AI, Automation, and the Meaning of Work 

The technical economic issues and questions surrounding artificial intelligence are myriad. Perhaps the most fundamental set of issues, however, relates to the implications of AI for our work. If AI lives up to the most optimistic forecasts and does at least some of what the most enthusiastic analysts hope it will do, what impact will that have on the human condition here on earth as relates to work? 

The relationship between human beings and work is complex. Questions surrounding human labor and its significance turn on basic convictions regarding the nature of the human person. From a Christian theological perspective, the mandate to work is seen as foundational to the biblical account of the creation of human beings, from the rendition of humanity created in the image of God (imago Dei) in Genesis 1:26-28 to the specific commands to Adam placed in the garden of Eden to “work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). After man’s fall into sin, the mandate to work continued, albeit in a different context as Adam’s work became toilsome and troublesome. As God relates to Adam in Genesis: 

… cursed is the ground because of you;  

      in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life;  

  thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you;  

      and you shall eat the plants of the field.  

  By the sweat of your face  

      you shall eat bread,  

  till you return to the ground,  

      for out of it you were taken;  

  for you are dust,  

      and to dust you shall return.  

(Gen. 3:17-19) 

And after the Flood, God’s covenant with Noah reiterates the primal mandate: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 9:1). 

The doctrine of humanity as created in the image of God relates to the question of the relationship between humanity and work and is likewise contested and complex. But as Ximian Xu has recently written, one of the “conventional interpretations” of the image of God is what he calls the “functional” understanding, which sees “the imago Dei as the God-given stewardship that humans assume to achieve certain tasks.” Among these tasks, and according to at least some interpretation of this functional understanding, the creation of human beings in the image of God means that “humans are created to be God’s partners in God’s continuous providential work, contributing to the flourishing of creation.” 

There is a rich and diverse literature exploring the nature of human work in theological perspective, which involves both objective and subjective dimensions of work. Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter Laborem exercens, for example, distinguishes these two aspects and argues that  

Man has to subdue the earth and dominate it, because as the “image of God” he is a person, that is to say, a subjective being capable of acting in a planned and rational way, capable of deciding about himself, and with a tendency to self-realization. As a person, man is therefore the subject of work. As a person he works, he performs various actions belonging to the work process; independently of their objective content, these actions must all serve to realize his humanity, to fulfil the calling to be a person that is his by reason of his very humanity. 

The “new things” represented by digital innovation show the prudence of Pope Leo XIV’s focus on AI in the social teaching of his pontificate. As he has written in Magnifica humanitas, “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.”  

This era of transition and change raises anew important questions about the relationship between material betterment, economics, and human development. Given its focus on material prosperity, economics as a discipline and economic history as an undertaking have tended to focus on material causes as well as material consequences of development. In the same way, discourse surrounding human work has tended to focus on the material objects, factors, and outputs of labor.  

The earliest records related to work and innovation in the Bible, for instance, tend to focus on the physical and manual features of labor. This makes sense given the level of technological development and the largely agricultural nature of ancient life. Noah’s father Lamech expresses such concerns with his prediction concerning Noah: “Out of the ground that the LORD has cursed, this one shall bring us relief from our work and from the painful toil of our hands” (Gen. 5:29). Scripture also relates that Cain founded a city (Gen. 4:17), and that his descendants invented musical instruments (the lyre and pipe, Gen. 4:21) as well as forged tools (of bronze and iron, Gen. 4:22).  

All work has a moral and spiritual as well as material dimension, however, even if Christian reflection on economic realities has at times focused on some aspects over others at various points. The Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) describes a theological understanding of human labor well:  

In itself work is not a curse but a blessing, no shame but an honor, no compulsion but a calling and privilege. But if work is severed from its moral principle and its moral purpose, it quickly becomes a heavy burden, or a means of indulgence. Presently here on earth, work is paired with difficulty; it must be done in the sweat of one’s brow, not only by the manual laborer who works with his body, but also by the craftsman and the salesman, the teacher and the thinker, who work especially with their mind. 

It is with those “who work especially with their mind” that the development of AI technologies brings into sharper focus the dangers and opportunities for tools to either degrade or enhance human dignity as expressed in work.  

This is not to say that all economic development in human history before the present day has merely been the result of the expansion of the technical, physical power of human beings. Nevertheless, there does seem to be something novel about the ability of AI systems to mimic, complement, or supplant what has typically been assumed to be distinctively human. A hammer extends the reach and concentrates the strength of the human hand. A word processor allows for human thought to be expressed dynamically. An AI agent or large-language model (LLM) running on a computer system shares much with earlier types of software and yet also seems to be qualitatively different.  

