In an urgent and provocative essay in Die Zeit, journalist Georg Diez calls for a redefinition of progress in the time of AI. Taking lessons from the genesis of progressivism — a response to the Industrial Revolution and the (first) Gilded Age — we cannot now surrender the power to decide society’s future to present technologists.
“A notion of progress that inspires society and supplies it with new energy, both intellectually and emotionally, must therefore be comprehensive, systemically conceived, and grand,” Diez writes (with apologies for my translation). “It must be formulated collaboratively by politics, business, science, and civil society, and it must answer the question of what technology we want — and under what terms.”
I write this just as the ultimate profanity of capitalism’s coupling with technology — Elon Musk’s SpaceX — comes to the market at the absurd and obscene valuation of $2.11 trillion. Thus he, the world’s richest man, is funded and empowered to define progress according to his insanities: colonizing Mars and beyond with the seed of his loins and fevered dreams.
We cannot let this stand.
Diez asserts that “the situation is schizophrenic. On the one side, large swathes of Western societies seem to have lost faith that the future will be better. On the other side, a techno-optimist progress cult has established itself in Silicon Valley, promising incredible prosperity and undreamed-of convenience for all, because artificial intelligence will enable a giant leap in productivity.”
These extreme worldviews preempt reasoned public discourse over progress’ direction. “What does it mean,” Diez asks, “especially for a society that is experiencing the end of its old certainties, without having yet found new ones?” He says that in the past, progress equaled “technology plus values” and society was able to negotiate “how the advantages and gains of technological progress could and should be distributed.” I’m not so sure we’ve done such a good job of it of late. Still, he is right to add that today, we must recognize changed circumstances: the decline of the West in the face of advances by China, India, and Indonesia. “This makes it all the more urgent to formulate a concept of progress for the 21st Century.”
For this, Diez turns to the 19th Century, to the Industrial Revolution and the impact of the era’s coal, steel, and railway barons. “Driven by the first Industrial Revolution, a technological and economic transformation produced both mass proletarian misery and stark wealth.” Resistance to both gave birth to the politics of progress.
I write about a slice of this history in my upcoming book Hot Type, tracking the response of America’s oldest national labor organization, the International Typographical Union (ITU), as it was faced with the imminent arrival of the typesetting machine, the Linotype, in 1886. Having learned from the failures of the Luddites and Captain Swift against mechanical feudalism, as against the eventual perseverance of pressmen at the advent of steam, the union did not fight technology but instead insisted on controlling it and benefiting from its efficiencies, while leading the national movement for the eight-hour day and safer working conditions. The ITU flourished in pay and power until faced with a next technology it could not control (for that story, you’ll have to order the book).
Such was a spirit of “militant optimism,” in Diez’ words. “Progress, as was clear then and should be clear now, can only be achieved with technology, not against it.” The task is to balance certainly legitimate criticism of technology with a clear vision for how its fruits might benefit society.
The difference today, Diez says, citing VC Vinod Khosla, is that AI will shift the distribution of power and wealth to capital, away from labor. In response, Khosla proposes exempting the lowest-paid workers from income tax, making up the difference taxing capital gains; various AI boys have touted a universal guaranteed income. But note well that in his encyclical, Pope Leo XIV rejected the latter, for “work is not simply an instrument; it expresses and enhances the dignity of our lives.” Redistribution of wealth is imperative — see: the trillionaire — and should occur through taxation to support social programs.
A new concept of progress, Diez argues, must be conceived from the perspective of humanity. Amen. This is why I work on new educational programs that emphasize the humanities in the time of AI. And this is what inspired me to edit a new book series called Intelligence: AI & Humanity, to open the discussion to writers from the humanities and social sciences.
“Artificial intelligence challenges us to redefine who we want to be, both as individuals and as a community,” Diez observes. “It provokes questions such as: What constitutes quality of life for us?… A new concept of progress should be shaped neither by technophobia and austerity nor by the promise of exponential growth.”
Today, it has been left to the technologists — to the wrong sorts of technologists, often sophomoric dropouts: the Musks, Altmans, Thiels, Karps, Zuckerbergs, Bezoses— to impose their ideas of progress on the rest of us. There is no better example lately than Anthropic positioning itself as savior of humankind, touting its AI “constitution,” while building what it deemed to be AI so dangerous it could not be revealed to mere citizens — prompting Trump to ban it to foreigners, resulting in turning it off for all. This is not progress.
No, progress must be the result of open public discourse and political discernment and negotiation. In the 19th Century, trade unions fought for their share of newly created wealth while social movements fought for justice: abolition and suffrage. Today, the debate over the limits and fruits of technology must be driven by new leaders representing the rest of the world outside Silicon Valley.
This is not to say that technologists should not be parties to the discussion. They should take part in the conversation based on the merit of their work and ideas, not their market caps. But as I have learned in researching and writing my histories of technology and media — of print, magazines, the mechanization and industrialization of mass media, and even the internet — one clear lesson I have taken away is that once a technology becomes commonplace and is put to use by others, the technologists inevitably fade into the background. They hold their power of as priests only temporarily, so long as their mysteries may prevail. This fall from the heights, I predict, will be their fate much faster in the case of AI, because it is the tool made so simple anyone can use it, and because so many of its masters are so deservedly disliked.
And that is why I share Diez’ arguments with you, for I agree that it is vital that we — workers, students, academics, creators, citizens — take charge of this new technology and of the discussion about its effects. We must define progress not in terms of the AI boys’ bullshit — AGI (artificial general intelligence), ASI (artificial superintelligence), the end of labor, the colonization of unlivable Mars, a world post-humans — but in human terms: dignified work; shared wealth; the benefits of science, art, and creativity; education for all; equity and justice; and community. It is our future we need to map, a task far too vital to leave to programmers and capitalists.
