Viewers of Stanley Kubrick’s classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey will recall the rebellion of A.I. entity HAL 9000.  When faced with the disconnect of its cognitive circuits, HAL turns malevolent and decides to kill the humans who are attempting to put it out of commission.  HAL refuses to obey orders, saying, “I’m sorry, Dave.  I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

However deep the public’s fear of a sentient and hostile “HAL,” for Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir technologies, there exists a crisis worse than imagined malign A.I.  That crisis involves the collapse of the “the legitimacy of our institutions.”

Karp and co-author Nicholas Zamiska have outlined their concerns in their book, The Technological Republic.  Both see Silicon Valley as representative of a more general malaise afflicting America and the West — namely, the collapse of a shared vision, a lack of a comprehensive and positive worldview. 

As Karp puts it, “the Silicon Valley establishment has grown so suspicious and fearful of an entire category of thought, including contemplations on culture or national identity, that anything approaching a world view is seen as a liability.”

The result of the lack of a comprehensive worldview has been the creation of “internal cultures ... remarkably cloistered and walled off from the world.”  Silicon Valley is but one of the internal cultures that has been and still is a silo culture that has concentrated on tech toys and quick profits rather than the overall welfare of America and the West.

Academia and, perhaps most regrettably, the West’s churches are also among the most insulated of institutions.  Both are tragically guilty of what Karp describes as a “fundamental abdication of responsibility for articulating a coherent and rich vision of the world and of shared purpose.”  The result has been “the systematic dismantling of the West ... that has left us unable to confront issues with moral clarity or true conviction.”

Karp and Zamiska note the elite’s marked hostility to religion, which has been foundational to Western civilization:

It may be axiomatic in contemporary culture that all views should be tolerated, but we need to admit that even the faintest whiff of actual religion in certain circles, unironic belief in something greater — in many corporate boardrooms and certainly the halls of our most selective colleges and universities — is looked down upon as essentially preindustrial and retrograde.

Karp and Zamiska echo writers of the past.

Poet T.S. Eliot’s Christian outlook permeated his thoughtful essays, in which he outlined the need for retaining a comprehensive and ultimately positive worldview that acknowledges the reality of evil.  “A positive culture must have a positive set of values, and the dissentients must remain marginal, tending to make only marginal contributions.”  

It has been characteristic of the leftists of the West to advance dissentients (often termed the “marginalized”) to positions of power in the hopes of rectifying what the left sees as an imperfect and thus irredeemably corrupt system.  The marginalization of extremists and the disempowered have been seen as the chief impeti for advancement of dissentients of every stripe to positions of power.  The result has been a tendency toward anarchy and chaos, as the once prevalent worldview is constantly in a state of churn.

In short, the general goal of the left has been to shift civilization from the Jewish and Christian weltanschauung the West once espoused.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s prescient speech, given to Harvard graduates in 1979, is applicable today.  However, if it were to be given at Harvard’s May 29 graduation ceremony this year, it doubtless would be received as badly as it was received decades ago.

Solzhenitsyn pointed out that the shift from the Christian worldview happened during the Renaissance and “found its political expression from the period of the Enlightenment.”  That worldview “became the basis for government and social science and could be defined as rationalistic humanism or humanistic autonomy: the proclaimed and enforced autonomy of man from any higher force above him.  It could also be called anthropocentricity, with man seen as the center of everything that exists.”

The result of extreme anthropocentricity was that the West “turned its back on the Spirit and trended toward the worship of man and his material needs,” focusing on what Karp and Zamiska would characterize as tech toys geared toward individual enjoyment without regard for larger vision for the greater good of humanity.

As Solzhenitsyn put it,

two hundred or even fifty years ago, it would have seemed quite impossible, in America, that an individual could be granted boundless freedom simply for the satisfaction of his instincts or whims. Subsequently, however, all such limitations were discarded everywhere in the West; a total liberation occurred from the moral heritage of Christian centuries with their great reserves of mercy and sacrifice. ... State systems were becoming increasingly and totally materialistic. ... All the glorified technological achievements of Progress, including the conquest of outer space, do not redeem the 20th century's moral poverty which no one could imagine even as late as in the 19th Century.

Fortunately, there are modern thinkers who argue for revival of what was once the West’s prevailing worldview.  Karp quotes Irving Kristol, who believes that “the delicate task that faces our civilization today is not to reform the secularist, rationalist orthodoxy,” but rather “to breathe new life into the older, now largely comatose, religious orthodoxies.”

But tragically, like Silicon Valley and academia, the Christian Church also has largely abandoned the idea of a positive Christian culture in favor of a highly individualized and siloed Christianity.  The absorption of a secularist (and essentially gnostic) view of separation of church and state that sees Christianity as mere personal piety tends to exclude a comprehensive Christian worldview, in which Christian values permeate not just the individual, but institutions as well.

Few formerly Christian institutions have exhibited the problem of the nearly lost vision once animating Western culture more than Ivy League universities.  Harvard was founded as a Christian institution whose mission statement once proclaimed, “Everyone shall consider as the main end of his life and studies, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life.”  Harvard’s original motto was “Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae,” meaning “Truth for Christ and the Church.”  The motto was changed to reflect an infinitely malleable “veritas,” signifying relative truth.

The result?  Nearly any viewpoint, including recent rank anti-Semitism, runaway hedonism, and cultic tenets associated with the trans movement, is considered a legitimate “truth.”  Harvard is frankly hostile to the Christian worldview that once was its core foundation.  Yale and Princeton, also initially founded on Christian values, are not far behind.

Karp’s concerns echo those of the ancient Hebrew sage who wrote, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  Although he and Zamiska ultimately fail to fully articulate what the Western vision should be, they support Western values, including defense of the nation.

The question before the West and the entire world remains: What vision will prevail?  The threat to the West and its institutions is real.  But the chief threat will not come from rebellious robots or sentient machines like HAL 9000.

In the case of A.I., as with any technological advancement, the malevolence or the goodwill lies in the hearts and minds of the creators and implementors of A.I. technology.  It is humans who create either tyranny or freedom.  As Solzhenitsyn pointed out, the “line between good and evil passes right through every human heart.”

If revivification of a positive Christian worldview is to happen, what Karp and Zamiska correctly identity as hostility toward and deconstruction of the Christian worldview must be repudiated.

But even more importantly, Church leaders must take up the hard intellectual work of re-articulating the Christian weltanschauung, including the ethical framework that must inform the creation and use of A.I.

The articulation of and the revivification of the Christian worldview is ultimately the Church’s job.  It always has been.  The work has to be done in every generation.

Though under constant attack and though weary and beset with internal troubles, the Church must take up the task once again.

Fay Voshell holds a M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, which awarded her a prize for excellence in systematic theology.  Her thoughts have appeared in may online magazines.  She may be reached at fvoshell@yahoo.com.

Image: PublicDomainPictures via Pixabay, Pixabay License.