hedgehogreview-com-5syd8y.txt (21056B)
1 IASC 2 3 [1]Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture 4 5 • [2]About 6 • [3]Research 7 • [4]Scholars 8 • [5]News & Events 9 • [6]Support Our Work 10 11 [7]Hedgehog [8]The Hedghog Review -- Critical Reflections on Contemporary 12 Culture 13 14 • [9]Issues 15 • [10]Browse 16 • [11]Web Features 17 • [12]About 18 • [13]Contact 19 • [14] 20 • [15]Login 21 • [17] Order 22 • [19] 23 24 • [20]Issues 25 • [21]Browse 26 • [22]Web Features 27 • [23]About 28 • [24]Contact 29 • [25] 30 • [26]Login 31 • [27] Order 32 33 [28]THR Web Features / June 11, 2024 34 35 AI as Self-Erasure 36 37 Humanity’s will to disappear is being installed in the omni-operating system. 38 39 [29]Matthew B. Crawford 40 41 ( Piranka/iStock.) 42 [30] THR Web Features 43 44 [31]Matthew B. Crawford 45 46 Matthew B. Crawford writes the Substack [32]Archedelia and is a senior fellow 47 at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia. 48 His books include Why We Drive: Toward a Philosophy of the Open Road, The World 49 Beyond Your Head: On Becoming an Individual in an Age of Distraction, and the 50 best-selling Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value of Work. 51 52 Categories 53 54 • [33]Essays 55 56 Related Topics 57 58 • [34]Work 59 • [35]Technology 60 • [36]Self 61 62 Share 63 64 • [37] 65 • [38] 66 • [39] 67 • [40] 68 69 Elevated “deaths of despair” and declining birth rates in the West must be due 70 to an array of factors, hard to tease apart. My hunch is that one of them is 71 what the sociologist Richard Sennett called “the specter of uselessness.” He 72 meant feeling redundant at work. But there is a deeper, existential version of 73 this that may arise when the world feels already occupied, so there is no place 74 for you to grow into and make your own. 75 76 In the normal course of human society, you are born into a culture that has 77 prepared the way for you. It initiates you into its language and tells a story 78 of where you came from. It is saturated with meaning due to a chain of 79 begettings that reaches back in time, each generation of which started and grew 80 through acts of love: at conception, and in the ongoing work of teaching, 81 transmission and care. The world is welcoming, in other words. It was built by 82 your ancestors, and they imagined you long before you arrived.^[41]11[42]xThe 83 “owned space” spoken of by our Nietzscheans is an inherited space, not a 84 conquest of individual will. They wondered what sort of work you might do, 85 before you knew there is such a thing as work. Your parents may have recognized 86 the echo of a sibling or a parent in your face as you sought the nipple. They 87 smiled at you. 88 89 This sense of a world handed down in love is interrupted when the basic 90 contours and possibilities of life appear to be ordered by impersonal forces. 91 92 Small Language Models 93 94 I was at a small dinner a few weeks ago in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Seated next 95 to me was a man who related that his daughter had just gotten married. As the 96 day approached, he had wanted to say some words at the reception, as is fitting 97 for the father of the bride. It can be hard to come up with the right words for 98 such an occasion, and he wanted to make a good showing. He said he gave a few 99 prompts to ChatGPT, facts about her life, and sure enough it came back with a 100 pretty good wedding toast. Maybe better than what he would have written. But in 101 the end, he didn’t use it, and composed his own. This strikes me as telling, 102 and the intuition that stopped him from deferring to AI is worth bringing to 103 the surface. 104 105 To use the machine-generated speech would have been to absent himself from this 106 significant moment in the life of his daughter, and in his own life. It would 107 have been to not show up for her wedding, in some sense. I am reminded of a 108 passage in Tocqueville where he noticed that America seemed to be on a 109 trajectory that would have it erecting “an immense tutelary power” that wants 110 only what is best for us, and is keen to “save [us] the trouble of living.” 111 112 In Aristotelian language, human “being” is an ergon, an activity or work that 113 is distinctive of the peculiar sort of animals that we are, and in this the use 114 of language is key. There have been rare cases of anatomically normal children 115 who (whether by some monstrous crime or by circumstance) matured without human 116 society, with no initiation into a language. They grew into feral creatures, 117 resembling a human in form only.