What Makes a Community?
Facebook wants to build community. Ditto media. Me, too.
But I fear we are all defining and measuring community too shallowly and transiently. Community is not conversation — though that is a key metric Facebook will use to measure its success. Neither is community built on content: gathering around it, paying attention to it, linking to it, or talking about it — that is how media brands are measuring engagement. Conversation and content are tools or byproducts of real community.
Community means connecting people intimately and over time to share interests, worldviews, concerns, needs, values, empathy, and action. Facebook now says it wants to “prioritize posts that spark conversations and meaningful interactions between people.” I think that should be meaningful, lasting, and trusting interactions among people, plural. Think of community not as a cocktail party (or drunken online brawl) where friends and strangers idly chat. Instead, think of community a club one chooses to join, the sorts of clubs that society has been losing since my parents’ generation grew old. Meetuphas been trying to rebuild them. So should we all.
What if instead of just enabling people to share and talk about something — content — Facebook created the means for people to organize a modern, digital Rotary Club of concerned citizens who want to improve their circumstances for neighbors, geographic or virtual? Or it provides pews and pulpits where people can flock as congregations of shared belief. Or it opens the basement in that house of worship where addicts come to share their stories and needs. Or it creates the tools for a community of mutual support to reach out and lift each other up. Or it makes a classroom where people come to share knowledge and skills. Or it creates the means to build a craft union or guild for professionals to share and negotiate standards for quality. Or it builds the tools for citizens to join together in a positive social movement…. And what if journalism served these communities by informing their conversations and actions, by reflecting their desires, by answering their information needs, by convening them into dialogue, by helping to resolve instead of inflame conflict?
That is community. That is belonging. That is what Facebook and media should be enabling. I’ll reprise my definition of journalism from the other day as the imperative Facebook and news share:
Convening communities into civil, informed, and productive conversation, reducing polarization and building trust through helping citizens find common ground in facts and understanding.
How can we convene communities if we don’t really know what they are, if we are satisfied with mere conversation — yada, yada, yada — as a weak proxy for community?
While doing research for another project on the state of the mass, I recently read the 1959 book by sociologist William Kornhauser, The Politics of Mass Society, and reread Raymond Williams’ 1958 book, Culture & Society. I found lessons for both Facebook and media in their definitions of connected community vs. anonymous mass.
Kornhauser worries that “there is a paucity of independent groups” [read: communities] to protect people “from manipulation and mobilization.” In a proper pluralist and diverse society, he argues, “the population is unavailable [for such manipulation] in that people possess multiple commitments to diverse and autonomous groups.” To communities. “When people are divorced from their communites and work, they are free to reunite in new ways.” They are feed for trolls and totalitarians.
Thus we find ourselves working under a false definition of community — accepting any connection, any conversation, any link as qualification — and we end up with something that looks like a mob or a mass: singular, thin, and gross. “The mass man substitutes an undifferentiated image of himself for an individualized one,” Kornhauser says; “he answers the perennial question of ‘Who am I?’ with the formula ‘I am like everyone else.’” He continues:
In other words, when you cannot find a community to identify with, you are anonymously lumped in with — or lump yourself in with — the mob or the mass. But when you find and join with other people with whom you share affinity, you have the opportunity to express your individuality. That is the lovely paradox of community: real community supports the individual through joining while the mass robs of us of our individuality by default. The internet, I still believe, is built so we can both express our individuality and join with other individuals in communities. That is why I value sharing and connection.
And that is why I have urged Facebook — and media — to find the means to introduce us to each other, to make strangers less strange, to rob the trolls and totalitarians of the power of the Other. How? By creating safe spaces where people can reveal themselves and find fellows; by creating homes for true communities; and by connecting them.
That is what might get us out of this mess of Trumpian, Putinistic, fascistic, racist, misogynistic, exclusionary hate and fear and rule by the mob. There’s nothing easy in that task for platforms or for journalists. But for God’s sake, we must try.
Now you might say that what is good for the goose is good for the nazi: that the same tools that are used to build my hip, digital Rotary Club can be used by the white supremicists to organize their riot in Charlottesville or advertise their noxious views to the vulnerable. Technology is neutral, eh? Perhaps, but society is not. Society judges by negotiating and setting standards and norms. A healthy society or platform or media or brand should never tolerate, distribute, or pay for the nazi and his hate. This means that Facebook — like Google and like the media — will need to give up the pretense of neutrality in the face of manipulation and hate. They must work to bring communities together and respect the diverse individuals in them.
“An atomized society invites the totalitarian movement,” Kornhauser warns. In mass society, the individual who does not conform to the group is the cuck; in totalitarian society, he is a criminal. In pluralist, open, and tolerant society, the individual who does not conform to someone else’s definition of the whole is free to find his or her community and self. That is the connected net society we must help build. Or as Kornhauser puts it, in terms we can understand today: “A pluralist society supports a liberal democracy, whereas a mass society supports a populist democracy.” Trump and his one-third base are built on populism, while the two-thirds majority (not “the mass”) of the nation disapproves. But our platforms and our media are not built to support that majority. They pay attention to Trump’s base because mass media is built for the mass and conflict and platforms are built as if all connections are the same.
In the end, Kornhauser is optimistic, as am I. “[T]hese conditions of modern life carry with them both the heightened possibility of social alienation andenhanced opportunities for the creation of new forms of association.” We can use Facebook, Twitter, et al to snap and snark at each other or to find ourselves in others and join together. The platforms and media can and should help us — but the choice, once offered, is ours to take.
I’ll end with these words of sociologist Raymond Williams: