of the craftsman. In fact, this is what distinguishes the true craftsman from the machinist. The artisan has cultivated the requisite skills and habits to produce the work under the aegis of his talents rather than outsourcing the results to a machine, removing all the risk.

By prioritizing efficiency and certainty, we lose some human aspect of craft. The workman has less skill by outsourcing the labor to the machine. He cannot saw to a line nor does he notice grain direction or patterns. He now works to the standards of the machine, making every surface perfect, rather than for humans who cannot notice such fine degrees.

The traditional approach would have thought differently. If a surface looks flat and doesn’t cause things to roll of the surface, it is flat. If the cases don’t fall apart and if the desk fulfills its function, it is enough. At every point in design and creation, the craftsman worked for human ends. Call it a humane efficiency that does not strive toward the perfection only a machine could love.

Even the methods were humanizing. Using conventional hand tools allows convivial work—talking, singing, laughing. The worker doesn’t need to don the equipment of a termite exterminator for some simple woodworking. The craftsman can have his children working at the bench without needing an industrial dust collector, respirators for the whole family, and open space for the fine, choking dust of a router. On a smaller scale, the only thing preventing him from working in the living room is his wife.

There may be cases where efficiency is the primary objective. In such cases, machines and risk-free work may be an acceptable decision. However, in most cases, there are more valuable ends for which we work. Cultivating the things which mark us as human is something we cannot disregard. The work is the point. Work is a good that is not to be erased from human existence. Just as it does us no good to point out that a car is faster than a cyclist to someone who wants to feel their heart pumping, it is silly to trumpet efficiency and labor-saving as the only consideration in how we work. We don’t want a robot to lift weights or run track for us. The pain and effort is the point. The ability to reason and think through hard problems without rushing to the answer key is a feature, not a bug. There are other ends which come by the way we work, not merely the result.

Thus, the AI question reveals what is truly valuable. If there is work that we truly do not mind replacing with artificial intelligence, perhaps it was not worth applying genuine intelligence in the first place. That is, if it is only worth doing by AI, maybe it is not worth doing. If an AI can replace teams of HR delegates answering pointless questions and regurgitating bureaucratic obfuscation, then maybe the HR department is a distraction from human relations. If the president or CEO can outsource all of his emails, communications, and decisions to a robot, what are you really paying him for?

We would save ourselves a great deal of busywork that has accrued through the information age by recognizing AI as the great litmus test. If the teacher is willing to outsource the writing or grading of an end of unit assessment, what is this teacher providing? It certainly is not experience or expertise or even relational capital with the students. If a student assignment could just as easily be performed by AI with no loss, then why are we having them do it? If it could be graded by AI, we might ask the same question. It is meaningless drudgery for the sake of drudgery to satisfy industrial-age metrics dreamed up by bureaucrats who have never been in the classroom.

However, if what the teacher is providing to the student is a mentor capable of exercising his judgment to apply wisdom to particular situations, then this cannot merely be passed off to a large-language data model. The teacher must create, review, grade, and give feedback on assignments because he knows and loves the student in a way computers cannot. A machine is not a human. It requires a human to practice human arts. AI reveals who works as a human and provides irreplaceable value and who was operating as a dispensable cog performing meaningless busywork all along.

Yes, tools are labor-saving devices, but what kind of labor is the generative language AI saving? I would argue that it is trying to supplant those very labors that mark us as human. Life is more than food, and the body more than raiment. We are distinguished from the animals in our ability to exercise virtue by governing the passions through reason. Generative AI attempts to usurp a distinctly human way of living in the world and removes the dignity and creativity of our labors. It is an unnatural way of living—perhaps Dante would have put the creators of such a monstrosity in the circle with the blasphemers, sodomites, and usurers for their revolt against nature.

