Sammeltassen. Vessels of Honor.

I’ve made critical comments about Answers in Genesis (AiG), the organization whose video Danger Ahead? on AI I have shared as being mostly helpful, and I wanted to expand on that a bit.

An example of AiG unhelpfulness in this video is in the section on Surveillance (at the 50:02 mark), where Ms. Engler discusses a document published by the World Economic Forum (WEF) called The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 4.0 Toolkit.

First, here’s the transcript for the remarks in question:

“For example, a document called The Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion 4.0 Toolkit, published by the World Economic Forum, encourages organizations to use AI to monitor all employees to ensure they comply with diversity and equity policies that might go against God’s Word, and to flag people who need further coaching, aka reeducation. They’ve also suggested using AI to keep track of individual’s carbon footprints and to ensure it’s only a certain amount by combining real-time and historical data from products and users, in other words, by digital surveillance.” (50:02)

First off, I will say that digital surveillance, and AI in general, is already a problem, and needs regulation. But we need accurate and credible information to inform appropriate regulation.

AiG makes several errors here, errors of fact and errors of logic, which result in further errors of interpretation and conclusion. These errors combine to create information which is not quite true but nonetheless is used by Ms. Engler to support some misplaced concern about AI.

I will describe the errors, let you decide what to make of them.

• Monitoring of compliance with DEI policies that might go against God’s Word – the implication here is that the WEF’s DEI policies go against God’s Word. I reviewed the WEF document for anything that might be unbiblical and found nothing. Keep in mind that in a pluralistic society, we need to distinguish between theological issues and civil issues. DEI policies fall clearly in the realm of civil issues, not theological issues. The Bible supports the authority of governments to govern in a way that maintains Shalom (justice, peace, freedom) but does not require governments to be Christian theocracies. That is reserved for the Kingdom of God.
  
  With that context, let’s look at the specific WEF definitions for DEI. WEF recommends DEI be maintained in organizations by inclusion and avoidance of discrimination against the following:

There’s nothing overtly unbiblical here, and in fact, I would say this is actually quite Biblical. Although we might not agree with how some people express their gender and sexual orientation, we would never want to discriminate against them. They ought to be welcome employees and contributors to any civil or secular organization. According to Jesus, loving others is the 2^nd most important commandment. We love others by taking actions for their good. Is it not a good for any individual to be accepted and treated fairly in the pursuit of their livelihood?

• Monitoring of Individual Employees – Analysis and observation of employees for further coaching already exists in every organization that I’ve ever been a part of. AI makes the process faster and more comprehensive, again not a bad thing where an organization’s policies are legal. Additionally, WEF specifically uses the term anonymize when recommending analysis of organizational communication channels like Slack and Teams to observe organizational trends that may need correction. Contrary to what is implied by Ms. Engler, there does seem to be a consciousness in the document about avoiding individual monitoring for nefarious purposes.

• Individual Carbon Footprints – while ideas about the use of AI to monitor Individual Carbon Footprints have been discussed at WEF events, WEF has only formally recommended studying AI’s use for monitoring Carbon Footprints in the Supply Chain. Organizational monitoring of Carbon Footprints is a not terrible idea, in my view, although it’s a ways from being a viable and regulatable concept. Ms. Engler’s implications about individual monitoring are inaccurate. Click here to view ChatGPT’s search results on this question.

This is but one example that I noticed in the video, which, again, is actually quite informative, and generally factual and accurate. I’ll add only that I’m not sure the WEF and some of the other more extreme voices on the left that she quotes are the best representative voices of mainstream consensus opinions on how to use and regulate AI. There are many reasonable and thoughtful voices on both the left and the right that are more worthy of attention. We need rational and accurate information to assist with determining the best guardrails. The AiG organization as a whole has a tendency to overstate and misinterpret observations about opposing views, a logical fallacy labeled “straw man,” where the most extreme example of a position is used to (more easily) refute the position. Therefore I recommend caution in using their material, generally.

At any rate, I rarely recommend throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and certainly not before a thorough analysis of the bathwater. Always read with comprehension first, come to informed conclusions after.

Sources

• AiG Video Danger Ahead?
• WEF DEI4.0
• ChatGPT Search on WEF and DEI

Note: Except for the ChatGPT research cited, AI was not used in the creation of this content.