Public ideas
Pope Leo on artificial intelligence
Global and Australian echoes of 1891.
Pope Leo’s encyclical letter Magnifica Humanitas – on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligenceshould strike a chord with all who are concerned with social justice, regardless of their religious beliefs.
Papal encyclicals aren’t renowned for their brevity, but there is a reasonably concise summary in one of its early paragraphs:
While Leo XIII [the last Pope to use the name “Leo”] spoke in his time of “new things” (rerum novarum), today we cannot limit ourselves simply to repeating his insightful teachings. Instead, we must ask God for the wisdom to interpret the great trends of our time, particularly technological advances. In recent years, it has become increasingly evident how rapidly and profoundly digitalization, artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics are transforming our world. Technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity. On the contrary, it has formed part of our history since the beginning as “a profoundly human reality, linked to the autonomy and freedom of man.” Over the centuries, technological development has significantly improved the living conditions of humanity. At the same time, each phase of progress has also revealed the ambiguity of tools that can cause harm when not oriented toward the good. Today, however, we find ourselves facing a new situation. The power and prevalence of emerging technologies are interwoven into the fabric of daily life, shaping decision-making processes and deeply affecting the collective imagination: “Never has humanity had such power over itself.” New technologies open up a horizon extending in directions that are imaginable but not yet fully predictable. This complicates the assessment of their potential impact and the long-term effects they may have on both the dignity of individuals and the common good.
That reference to his nineteenth century predecessor is not just a literary convenience. As the ABC’s Rachel Mealy points out on Radio National’s PM – Pope warns of AI dangers – it is a reference to the encyclical Rerum Novarum, on capital and labor , promulgated in 1891, the same year as trade unions and the Labor Party were getting together in Australia. Rerum Novarum was a reaction to the growing power of two dehumanizing movements of the time – communism and unconstrained capitalism. It was a time of wonderful strides in technologies, but it was also the “gilded age” when powerful oligarchs lost contact with reality: Rerum Novarum can be seen as a prescient warning of the terrible 1890s depression.
Magnifica Humanitas echoes and builds on the social morality embedded in Rerum Novarum, a morality that had expression in the Labor Party – at that stage a party that was overwhelmingly Catholic. Somehow the Latin of the papacy was translated into the political principle of a “fair go” and a “basic wage”.
That theme is taken up by three scholars from the Australian Catholic University in their Conversation contribution Pope Leo warns of AI’s risks to humanity in his first encyclical. They see Magnifica Humanitas on its widest context:
The significance of Magnifica Humanitas lies in its ability to shape public conversation and moral imagination. Moral frameworks matter. They influence what societies fear, what they tolerate, what they defend – and what they refuse to sacrifice.
Plato on democracy
A reminder of the conditions for a just and thriving democracy.
Hopefully by the time Australians have completed their school education they will have some idea of the separation of powers in democracies, the rule of law, and the authority of a constitution.
Some will have been be exposed to the ideas of the Greek political philosophers, Socrates and his follower and scribe Plato, and may have read a translation of his Republic, a treatise on the place of justice in a democracy.
For those seeking a refresher, with illustrations of how the Greek philosophers’ ideas on governance apply in recent or contemporary democracies, the ABC’s Natasha Mitchell on Big Ideas interviews David Horan, of Ireland’s School of Philosophy and Economic Science: What can Plato teach us about democracy today?.
Along the way you will learn that there have been times when Persia has had better governance than it has today, and why that order did not survive.
Most importantly, you will be reminded that the rule of law is effective only if there are morally courageous people in independent institutions ready to ensure the law is enforced. In view of the reports of the NACC’s shortcomings, you may find of relevance the most recent work on integrity agencies by the Centre for Public Integrity.
Minimum wages
One more time: decent minimum wages don’t impede economic performance.
In the USA the federal minimum wage is $US7.25 an hour – equivalent to around $A10, and much lower than our national minimum wage of $A25. About two thirds of states have higher minimum wage laws, however, including some with minimum wages up to $US17 an hour.
This wide range of wages provides economists with a natural experiment to test a prevailing belief that high minimum wages, by making labour too expensive, suppress the demand for labour, killing employment opportunities and resulting in a lower rate of economic growth than would occur in a less-regulated labour market.
This is the subject of an article in The Atlantic – The economic experiment that upended reality – by Nick Hanauer of the public policy incubator Civic Ventures and Eric Beinhocker of Oxford University.
Australians won’t be surprised by their findings. States which already had high minimum wages outperformed those with lower wages, and, more importantly, states that raised their minimum wages significantly suffered no adverse economic outcome. The main explanatory factor is that people with higher minimum wages spend more than people with lower minimum wages.
Hardly radical or surprising, but what stands out in their research is the persistence of the idea that minimum wages destroy jobs, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. It is held as an article of faith by Republican and Democrat lawmakers alike.
This does not mean that governments on the left are just as mean as governments on the right, but if the belief holds across the spectrum it may mean that when a government on the left enacts a higher minimum wage (or effectively does so though the Fair Work Commission in our case), it does so in the belief that it is trading off economic performance with principles of distributive justice, as if it has to apologise for its social-democratic values. It’s a belief that tends to leave social-democratic governments vulnerable to accusations of economic irresponsibility.
The article is basically a refutation of the foundation beliefs of neoliberalism, which the authors see as a “paradigm” built around three ideas – an instrumental view of human value, a belief in simple models of markets that fail to deal with their interactive complexity, and a failure to recognize that because employers have strong market power over workers, workers’ value is underrecognized.