Day: January 29, 2025

Supporters and critics of AI claim it will be taking our jobs. If true, this suggests that AI could eliminate the need for certain skills. While people do persist in learning obsolete skills for various reasons (such as for a hobby), it is likely that colleges would eventually stop teaching these “eliminated” skills. Colleges would, almost certainly, be able to adapt. For example, if AI replaced only a set of programming skills or a limited number of skills in the medical or legal professions, then degree programs would adjust their courses and curriculum. This sort of adaptation is nothing new in higher education and colleges have been adapting to changes since the beginning of higher education, whether these changes are caused by technology or politics. As examples, universities usually do not teach obsolete programming languages and state schools change their curriculum in response to changes imposed by state legislatures.  

If AI fulfils its promise (or threat) of replacing entire professions, then this could eliminate college programs aimed at educating humans for those professions. Such eliminations would have a significant impact on colleges and could result in the elimination of degrees and perhaps even entire departments. But there is the question of whether AI will be successful enough to eliminate entire professions. While AI might be able to eliminate some programming jobs or legal jobs, it seems unlikely that it will be able to eliminate the professions of computer programmer or lawyer. But it might be able to change these professions so much that colleges are impacted. For example, if AI radically reduces the number of programmers or lawyers needed, then some colleges might be forced to eliminate departments and degrees because there will not be enough students to sustain them.

These scenarios are not mutually exclusive, and AI could eliminate some jobs in a profession without eliminating the entire profession while it also eliminates some professions entirely. While this could have a significant impact on colleges, many of them would survive these changes. Human students would, if they could still afford college in this new AI economy, presumably switch to other majors and professions. If new jobs and professions become available, then colleges could adapt to these, offering new degrees and courses. But if AI, as some fear, eliminates significantly more jobs than it creates, then this would be detrimental to both workers and colleges as it makes them increasingly irrelevant to the economy.

In dystopian sci-fi economic scenarios, AI eliminates so many jobs that most humans are forced to live in poverty while the AI owning elites live in luxury. If this scenario comes to pass, some elite colleges might continue to exist while most others would be eliminated because of the lack of students. While this scenario is unlikely, history shows that economies can be ruined and hence the dystopian scenario cannot be simply dismissed.

In utopian sci-fi economic scenarios, AI eliminates jobs that people do not want to do while also freeing humans from poverty, hardship, and drudgery. In such a world of abundance, colleges would most likely thrive as people would have the time and opportunity to learn without the pressure of economic necessity. Or perhaps colleges would be largely replaced by personal AI professors.

 But it is also worth considering that this utopia might devolve into a dystopia in which humans slide into sloth (such as in Wall-E) or are otherwise harmed by having machines do everything for them, which is something Issac Asimov and other sci-fi writers have considered.

In closing, the most plausible scenario is that AI has been overhyped and while colleges will need to adapt to the technology, they will not be significantly harmed, let alone destroyed. But it is wise to be prepared for what the future might bring because complacency and willful blindness would prove disastrous for the academy.

 

As noted in the previous essay, it can be argued that the likeness of a dead celebrity is a commodity that and used as the new owner sees fit. On this view, the likeness of a celebrity would be analogous to their works (such as films or music) and its financial exploitation would be no more problematic than selling movies featuring actors who are now dead but were alive during the filming. This view can be countered by arguing that there is a morally relevant difference between putting a re-animation of a celebrity in a new movie and selling movies they starred in while alive.

As with any analogy, one way to counter this argument is to find a relevant difference that weakens the comparison. One relevant difference is that the celebrity (presumably) consented to participate in their past works, but they did not consent for the use of their re-animation. If the celebrity did not consent to the past works or did consent to being re-animated, then things would be different. Assuming the celebrity did not agree to being re-animated, then their re-animation is being “forced” to create new performances without the agreement of the person, which raises moral concerns.

Another, more interesting, relevant difference is that the re-animation can be seen as a very basic virtual person. While current re-animations lack the qualities required to be a person, this can  be used as the foundation for a moral argument against the creation and exploitation of re-animations. Before presenting that argument, I will consider arguments that focus on the actual person that was (or perhaps is) the celebrity.

One approach is to argue that a celebrity has rights after death and their re-animation cannot be used in this manner without their permission. Since they are dead, their permission cannot be given and hence the re-animation is morally wrong because they would exploit the celebrity without their consent.

But, if the celebrity does not exist after death, then they would seem to lack moral status (since nothing cannot have a moral status) and hence cannot be wronged. Since they no longer exist to have rights, the owner of the likeness is free to exploit it—even with a re-animation,

The obvious problem is that there is no definite proof for or against an afterlife, although people do often have faith in its existence (or non-existence). So, basing the rights of the dead on their continued existence would require metaphysical speculation. But denying the dead rights based on the metaphysical assumption they do not exist would also be problematic for it would also require confidence in an area where knowledge is lacking. As such, it would be preferable to avoid basing the ethics of the matter on metaphysical speculation.

One approach that does not require that the dead have any moral status of their own is to argue that people should show respect to the person that was by not exploiting them via re-animation. Re-animating a dead person and sending it out to perform without their consent is, as noted in the first essay, a bit like using Animate Dead to create a zombie from the remains of a dead person. This is not a good thing to do and, by analogy, animating a technological zombie would seem morally dubious at best. For those who like their analogies free of D&D, one could draw an analogy to desecrating a corpse or gravesite: even though a dead person can no longer be harmed, it is still something that should not be done.

A final approach is to build on the idea that while the re-animation is clearly not a person, it can be seen as a simplistic virtual person and perhaps this is enough to make this action wrong. I will address this argument in the final essay of the series.