The People's Canon

How has or might AI change our conception of self? Our interactions with others? The functioning and purpose of our institutions?

Scholars within the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University are embarking on a research project that will address pressing questions related to the construction of self, community, and institutions in a rapidly changing world shaped by AI. In placing the enduring texts, traditions, and techniques of the humanities together, we aim to create a unique resource for scholars, students, and members of the public who seek to cultivate a humanities-informed perspective on contemporary developments in AI.

We need your help!

"Canons" are sites of contestation and conversation. "The People's Canon for Human Flourishing in the Age of AI," is a resource compiled from responses from members of the public about which works should be included in this new and emerging canon. Your submissions and recommendations will form an important part of this project!

What kind of texts are we looking for? We welcome any and all submissions that offer a unique perspective on human flourishing and its relationship to technology. The People's Canon is especially focused on enduring works in the humanities that have something to add to our contemporary conversation on AI, but are not necessarily about AI.They will be compiled, curated, and made available online with accompanying contextual materials. These submissions will also inform a larger printed volume to be completed at a later stage of the project.

Take the survey!

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The Burnout Society

While this work does not address AI by name, it is a great entry point into Han's thinking. He is arguably one of the most influential, popular, and important current philosophers, writers, and social critics. AND, he is alive and actively writing and contributing to current thought.

Rather than living in a punishment society and panopticon as described in Foucault's work, Han expertly focuses the lens to reveal an excess positivity (as in the addition of things not the quality of something as a positive or negative experience), false freedom, false transparency, and how all this contributes to being an ""achievement society"". We are achievement subjects in our own individual projects of self, that digital capitalism, big tech and big data, and neoliberalism have reinforced, in particular through the internet, giving up of our data to big tech companies, and social media. He goes on to build on this idea in other important works that I would suggest be a part of this collection: ""The Crisis of Narration"", ""Psychopolitics"", and ""Infocracy"".

We are taking in more information than we can actually handle, which he has talked about or framed as also being in an ""Information Society"" rather than a ""Knowledge/Widsom Society."" We ""sell"" our stories and data rather than connect with people communally, via ritual ,via third spaces, via group projects and community organizations or places of worship, and instead must produce, achieve, and prove ourselves not just to others but ourselves. In this way, Han would suggest that AI, part of big data and the internet and this Information Age, enhancing productivity, and infiltrating our lives and the information presented to us, creates a false freedom that actually exploits it. Everything is tracked, and could be use to control and manipulate us.

He suggests the antidotes are to not participate in these systems or technologies to the extent that we can, to slow down, to be present with activities like gardening, community interaction, walking, contemplative time, and an active ""inactivity/passivity"" whereby we stop trying to ceaselessly respond to everyone and live rather than survive. Again, while Han does not write about AI specifically, he talks about the systems, structures, and phenomena beyond AI that threaten human flourishing and are already damaging it. AI talks about efficiency but also removes meaning whereby we might have less friction to find that book, article, or record we were looking for, the mystery or journey in trying to get something done that then gives us spontaneity and a real story and experience. In just getting anything you want delivered to your home, via suggested products from big tech and AI, or sponsored Ads on a social media platform, one does not have to venture into the world and actually connect with people and search to find something. This begs the question, is this living, much less, human flourishing?
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The Fifth Head of Cerberus

The Fifth Head of Cerberus dramatizes the fragility and constructedness of identity in a way that feels urgent in the age of AI. Through stories of cloning, memory, and colonial domination, Wolfe forces us to confront how the self may not be some sort of indivisible essence but something that is shaped, copied, and manufactured.

As AI begins to challenge our assumptions about consciousness, creativity, and authenticity, Wolfe’s work is obviously relevant. It suggests that flourishing may not come from rigidly defending the boundaries of traditional ideas on humanity, rather we need to cultivate a new understanding grounded in humility. We need to gain a new sense of humility in acknowledging that human consciousness and creativity are not sovereign or absolute, but part of a larger ecology of intelligences, whether AI or institutional.

The Fifth Head of Cerberus reminds us that human flourishing in the age of AI may depend less on superiority or mastery, and more on our willingness to reimagine what it means to be human: as a shared, ongoing project of recognition, responsibility, and renewal.
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The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas

This is a story about a society that enjoys peace, harmony, and technological advancement at the cost of one small child's misery. The story succinctly encapsulates the ethical quandaries of AI and our technofuture.
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Christian Religious Education in a Missionary Key: Exploring the Border Between the Kingdom of God and the Device Paradigm in Latinx Communities

The article describes the danger posed by Albert Borgmann's device paradigm to the values of the Kingdom of God, which aim towards human flourishing, in Latinx communities. And proposes a view of Christian education to address digital technologies/culture, which grounds AI and which AI is a part of.