Generative language AI is incongruous with the world as it is. We do not live in a risk-free world. It is not plastic or frictionless world. As Joshua Klein points out, in a reality with no friction, there is no traction. Walking requires the rough patches and effort. At any moment you might fall on your face. This is not weakness; it is life. Every moment requires being attuned to reality as it really is and exercising judgment about the prudent decision. Lean into the “thisness” of reality. Do not retreat into the virtual box with no struggle, inefficiency, or risk.

Life itself does not offer us the workmanship of certainty as a choice; there is great risk involved. You can screw up your life with one bad decision. Linger too long at a party; blurt a word in a moment of anger; click the wrong link. Life is filled with danger. You will fall and fail. It can be tempting to try to avoid all of these traps—to never venture beyond your door and curse the world outside from your prison. But you will be worse for it. You will be less than a human, less than even an animal, for even they inhabit the real world.

The essential argument in favor of AI is that it is efficient. It can do more, better, and faster than humans. But this is the wrong standard of measurement. Instead, we need to ask which method of working is more congruent with humanity and promotes those habits and affections which expose the magnificence of being a human. Further, which method of working more accurately reflects the kind of world we live in?

Sometimes, inefficiency is good. We need to stop and linger at the sunset without rushing to the big box store for a TV with enough lumens to blind, but not enough to match Sol’s rays. Enjoying long piece of classical music without doing anything else is more worthwhile than playing 30 minutes of half-heard mumbo-pop while making dinner.

Consider Meta, who needed to rent an escape room game in order to provide in-person team-building. Somehow a digital Metaverse was not sufficient to provide human connection to the employees. The company spits platitudes of human connection and collaboration but when they really needed relationships, they locked their employees in a room that required physical manipulation and real-world interaction. The frictionless digital world cannot provide full human happiness because we are embodied creatures. We need the tactile struggle against the environment to make any progress.

We don’t long for AI-human connection. We actually don’t want a personally tailored super-computer to answer all our questions or be a conversation partner. We desire to be known and loved by people. Consider that talk-therapy and counseling is little more than monetized friendship. It provides rent-a-friends to those who need someone to talk to. Are we really willing to filter all communication through an impersonalized robot, stripping conversation and relationships of the character of unique human beings?

I fear that in the rush to adopt AI, we are unwittingly implementing the same kind of disguised wealth distribution scheme as inflation or most government solutions. Rather than transferring wealth from rich to poor, it cleverly takes from the poor and gives to the rich. We are consigning able-bodied toddlers to a motorized wheelchair because it is easier and more efficient. But what will happen to these children who never train their muscles through stumbling and falling? They will never walk.

Those who have not developed the habits of mind and judgment will grow less capable while those who have tested themselves through experience will grow in their wisdom and application. Those who depend upon AI to think for them will lose the ability to think entirely. Those who cannot communicate except by a digital speechwriter will be unable to engage in human conversation. The one who delivers himself to the machine will become a machine himself: cold, unfeeling, unable to experience human joy, compassion, or love. He will be a mindless automaton, moving at the direction of his masters.

We are likely already in the same situation with AI as with screens, education, or marriage. While enlightened tech bros proclaim liberation through technology or elites protect public education, denigrate marriage, and promote promiscuity, they do not take their own medicine. They refuse to allow their children devices or social media. The elites themselves receive their education, get married, and have children, and they send their children to private schools. I assume that those most involved in the development and promotion of AI are unwilling to allow their children to become too attached to it.

Perhaps AI isn’t referring to the technology itself, but only those who use it. It is artificial intelligence for the artificially intelligent. In seeking to master the world, they become its slaves. They have removed their humanity for the sake of efficiency and so have become a machine, incapable of love or connection. All the fear or excitement about the digital world should drive us back to real, tangible things. In this way, the common arts may be just the antidote that we need to the artificial insanity our world seems afflicted with.

Hold the weight of the saw, feel the fibers of the wood lay flat when stroked along the grain, hear the pitch change as the cut nears the end. Such moments attune us to reality and the world as it is. No imitation is worth the cost.

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