Human labor and human dignity

With the advent of artificial intelligence and large-language models like ChatGPT over the last 18 months, one common reaction has been to bemoan the advances in software and the lack of development in hardware. Fantasy and science fiction author Joanna Maciejewska put it this way: “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.” Much of the news concerning automation and AI has focused on their effects on white-collar industries and professions, particularly writers, programmers, and teachers.

A decade ago, tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel observed the inherent differences in advancement in the virtual as opposed to the real world. “Software startups can enjoy especially dramatic economies of scale,” he noted, “because the marginal cost of producing another copy of the product is close to zero.” As any Minecraft aficionado knows, it is far easier to craft a new pickax or shovel in a computer-generated world than to make one from scratch in real life.

And while we are enjoying advances in the real world, it seems they are inevitably outpaced by advances in computing applications. The two coincide, of course, since computers rely on energy generated in the real world and the limits of real-world materials, like silicon. The most fascinating and compelling advances are occurring at that intersection of software and hardware, such as driverless cars, automated drones, and robotics. On this latter front, Elon Musk recently announced that Tesla is developing a robot intended to perform “unsafe, repetitive, or boring tasks.” This is the latest in a long line of announcements, predictions, and proclamations that we are on the cusp of an automated revolution.

Realizing such technological transformation has proven trickier and more difficult than many tech gurus have expected, but the real world is indeed being changed, often for the better. That isn’t to say that there are no costs and significant trade-offs with all such developments. The political economist and moral philosopher Adam Smith, famed for his influential treatise exploring the effects of the division of labor and specialization on economic development, was quick to acknowledge the dangers of routinization in the assembly line. “The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations,” worried Smith, has no occasion to exercise his mind or creativity in his work and “naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.”

These are strong words from the famed father of modern economics, but Smith was honest in his recognition that while there were economic gains from specialization, there were also dangers in mundane, repetitive, and uncreative labor.

In this way, the Tesla robot might be liberating for human beings. The stated goal is to have these humanoid robots perform the kinds of tasks that Smith thought were so stultifying for human beings. Indeed, such robots might take jobs away from people, but these may well be the kinds of jobs that it is better not to have people perform.

This is certainly easier to say and to propose than to reckon with in the real world. As automation becomes more sophisticated, people will be put out of work. We need a policy and a culture that is clear-eyed about the inevitability of such transitions.

Smith looked to education as one of the key ways to ameliorate the effect on the working classes. Certainly, it is true that programs need to be developed to help people move from one area of work to another, from lesser-paying and less in-demand jobs to other more productive forms of labor.

Robots are not about to take over all our dishwashing and laundry. Of course, the dishwashing and laundry machines themselves represented remarkable advances in automation, setting domestic workers (mostly women) free to develop all kinds of new skills and even enter the workforce in numbers previously unknown. We need education but we also need entrepreneurs who not only create labor-saving technologies but in so doing also create new kinds of careers fit precisely for the creativity and dignity of human workers.

The key as we move forward in realizing and implementing such technological advances as Tesla’s proposed humanoid robots is that all such developments ought to be liberating in the service of human beings. If people can be freed from “unsafe, repetitive or boring tasks,” that is a good thing. It would be a great thing if people could be freed from such tasks so that they can achieve even greater things in their work, the kinds of labor that only human beings who are formed in the image of God are called to do.