Departing AI

We live in a culture mesmerized by technology. Early days with the wheel or the printing press. Today it is robots, artificial intelligence, online everything. We were forewarned by 1950’s folklore that President Eisenhower, invited to ask a question of an early Univac mainframe computer, asked, “Is there a God?” After some reflection, the computer answered, “There is now.”

Today’s attention goes to artificial intelligence (AI), which is beyond anything we might have imagined. It is so sophisticated that tech insiders tell us that it cannot defend itself against its own kind. Bot versus Bot is a whole other level of family dynamics.

AI now promises and delivers whatever we choose to outsource. It accelerates every job that requires a thought. It offers to record and summarize every virtual meeting I attend. It is so generous, I have to refuse it for it not to be of service. A friend of mine celebrates that her most recent book took three months to finish. Previous ones took three to seven years. Of course, this power comes with some costs. In the news today AI insiders claim that in ten years it will be the end of humanity as we know it. Collateral damage.

We are surrounded by technology in every direction. It would be challenging to find one part of our lives that isn’t touched by a screen, a search, the media, the work we do, the stuff we buy. There also is a countermovement to AI development and our reliance on today’s technology. Much of this calls for a mixture of government regulation and Silicon Valley restraint. One very clear and powerful voice is Senator Chris Murphy’s book Crisis of the Common Good: The Fight for Meaning and Connection in a Broken America. He offers a broad summary of the forces in our culture that are an assault on the common good and democracy.

The Cult of Technology

Senator Murphy frames the underlying realities of our world as a series of cults that have evolved in the last decades: the cult of everywhere, corruption, technology, consumerism. In discussing the Cult of Technology, he works to clarify the impact of AI plus our time spent on screens. In his call to action, his attention is on what legislation and regulatory structures are needed. My intent is to attend to what we can do in our own lives.

First, a quick review of some of his insights.

The book begins with what makes the technological call so appealing and risky. It explores how technology impacts our way of being far beyond delivering better diagnoses and problem-solving. Far beyond the promise of productivity and increased efficiency in whatever we are up to, questions arise about what interests does it really serve and what would result if we took the warnings seriously.

Senator Murphy considers our reliance on technology an addiction. It helps to see clearly that artificial intelligence is not a new world. It is one more phase in our obsession with cost, speed, scale, and convenience.

The Cult of Consumption

Murphy discusses some consequences from the fact that consumer spending is headline news. He calls this the Cult of Consumption. Since gaining real momentum in the 1950’s, this trend lures us into the narrative that having more, faster, cheaper, and easier are essential elements of the good life for us and for all. Although now being questioned in many quarters, we are still driven by the conviction that no matter how much we have it is not enough.

In addition to our consumer behavior, our institutions, both private and public, are judged on how well they create more convenient ways to function. Maximize quarterly profit for the private sector, minimize the cost to educate a child, efficiently service a homeless person, house the elderly in the most cost-effective way. AI has now entered these domains. It promises more speed, more information, greater accessibility. It is cheaper and of course easier to control than employees and, in the case of schools, the screen is an easier way to centrally control the curriculum.

At What Cost

We occasionally hear about the unintended consequences of technology, but Senator Murphy underlines the larger price we are paying.

“The problem of our social regression involves a much broader set of causes, symptoms and solutions. The ‘anti-social century’…will involve a broad retreat of Americans away from communion from others and into time alone, virtual contact and relationships with technologies that feed us conspiracies and pretend connection as a substitute for real interaction in the world.” (p 103)

He harks back to Hanna Arendt’s observation about Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi in charge of the railroads that kept the extermination campaign running on time. In studying the post-WWII trials of Nazi war criminals, Arendt determined that Eichmann was not evil, just committed to making the system work. As Murphy describes it,

“Arendt believed she was looking into the eyes of someone who could not think from the standpoint of someone else, who could not make independent moral judgments. Pursuing his self-interest, he surrendered to the system built for him. And as a result, he helped murder millions of innocent people.” (p 103)

