AI Involves Lots of Politicial Choices: For Whom and Why

It’s easy enough to argue that widespread use of artificial intelligence has some potential to raise important new questions about economic life, political choices and values. 

“The question is not which jobs will survive. It is what kind of economy we are building, and for whom,” a World Economic Forum note asks. 

“A livelihood is not a role,” WEF suggests. “ It is a sustained capacity to generate value, dignity and security over time, for a person, their family and their society.”

“It encompasses income, but also purpose, identity and belonging,” WEF notes.

Catholic social teaching dovetails. 

Catholic social teaching assigns work an importance that goes well beyond economics or material production. 

Principle	Meaning	Representative documents
Work has inherent dignity	Human work possesses value beyond wages or productivity because workers are made in God's image.	Rerum Novarum, Laborem Exercens
The worker is more important than the work	Persons must never be treated merely as instruments of production.	Laborem Exercens
Work participates in creation	Human labor continues God's creative work by cultivating and improving creation.	Gaudium et Spes, Laborem Exercens
Work contributes to human flourishing	Work develops talents, virtues, responsibility, and community.	Gaudium et Spes
Work serves the common good	Labor should benefit families, society, and future generations.	Centesimus Annus, Caritas in Veritate
Economic systems exist for persons	Markets are valuable but must remain ordered toward human dignity rather than treating labor as merely another input.	Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, Centesimus Annus

Work is not simply a means of earning income, nor is it merely a commodity bought and sold in markets. 

Instead, work is understood as an essential aspect of human dignity, a way in which persons participate in God's continuing work of creation, develop their own humanity, serve their neighbors, and contribute to the common good.

So AI has spiritual and religious implications.

John Paul II explained that because humans are created in God's image, they imitate God's own creative activity through their labor. 

Perhaps the most distinctive contribution of the encyclical Laborem Exercens is its teaching that work is participation in creation.

For such reasons, even some apparently-appealing ideas such as universal basic income are insufficient compensation for AI-induced productivity gains. 

Work matters for human dignity and meaning, and UBI does not help, in that regard. 

Humans need “work” because, as the Second Vatican Council's Gaudium et Spes teaches:

• through work people develop their talents;

• acquire virtues;

• grow in responsibility;

• contribute to society;

• become more fully themselves.

Gaudium et Spes marked the first time an ecumenical council addressed the entire world rather than just focusing on internal church matters. It established modern Catholic social teaching, so is foundational. 

Catholic social teaching is that work is fundamentally relational and imbued with moral purpose.

Work serves:

• one's family

• customers

• fellow workers

• local communities

• society as a whole.

Markets help coordinate work, but the moral purpose of work extends beyond markets, as markets and work are ordered to the promotion of the common good of society and people, including:

• economic prosperity

• cultural development

• scientific advancement

• political stability

• social solidarity. 

So employment and work are viewed not merely as a private contract but as participation in building society.

For that reason, pursuit of the common good means supporting:

• opportunities for productive employment

• just wages

• safe working conditions

• reasonable working hours

• rights of association and labor unions

• protection of family life.

Catholic social teaching suggests several enduring principles:

• Economic systems exist for persons, not persons for economic systems

• Every form of honest work possesses inherent dignity

• Workers should never be reduced to costs or commodities

• Technological innovation should enhance rather than diminish human flourishing

• Work is both economically productive and spiritually formative

• Human labor contributes to God's continuing work of creation and to the common good.

AI does raise these issues in a new context. How do we ensure humans have work, irrespective of the impact of AI? 

Because work matters, not simply as a means to sustenance, but as a fundamental expression of human creativity. 

At the same time, Catholic social teaching disagrees with purely market-based views (which reduce work to a commodity) and purely collectivist views (which subordinate the worker to the state). 

“Markets that operate with morals” might be one somewhat inadequate way of expressing the formulation.