^[43]22[44]x “Just before dawn on January 9, 118 1800, a mysterious creature emerged from a forest in southern France. Although 119 he was human in form and walked upright, his habits were those of a young male 120 animal. He was wearing only a tattered shirt, but did not seem troubled by the 121 cold. Showing no modesty about his nakedness, he ate greedily, seizing roasted 122 potatoes from a hot fire. He seemed to have no language skills, only grunting 123 occasionally.” From the [45]jacket of The Forbidden Experiment by Roger 124 Shattuck. 125 126 LLMs (large language models such as ChatGPT) won’t return us to a 127 pre-linguistic state, but they do point to a post-human one. In The Language 128 Animal, Charles Taylor points out that in our use of language, “we are 129 continuously responsive to rightness, and that is why we always recognize the 130 relevance of a challenge that we have misspoken.” In other words, we care. 131 132 This is because, unlike an LLM or a parrot, things have significance for us, 133 and we search for words that will do justice to this significance. For example, 134 you try to find words that are apt for a wedding toast: ideally something both 135 true and pleasing, maybe built around some anecdote that is emblematic of your 136 relationship with your daughter, hopefully funny, with just the right 137 touch—warm but not maudlin, suggesting the subtle and evolving currents of 138 affection (and maybe conflict, too) between you over the years as she has grown 139 into a woman. You don’t want to over-share, but you want to take some risks 140 too, because you sense that showing faith in the love of your daughter, and in 141 the goodwill of your guests (some of whom you have never met) will create the 142 enlarged circle of intimacy and witness that you are hoping to realize on this 143 occasion. 144 145 As the father sits with pen and paper, he strives to encompass in words the 146 elusive truth of his daughter, as seen from the unique vantage of a father, in 147 a way fitting for this pivotal moment in the progression of her life. He may 148 find that through the effort of articulating this relationship, it is more 149 fully revealed to him. As Taylor says, the “right word” discloses, “brings the 150 phenomenon properly into view for the first time. Discovery and invention are 151 two sides of the same coin; we devise an expression which allows what we are 152 striving to encompass to appear.” 153 154 We do this also with respect to ourselves; we “self-articulate” as part of the 155 lifelong process of bringing ourselves more fully into view‚ how I stand, the 156 particular shape that various universal goods have taken in my own biography, 157 and in my aspirations. This is a moving target. One may cringe at one’s younger 158 self. What appeared to be an episode of courage at eighteen now strikes me as 159 dickishness; what seemed righteous then looks self-righteous now as I fill in 160 my own past with fresh articulations, corresponding to fresh intimations of the 161 good, the fruit of a long process of acquiring depth as a human being. Or I may 162 try to look back at my younger self with kindness, in the hope of overcoming 163 regret about the decisions I made. We do all this with words, in our internal 164 monologues. 165 166 What would it mean, then, to outsource a wedding toast? To use Heidegger’s 167 language, some entity has “leaped in” on my behalf and disburdened me of the 168 task of being human. For Heidegger, this entity is “das Man,” an anonymized 169 other that stands in for me, very much like Kierkegaard’s “the Public.” It is a 170 generalized consciousness—think of it as the geist of large language models. 171 172 LLMs are built on enormous data sets—essentially, all language that is 173 machine-scrapable from the Internet. They are tasked with answering the 174 question, “given the previous string of words, what word is most likely to 175 occur next?” They thus represent what the philosopher Talbot Brewer recently 176 referred to as “the statistical center of gravity” of all language (and I am 177 following Brewer’s lead in viewing LLMs through the lens of Taylor’s account of 178 language). Or rather, all language that is on the Internet. This includes the 179 great literature of the past, of course. But it includes a whole lot more of 180 the present: marketing-speak, what passes for journalism, the blather produced 181 by all who suffer from PowerPoint brain. But put aside the impoverished quality 182 of the language that these LLMs are being trained on. If we accept that the 183 challenge of articulating life in the first person, as it unfolds, is central 184 to human beings, then to allow an AI to do this on our behalf suggests 185 self-erasure of the human. 