Written by David L. Bahnsen |
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
Modern technology has always faced a certain Godlike aspiration from some of its more arrogant zealots, as even leading industrialists in the pre-digital era fancied themselves miniature deities on occasion. The AI moment is an odd twist on this Babel-like idolatrous tendency.

The subject of artificial intelligence has become a national obsession in the last year or so. Various questions about what AI will mean for society, the jobs market, and our way of life have become a media craze and an opportunity for great handwringing. Stratospheric stock prices of the companies that serve as the “backbone” of AI have added to the craze. Whether one owns stock in Nvidia or is afraid of what AI will do to one’s job or is a student who wants to know how AI can help write a paper, almost everyone has some skin in the game when it comes to the latest national hype.
In a lot of ways, the AI moment is not entirely new. The digital revolution itself has been years in the making, and many of us have lost count of the examples of “disruption” it has created. From personal computing to the internet to the cloud to now AI, digital technology has made obsolete many jobs and many entire sectors (RIP, typewriters) and has simultaneously created millions upon millions of new jobs. But what is new with AI is the so-called “generative AI” and the machine learning behind it that allows content creation with less human input and more machine capability.
Read More
Related Posts:

Written by David L. Bahnsen |
Wednesday, October 5, 2022
It is easy to watch a series like this and suspect the modern anarchy movement guilty of a flawed or miscalculated sociology. But I am sad to say, sadder after watching this series, that it is not a particular sociology that is at the root of this tragedy. That could conceivably be re-engineered. Rather, it is a moral pathology that hated a loving Lawgiver who alone holds the key to our escape from bondage.

I have a reasonably high tolerance for uncomfortable television and movies, maybe a higher tolerance than I should, but the first thing I would say about the HBO Max series The Anarchists is that it is not for the faint of heart. In this case, though, the tough stomach required is not due to excessive violence, cringey sexual content, or other common factors in objectionable material. The series is tough to watch because it directly touches on elements of human depravity that are unpleasant to engage. It shines a light on a certain darkness that can creep over the human soul that is more than I bargained for when deciding to watch the documentary. And yet, out of the very depressing reality that the series covers, a lesson is to be discovered of profound importance for the intellectually curious and morally rooted.
The Anarchists is a look behind the scenes at a group of American-born anarchists who took refuge together in Acapulco, Mexico, leaving behind their careers and domestic roots for a life committed to autonomy. Eventually, select members of these anarchistic refugees start an annual conference called Anarchapulco. The documentary covers the rise and fall of the conference, dovetailed with the rise and fall of this community. The gripping drama that is both tangential to and at the root of this group’s implosion is the murder of a drug-dealing fugitive member of their community, and the eventual suicide of the PTSD-suffering veteran widely believed to have been complicit in the murder.
The tensions are heightened by the sensational real-life drama that defined this community—murder, drugs, inordinate alcohol consumption, scandal, fraud, corruption, violence, lawbreaking, and all the rest. Yet the filmmakers include some modest level of the philosophy of anarchism to seep through as well, allowing the leaders of the movement to state their case for a society disconnected from rules, norms, and institutions.
The filming of this sect could ideally have led to a provocative documentary on an iconoclastic group of intellectually eccentric adults. Perhaps the filmmakers (and the subjects of the documentary themselves) could have crafted a series that evaluated the pros and cons of anarcho-capitalistic thinking, countercultural philosophy, and the capacity for human autonomy unhindered by the laws of nature and the laws of men. But alas, like the philosophy of anarchism itself, such a documentary was doomed from the beginning, assured only of ending in the chaos and despair this series had to highlight. Missing from the Acapulco anarchy movement was a framework for liberty rooted in morality and ordered love. Ultimately, what was palpably present in the Acapulco anarchy movement was the fate of all human autonomy untethered from the law of God and awareness of the basic human condition.
Read More
Related Posts: