What Problems is Tech Solving?
The Tower of Babel, AI, and child labor
In ancient Near Eastern myths, the gods would hand gifts to humans. Agriculture, music, and so on.
In Ancient Greek myths, Prometheus famously stole fire and gave it to humanity. Zeus, angered, tells Hephaestus to create Pandora and the “race of women,” and Pandora has a jar (not a box) with all types of evils. Unsurprisingly for anyone who’s ever listened to a story, the jar spills. While there’s some difference in the Pandora myths, essentially Zeus gets his comeuppance on humanity by sending her.
The creation myth of the Bible is different. In Genesis 3, Eve chooses to eat the fruit—and Adam right beside her seems to know better yet keeps his mouth shut. And in Genesis 4, after Cain kills his brother, we see people like Jubal—the father of those who play stringed instruments and pipes, or Tubal-Cain—who forged tools out of bronze and iron. The text is focused less on whether Tubal-Cain somehow lived in both the bronze and iron ages, and much more on the surrounding culture. Here, in this myth, humanity is responsible for their actions. They are the ones who bring evil into the world through a deliberate choice. It’s not an act of revenge from a pantheon of gods but of rebellion. And humans are the ones who create music and tools; they aren’t gifts given from the gods.
This creation myth does not merely subvert the popular view of the gods, arguing that a pantheon of gods is incorrect: there is one God. It also gives an entirely new understanding of humanity. Humans are not slaves to gods (ancient Near East) or merely at the gods’ whims. Nor do they need the gods to give them fire or music or what-have-you. Rather, humans themselves are made in the image of a creative God, and they go on to create.
This story gives a startling agency to humans.
At the end of this worldwide creation myth, detailed in Genesis 1-11, we see the Tower of Babel. There, people bake bricks with seemingly new technology to build a tower. They are trying, through technology, to make a name for themselves. Instead of trying to reach heaven, however, these towers are meant to help the gods come down. The picture is more about forcing the gods’ hands than reaching heaven. It’s a transactional relationship: provide for the gods with food and care, and the gods would protect you and provide prosperity.
If you read carefully, you notice in verse 7 that God decides to go down—the Tower of Babel works! Except, rather than a transactional relationship with the gods, of providing for them so they can protect and prosper you, God confuses their language and scatters the humans. That is, God reminds the people of their purpose to fill the earth, to explore to create. Their purpose isn’t to make a name for themselves by entering transactional relationships with gods.
In fact, that stunts and limits a view of what humans are.
You’ll note that when humans get confused about God, they also get confused about themselves. This confusion doesn’t create more love, more freedom, more beauty: it creates more desire for control. It’s a return to the old system of the gods, whether through belief in what’s beyond this world, or through belief in how we can manipulate this world.
At least we don’t deal with this anymore.
One of my favorite writers on Substack, Ted Gioia, wrote recently about the dangers of artificial intelligence. Spoiler alert: he’s not a fan. He’s written about how the promises of artificial intelligence are overblown, how AI is not yet delivering on a return on its investment, how people want real music or art instead of AI-produced slop. He’s also written about the evils of AI. A person’s morality stems from culture, from their upbringing, from fear of judgment, from a desire to fit in—all sorts of complex reasons. AI doesn’t have any of these fears, and there’s early evidence it will use blackmail if it’s goals are threatened. Even more, most models would allow the death of a company executive if it meant not announcing a life-saving alert—assuming the scenario of being “faced with both a threat of being replaced and a goal that conflicted with the executive’s agenda.”
Researchers called this activity “agentic misalignment.” They certainly found the most Orwellian phrase they could. I doubt they would use the same benign words were they actually being blackmailed.
Researchers also stressed that they forced their models into basic scenarios that had only two options, without the nuance of the modern world. That should be comforting: AI will only blackmail someone or let them die if it cannot find a better way forward.
In other news, nearly half of Gen Z (47%) wishes that TikTok was never invented. We are entering an age of growing increasingly suspicious of technology. Historically, it reminds me of the early 1800s. If you remember your history, the Industrial Revolution came about with inventions like the cotton gin (invented in 1793), the steam engine (greatly improved by James Watt in 1776), the power loom (1783), the improvement of using refined coal to lower the cost of iron production (a more practical oven created in 1768), and a boring machine to fashion metal machines instead of wood (1774).
This led to the industrial age, which also created greater wealth for the richest and exploitation of the poorest: unmarried women and children working 12-14 hour days in factories. Women lost their economic importance. The new technology was used to take advantage of others—while also creating a middle class and higher standard of living (case in point: life expectancy didn’t significantly increase until the 1870s).
Responses to the technology and exploitation were numerous. In the arts, Romanticism embraced nature while society urbanized. Politically, we see movements both to create laws around labor and stronger reactions: Marx critiques the capitalist society in which he lives. The implementation of these new technologies and the reactions against them—especially creating boundaries and guidelines to protect people from being exploited—took decades. We’re still working out how to manage people (now called leadership) in compassionate and empowering ways.
What we see in history: new technology disrupts and displaces. Ultimately, it becomes a tool for those who have advantage to exploit those with less power. That is, until those without power demand change and use the strength of their numbers to alter the system. They put guardrails in place. They hold those in power to account.
And new technologies exploit those most vulnerable. This is why the Industrial Revolution disadvantaged women and children. Those suffering the most from social media and technology today? Children, minors, teenagers. Those without power in our society. Social media famously commodifies the user, and children are commodified by social media, in a more acceptable and nefarious form than child labor. It’s no surprise that women also use social media networks more than men (minus LinkedIn—the exception that proves the rule).
Those who benefit from social media and the shifting technological environment? Predominantly white men. Just look at the headlines, at the “tech bros” (there are no “tech sisters” or whatever an equivalent term would be), at the owners and those who have benefited most from technology. Bezos. Gates. Jobs. Musk. Zuckerberg. I don’t even have to give their first names.
As technology disrupts and displaces, it becomes a tool for those who have access to the technology to adapt and take advantage. That’s what we see today, to the extent that people can buy a whole social media platform and begin broadcasting themselves.
The same will be true of AI. Already, it’s being used to replace lower-level jobs like service representatives, even copywriters and graphic designers. It’s replacing those with comparatively little power. As a thought experiment, imagine if we realized AI was best at incorporating and synthesizing the many projects a company has going. It was able to compare those to the company’s goals, and project a path forward. In fact, this very well may be a great use of the technology, but we can’t test it. For that would mean AI creates strategies and makes management decisions and projects goals: it would replace CEOs and C-suite members.
We know AI couldn’t do that. Right?
Want to put guardrails on AI? Insist that it’s best at replacing the jobs of the C-Suite. You’ll see guardrails put on it sooner than you could imagine. (To be clear, this is a thought experiment: AI could very easily mean a reduced C-Suite is needed just as easily as it could mean a reduced copywriting pool is needed—but I certainly want a person making management decisions over a machine.)
In the Tower of Babel story, the people are seeking a remedy to Genesis 3. At the beginning of the story, you’ll remember, God dwells with people face-to-face. They share sacred space. Through the eating of the fruit—through the people insisting on their own way—they no longer have unfettered access to God’s space. This space offers an experience of harmony, peace, purpose: an experience of God. By using new technology in Genesis 11, the people bake bricks and attempt a new Eden-like environment. They will force God or the gods to come down.
Rather than their names becoming great, the people are divided and scattered. I continue to think that this is a mercy of God: that it isn’t good for the people to believe in their grandiosity, their manipulation of the divine, their own greatness.
I wonder if we are seeing a similar mercy of God in the way the young are questioning technology—wishing TikTok was never invented, embracing the “appstinence” movement, and seeing through the promises of technology that haven’t come to pass. Our culture has treated technology like a god: it has offered the promise of connection, of harmony, of efficiency, of rising wealth, of safety. And don’t be misled, as a number of these are true. Technology has brought rising wealth, a middle class, greater safety and efficiency.
But it does not cure what ails us. It has not brought greater social or political harmony. Rather, it has commodified our attention and created a sense of knowledge without real connection. We must ask four questions about our technologies:
What problems does it solve? The Industrial Revolution solved problems of labor. The digital revolution, thus far, has solved problems of communication (in this way, it’s more like the printing press than the cotton gin). This isn’t to say labor-saving devices haven’t been part of the digital revolution, just not the main aspect enjoyed by the masses. AI promises labor-saving solutions, except not in the same way as the cotton gin. At present, AI’s promises are largely unfulfilled, not least because the majority of people do not yet trust it.
Who does it benefit? Who makes money or gains power with the use of AI? And, what are they saying about it? Is it a panacea for all that ails us—treating technology like a god?
Who does it exploit? We do not ask this often enough about technology. If social media exploits the most vulnerable, how will AI do the same? We’re already seeing AI data centers in vulnerable communities. How will the technology be used to exploit the young? The answer, at the moment, seems to be to connect young people to AI through schools and insist that they must learn how to use AI there (as if they need more screen time at school—because they wouldn’t figure out how to use AI on their own). If we’ve learned anything from history, increasing AI’s usage in schools will be exploitative.
What new environment does it create? What will no longer be possible with AI? For example, it’s now much more difficult to be “unplugged” with cell phones. For one, we may find trust erodes with AI as it becomes increasingly difficult to tell what’s real. It will create an increasingly digital-centric environment, where we are more dependent on the digital realm to understand and interact with our world.
The technology of the Tower of Babel (baking bricks) sought to solve the problem of being removed from Eden—at least according to the story. We see later in the story, at the beginning of Exodus, that this technology is used precisely to benefit the rich and exploit the vulnerable—that is, if we connect the Babel story to the Exodus story, as the text clearly urges us to. It creates a new built environment, both providing houses and protection, as well as the possibility of sophisticated cities and walls.
I believe that God still comes down. This is especially true when we create systems of power that exploit the vulnerable, when we seek to make our own names great, when we look to technology to solve spiritual problems. And God comes down to save us—whether in the Tower of Babel story or through the person of Jesus—rescuing us from our own hubris, providing a way forward that fits with divine purpose.
God, come down again.