186 187 In a presentation in Charlottesville in April that is yet unpublished, at 188 University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, Brewer 189 referred to “degenerative AI.” Because the new AIs are language machines, they 190 are “aimed right at our essence.” Brewer is not himself a Christian, but he 191 finds Christian terms apt for thinking about the problem: We are created in the 192 image and likeness of God, who is the Word. 193 194 Talking to an Anonymity 195 196 Self-erasure through absorption into a mass (as distinct from a community) is 197 not a problem created by LLMs; it was noticed by Heidegger and Kierkegaard, and 198 by Tocqueville before them. Around the turn of the millennium, we were 199 fascinated with “the wisdom of crowds” and the generative possibilities of the 200 hive mind. We were told that there is a superior global intelligence arising in 201 the Web itself. This collective mind is more meta, more synoptic and synthetic, 202 than any one of us, and aren’t these the defining features of intelligence? 203 204 [46]Writing about the Web in 2006, Jaron Lanier said that “In the last year or 205 two the trend has been to remove the scent of people, so as to come as close as 206 possible to simulating the appearance of content emerging out of the Web as if 207 it were speaking to us as a supernatural oracle.” He was referring to 208 “consensus Web filters” that assemble material from other sites that are 209 themselves aggregators of other sites. “We are now reading what a collectivity 210 algorithm derives from what other collectivity algorithms derived from what 211 collectives chose from what a population of mostly amateur writers wrote 212 anonymously.” 213 214 Lanier points out that these developments aren’t confined to online culture. 215 The elevation of the collective through the fetish of aggregation is “having a 216 profound influence on how decisions are made in America,” in government 217 agencies, corporate planning departments, and universities. He reports that, as 218 a consultant, he used to be asked to “test an idea or propose a new one to 219 solve a problem. In the last couple years I’ve been asked to work quite 220 differently. You might find me and the other consultants filling out survey 221 forms or tweaking edits to a collective essay.” 222 223 Lanier suggests there are institutional reasons for the appeal of collectivism 224 in large organizations: “If the principle is correct, then individuals should 225 not be required to take on risks or responsibilities.” This is especially 226 attractive given that we live in times of tremendous uncertainties coupled with 227 infinite liability phobia, and we must function within institutions that are 228 loyal to no executive, much less to any lower-level member. Every individual 229 who is afraid to say the wrong thing within his or her organization is safer 230 when hiding behind a wiki or some other Meta aggregation ritual. 231 232 In his own participation in such rituals, Lanier reports that “what I’ve seen 233 is a loss of insight and subtlety, a disregard for the nuances of considered 234 opinions, and an increased tendency to enshrine the official or normative 235 beliefs of an institution.” 236 237 At the same gathering in Charlottesville where Tal Brewer spoke of 238 “degenerative AI,” sociologist Joseph E. Davis pointed out that AI is rushing 239 into domains that have already been vacated of the full exercise of human 240 judgment, making the substitution less obviously a degradation. Education is 241 conceived as the mere exchange of information, unconditioned by relations of 242 authority and care between teacher and student. The practice of medicine has 243 been partly reduced to following guidelines that claim to advance 244 “evidence-based medicine” (but with outcomes that are often worse than those 245 produced by the judgments of experienced practitioners).