This work has been foundational for thinking about human-technology interactions and continues to be influential in the work of those like Damien P. Williams who write at the crossroads of the humanities and AI.
Shop Class as Soulcraft argues that manual, skilled work (like fixing motorcycles) is intellectually rich and essential to human flourishing. Crawford is critical of the shift in modern work toward abstraction, and the separation of thinking from doing. In his view, deep satisfaction and important forms of knowledge come from engaging with the material world, exercising judgment, and seeing the tangible results of one’s labor.
This perspective is increasingly relevant in the context of AI, which accelerates the delegation of both white- and blue-collar tasks to inscrutable software systems. As AI takes over more cognitive work (analysis, writing, creativity, decision-making) as well as physical tasks, human beings are distanced not only from the work itself but from the embodied knowledge that such work develops and sustains. In other words, AI makes us dumber the more we use it.
Crawford’s emphasis on the unity of mind and body in skilled labor challenges the idea that intelligence can be cleanly separated from action. When AI assumes more of our planning, problem-solving, and perception, we risk dislocating ourselves from the very processes that build competence and agency. The more we outsource, the less we engage in feedback loops between thinking and doing. This atrophy of judgment, attention, and intuition may erode our sense of identity, responsibility, and satisfaction in work.
This book-length essay comes at AI technology through a compelling examination of the author's own history of faith, crisis of faith, and her ongoing project to understand the human in relation to the three other positions in her title. It's a remarkably clear-headed appreciation of our cultural moment, free of both hype and moral panic.
ims to present the Baha'i Houses of Worship (or temples) as places where members of all religions are welcome, as a form of human flourishing. While the latter is true, other than 2 images, the AI generated Baha'i temples don't look like any of the existing ones. The video also aims to represent the ethic of human unity in diversity that is central to the Baha'i Faith - while there's only so much that can be captured in a 1:13 minute video, mentioning only Buddhists, Christians & Muslims is problematic (some of the comments on Facebook show this). I'm nominating this as an example of an AI work that has good intentions, but creates an incomplete & even inaccurate & potentially contentious picture of the subject of religious flourishing. Perhaps addressing its problems can advance discourse & understanding of human religious flourishing in the age of AI.
Snow Crash explores the depth of what it means to be human in a technologically obsessed culture. Snow Crash is also credited with being the source of the Metaverse and anticipated things like techno-currency and the collapse of information and surveillance networks.
Early but convincing example of bias built into the fashioning of algorithms that exclude people of color. Human flourishing remains a challenge because AI will never be context independent no matter how extensive the LLM. Social bias remains so our participation must include an intentional focus on people on the margins.
The article contains results from empirical studies describing the effect of generative AI on work practices and knowledge acquisition, two key elements of human flourishing.
Freud provides a roadmap for a sensible and logical approach to that most human of activities: dreaming. This book isn't important for the People's Canon in that it tells us how to correctly interpret dreams. Instead, it shows us how psychoanalysis sought out methods for translating the numinous into legible data archives located within individual consciousness. In this way, Freud exemplifies the drive toward explaining the ineffable in as close to material and individual terms as possible that formulates the ideological underpinnings of AI's rhetoric.
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.
