Essay · Pillar III — The Ethical Image
The Lighthouse
On automation, the loss of work, and what remains when the machines have taken the wheel.
Introduction
There's a song I like called Lighthouse by Spirit of the West, a Canadian folk-rock group. It's an old song now, dating from the early 1990s, and it describes the automation of lighthouses—one of the latest trends of that era. Simply put: why employ a human being to turn the big revolving light on and off twice a day when we could install a computer to do it for us?
Songs and poetry often speak to the deeper truths within us far more than we realize. They express through melody and lyrics what we cannot always articulate in an essay. Just think of how many songs are about love and how they can convey what we cannot always say with words.
What does this have to do with AI, theology, or God? As I said, the song is from the early 1990s, when progress meant the emergence of personal computers. But today, three lines jump out at me as I reflect on this blog:
"Progress is measured by how much we lose".
We've automated the lighthouse. A microchip now does what a person used to do. So then the lighthouse keeper loses his job (my uncle was a lighthouse keeper, so this resonates). But then we automate the ships too, so they don't need lighthouses to steer them away from the rocks. And when they reach their harbour, we automate the loading and unloading of those ships so we need fewer dock workers. And so it continues.
"Soon we'll be watching the world turn with no hands at all".
So much has changed since the 1990s. Today, from the comfort of my armchair, I can open an app by speaking into my phone and order something from the other side of the planet. If it's in stock at one of those massive warehouses, I could have it delivered by drone to my home in 10 minutes—with almost no effort on my part, except to imagine what I must have, now, now, now—otherwise I cease to have value as a human being.
"We're watching the left hand, not watching the right hand"
We chase progress in the name of efficiency and advancement, but at what cost? When we automate ourselves out of existence, what then? When we can order at the speed of thought and receive it minutes later, what does this reveal about who we have become as a species? Mere consumers of the next latest thing. But not even that, for that suggests some agency in what we do. In fact, we become just human shopping bots, whose existence is simply to drive the revenue of a small number of companies, in order to keep their CEO in a job and to continue to increase the share price for the owners.
This is not how it was meant to be. In the Genesis creation story, humanity was created to be the object of God's love and to work in the Garden of Eden. But when we remove a major reason for our existence—because we've succeeded in automating it—what remains?
When the whole world is automated, what is left for us to do?
What does it mean to be human when nothing requires a human touch?
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