^[47]33[48]xSee Justin 246 Mutter, “A New Stranger at the Bedside: Industrial Quality Management and the 247 Erosion of Clinical Judgment in American Medicine” for an [49]account of the 248 exponential growth of guidelines that medical practitioners must follow, and 249 its effect on care. Essentially, doctors have been proletarianized and are 250 themselves the object of minute surveillance. Their incentives are to follow 251 guidelines even when they know the outcome will not be good. Dating apps 252 render the process of selecting a mate as something machine-optimizable through 253 search criteria and “cross-platform integration with social media accounts” (or 254 something like that). 255 256 But let us go back further yet, before the rise of the Web, to see how AI 257 expresses (and advances) a more general tendency of the democratic social 258 condition. Writing in the 1840s, Kierkegaard noticed something significant 259 going on with the rise of the newspaper: 260 261 Nowadays one can talk with anyone, and it must be admitted that people’s 262 opinions are exceedingly sensible, yet the conversation leaves one with the 263 impression of having talked to an anonymity.... Our judgments are “so 264 objective, so all-inclusive, that it is a matter of complete indifference 265 who expresses them.... In Germany they even have phrase books for the use 266 of lovers, and it will end with lovers sitting together talking 267 anonymously. (Kierkegaard, The Present Age) 268 269 The German lovers “go meta,” as we would put it today, which is a kind of 270 effacing of one’s own perspective as an interested party, as someone involved. 271 We instead think of ourselves as representatives of a general Public. 272 273 [W]e think over the relationships of life in a higher relationship till in 274 the end the whole generation has become a representation, who 275 represent...it is difficult to say whom; and who think about these 276 relationships...for whose sake it is not easy to discover. The disobedient 277 youth is no longer in fear of his schoolmaster—the relation is rather one 278 of indifference in which schoolmaster and pupil discuss how a good school 279 should be run. To go to school no longer means to be in fear of the master, 280 or merely to learn, but rather implies being interested in the problem of 281 education. (Kierkegaard, The Present Age) 282 283 Kierkegaard here connects the process of becoming a third party to oneself to 284 the process of democratic leveling. This has the effect of effacing real human 285 connection. 286 287 In the end, the whole age becomes a committee. A father no longer curses 288 his son in anger, using all his parental authority, nor does the son defy 289 his father, a conflict which might end in the inwardness of forgiveness; on 290 the contrary, their relationship is irreproachable, for it is really in 291 process of ceasing to exist... (Kierkegaard, The Present Age) 292 293 For Kierkegaard, differentiating relations of authority are the incubators of 294 genuine attachments, and these in turn make possible moments of rebellion. It 295 is through the attachments and the rebellions both that we become individuals. 296 Fake egalitarianism provides an excuse—no, a principle!—for shrinking from this 297 task. As representatives of a general Public, there is no complementarity 298 between us, no differentiation and dependence, but instead a colorless cohesion 299 of interchangeable, autonomous subjects. Liberal public culture is a culture of 300 polite separation. 301 302 This mood of interchangeability is likely to deepen as AI saturates the world 303 and we are tempted to let it stand in for our own subjectivity. But, like that 304 father at his daughter’s wedding, we are still free to refuse it. 305 306 This essay first appeared on Matthew Crawford’s [50]Archedelia Substack. 307 308 309 310 [minihog-ri] 311 312 Sign up for our newsletter 313 314 Email Address * [51][ ] 315 [52][ ] 316 Sign Up 317 [54] Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture [55] University of Virginia 318 319 Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture 320 321 • [56]About 322 • [57]Research 323 • [58]Scholars 324 • [59]News & Events 325 • [60]Contact IASC 326 327 The Hedgehog Review 328 329 • [61]Issues 330 • [62]Browse 331 • [63]THR Web Features 332 • [64]About 333 • [65]Contact 334 • [66]Search 335 • [67]Log In 336 • [68]Order 337 338 Join the Conversation 339 340 • [69] 341 • [70] 342 343 [71]Support our work 344 345 © 2025 Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture 346 347 ' + 348 349 Search articles, blog posts, and people 350 351 [72][ ] 352 Close Search 353 × 354 355 Login 356 357 [76][ ] 358 [77][ ] 359 360 [79]Forgot your password? 361 362 Login [81]No account? 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