Every technological innovation is useful within a world still fresh with its non-existence. A gasoline lawn-mower is immensely useful when the standard for mowing grass is set by the scythe it replaced. Hillaire Belloc sharpened his own scythe when the grass was “a thing just caught in its prime before maturing,” just before it grew “rank and in flower,” to make hay for what mooing creatures would munch it. According to this standard—which Belloc deemed ancient and customary—an Englishman mowed his two-acres three to four times a year at a pace of about five hours per acre: thirty to forty man-hours to get ‘er done.
Now an all-American gasoline lawn-mower could bang out Belloc’s lot in a comparable jiffy—not so usefully as to produce food for animals, of course—and if man could somehow remain static in his standards even as he abounds in abilities, we could praise the lawnmower, quite unequivocally, as a labor-saving device. But man does not remain static in his standards—and this is most especially true when he belongs to a society that has no definite standards; extra-’specially true when he lives, moves, and breathes within a society in which there is no ultimate “thing” which one, by avoiding labor, is free to do—like worship God. Deliberately without religion, deliberately designed to lack any transcendent ideal, a liberal society sets its standards on the basis of what it can do (power), and not what it ought to do (goodness).
In America, the lawnmower does not just mow the grass—it also sets the standard for how high the grass ought to be, the answer to which is about three inches. More than this is socially censured as neglect and much more than this is illegal: most cities would fine you for allowing grass to grow according to Belloc’s ideal (about eight inches). And so Americans mow faster, more. They mow an average of 0.3 acres about 30 times a year, and it takes them an average of 7.8 hours to do so, which, if you multiply it all to match Belloc’s two-acres would mean about 55 man-hours spent mowing per annum to his 30-40. Of course, at that acreage you’ve either purchased a riding mower or hired it out.
This phenomenon, by which the capacities of a new technology set the standards of its use, contributes to what Ivan Illich called the counterproductivity of capital-intensive, fuel-consuming machines, and is really the farce of the technocratic age, felt most keenly (I think) in traffic—in which the capacities of the automobile increases the standards of how far one is expected to travel for work, for groceries, for loved ones—to the point that Americans spend more time driving to their offices than their forefathers spent walking to their own. It is also felt (so think I, most heartily and most often) in our use of the various technologies piled together to make the fuel-powered smartphone. If our goals were fixed, these pocket-screens would serve them unequivocally—now I can communicate to fifty-odd people, in a whole multitude of different ways, in the span of ten minutes. But, as all you average Americans checking your phones approximately 177 times and averaging 7 hrs and 3 mins of screen time a day know—I am expected and often required to communicate and respond and to be available to people in accordance with the increased capacity afforded to me by the fuel-consuming smartphone. To send a letter back within a month was once a sign of friendliness. To send a text back in a month is criminal malfeasance and grounds for a divorce. Without a definite goal, we communicate, not according to what we want, but according to what we can do. The increased power of communication increases the expectation of communication—and this counters whatever “savings” the device grants us when compared to the age of letters and conversations that it killed.
We will either become Catholic or remain counterproductive. To do the former—which I recommend—would establish the unchanging God and the imperative of holiness before Him as the fixed purpose of human existence. This, in turn, would allow us to utilize all of these sweet, sweet inventions according to a standard which is not set by their pure capacity, but according to the actuality of God and His love for us—driving insofar as it serves Him, not driving insofar as it does not serve Him. The Middle Ages became Catholic to a great extent, and—to the continued shock of scholars everywhere—they appear to have labored less than eight hours a day, and for only about 150 days of the year—1,200 work hours. To do the latter, to become increasingly counterproductive, seems to be our fate, and so here we are, surrounded by labor-saving devices and working, on average—2,080 hours every year.
A.I. is no different in this regard. It will only save us from our labors insofar as its capacities are not taken as the standard of our life and work and action, but as serving standards otherwise fixed. Without religion, this will not happen. Instead, the capacities of A.I. will simply raise the bar of expectation and we will labor to keep up.