Adam Smith observed incisively that economic development was made possible by the division of labor. His focus was especially on the division of labor between human beings, which allows them to specialize and focus on particular aspects of the industrial production process. But there is another dimension to the division of labor, which has to do with the relationship between human beings and the tools they create and use. Smith famously used the example of a pin factory, noting how “the way in which this business is now carried on, not only the whole work is a peculiar trade, but it is divided into a number of branches, of which the greater part are likewise peculiar trades.” Focusing especially on the specialization of the laborers, Smith writes, “One man draws out the wire, another straights it, a third cuts it, a fourth points it, a fifth grinds it at the top for receiving the head,” and so on. Certainly workers use different tools for drawing, straightening, cutting, pointing, and grinding the pins. But the main emphasis here is on the reality that specialization is something that applies to people. Different people do different tasks, aided by different tools fitted for the particular operation.  

Smith recognizes this dynamic as he traces the different factors that result in the “great increase of the quantity of work, which in consequence of the division of labour, the same number of people are capable of performing.” He goes on to elaborate three: “the increase of dexterity in every particular workman,” as well as “the saving of the time which is commonly lost in passing from one species of work to another,” and finally “the invention of a great number of machines which facilitate and abridge labour, and enable one man to do the work of many.” In his exposition of this third factor, Smith notes that the specialized worker, who has the direct knowledge of and familiarity with the particular task, is often the one who discovers a method for more efficiently completing the work, whether by adjusting the process in some way, or by applying a tool in a new way or creating a new tool altogether. “A great part of the machines made use of in those manufactures in which labour is most subdivided,” he writes, “were originally the inventions of common workmen, who, being each of them employed in some very simple operation, naturally turned their thoughts towards finding out easier and readier methods of performing it.” 

Alongside the invention of such physical tools by workers intended to “facilitate and quicken their own particular part of the work,” there have also been inventions that amplify or complement in some way the mental powers of human workers. The first of these might perhaps be considered language and writing itself, but we might also note developments such as the codex, double-entry bookkeeping, analogue calculators of various kinds, and modern computing technologies. Smith was concerned that the specialization resulting from the division of labor might become so granular, particular, and repetitive that it would have serious deleterious effects on the worker: “The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur.” The result is that the worker “naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” 

Smith’s concerns regarding the specialization of laborers in manufacturing settings are shared by many with respect to the impact of AI on human cognition. These concerns also echo the warning about the impact of writing itself on human intelligence related in Plato’s dialogue Phaedrus. At one point in the dialogue, Socrates relates a story to Phaedrus about the invention of writing by the Egyptian god Theuth and his attempt to get the Egyptian king Thamus to adopt the technology. Thamus is skeptical, however, arguing that writing will essentially cause people to become forgetful because they will have outsourced memory to texts. As Thamus puts it, “this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them.” As Joel J. Miller points out, however, this criticism seems not to have been fully endorsed by Plato himself. The Phaedrus account comes to us in written form, and in other dialogues Socrates makes use of writing. Miller argues persuasively that the written codex has had a transformative cultural (and economic) impact through the millennia as this technology allows the stable transmission of knowledge across time and space. While granting the possibility of discontinuity and disruption, Miller concludes that “it’s possible to regard LLMs as part of the idea machine, as an extension of its affordances.” 

But perhaps Thamus’s criticisms of the written word apply more saliently to digital texts, and particularly those generated by artificial intelligence. This raises the challenge of identifying what, in particular, is actually being offloaded to AI tools and how they might properly be used. As in all things, it is necessary to discern prudent use and to distinguish between proper uses and abuses of such tools. There has been a great deal of research questioning the impact of digital technologies, and particularly AI tools, on human recall and cognition, including, for instance, “cognitive offloading,” a term that describes the delegation of mental tasks and processes to digital tools. If the printed codex does not cause forgetfulness in the minds of learners, then perhaps AI tools do. These concerns raise the possibility of human stultification on a scale not anticipated by Smith, arising now not from the repetitiveness of manual tasks, but from the ease and allure of digital tools. 

This calls for wisdom. Abuse is no argument against proper use. But AI’s challenges and opportunities are bound up with identifying the scale and scope of proper use as well as the consequences of abuse, and how to distinguish one from another. All of this means that in an age of change, dislocation, and disruption, the cultivation of and habituation to virtue are more important than ever. Work has always been, and will continue to be, a powerful institution for the development of the human person, individually as well as corporately, materially as well as spiritually. As much as the context and content of work may change, this remains a perennial truth.  

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