“Arendt worried that the industrial age would facilitate this kind of banality of evil through the construction of vast integrated systems that operated constantly and evolved incessantly with a momentum beyond human control. She could not have imagined what we are building today: machines designed not to replace our physical effort, but our mental life itself.” (p 105)

An AI-dominated world could be, Murphy says, “spiritually ruinous––as we surrender not just moral meaning but creativity, expression, and genuine human connection to machines that cannot understand what they are taking from us.” Millions of Americans have been “pulled away from the communal lives that once gave them meaning, and toward devices that offer endless stimulation and agitation but little real nourishment” (p 115).

Where Is the Data

There is data we all know, but we have not treated it as if it mattered. The data about collateral damage rarely appears above the fold in The New York Times or most other print or most media outlets.

“In 2003,” Murphy reports, “Americans ages fifteen to twenty-four reported spending 140 minutes per day with friends; by 2019, that time was down to 42 minutes per day. In 2017, 68 percent of girls reported feeling self-confident. In 2025, that number had dropped thirteen points. During that same time, the rate of clinical depression among teenage boys increased by 74 percent.” (p 115)

Senator Murphy helps us understand the breadth of the cultural narrative that lies beneath two dominant conversations of this moment: uncontrolled technology and political authoritarianism. The cost and impact of these concerns transcend who is in charge. Trump is a master at centralizing power, blatantly pursuing self-interest, and worshiping individualism and profit at any cost. Murphy’s point is that Trump is not the point.

Murphy’s basic thesis is that it is separation, loneliness, and isolation that make us vulnerable to widespread despair and anger, which in turn are the conditions that make autocracy, violence, and supremacy appealing to many. His perspective is that of a very thoughtful politician and his solutions are about what government can do to restore our humanity and reclaim our common good. The intent here is to explore additional options that are within the reach of every one of us.

A Proven Methodology

Departing the world of convenience and excessive technology is not an easy path. It takes more than willpower or determination. It takes a particular way of being with other people on the same path. One of the most effective methods of dealing with ingrained habits is the Twelve Step approach to recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. It provides an aid to the transformation explored here.

It is a program with some unique ground rules:

1. There is a well-defined structure to each gathering.

2. There is a huge volume of easily digested readings.

3. The core work is all run by volunteers. No professionals are engaged.

4. No advice, called cross talk, is allowed when people gather.

5. The expectations are low, the pace is slow, it is a process without end.

   
   

Having been a participant in the Twelve Step process in the healing of my family recovery for more than ten years, I have adapted, for our purposes here, a variation of some of these steps for a departure from AI, considering it a placeholder for our addiction to screens and convenience. These declarations, modeled after the style of the Twelve Steps, can hopefully make very specific what we might individually practice for both refusal and departure from our dependence.

1. Acknowledge that my dependency on convenience and my time spent and reliance on screens are having a negative impact on what matters most in my life. I admit I am powerless to step away from the allure of convenience and my dependency on content delivered in a compelling way.

2. Make a continuing examination of the costs I am paying for my dependency. These frequently take the form of isolation, impatience with things in any form that are slow or obscure. Examine carefully which efforts that depend on a screen are clearly necessary for my work, locating a good plumber, or finding directions when driving.

3. Be willing to ask friends for help in reducing my dependency on convenience in all its forms. This includes not using AI and screens when I have a choice, to replace the entertainment and distraction uses of the internet. Terminate all online purchasing. If the local merchant does not carry it, I have a choice to either select from what the merchant has in stock or consider it an invitation to a simpler life.

4. Make a list of all the local businesses I have abandoned, the drivers on the road I yelled at for going too slow, the instant summary of each Zoom call, the fast food that replaced cooking and the family dinner, the disappointments I expressed through text and email to avoid uneasy conversations.

5. Continue to take personal inventory of conveniences I am willing to depart. This includes not asking Claude for thinking and writing a book for me and summarizing discussions with others. Minimize the political and ideological aspects of social media with the exception of pictures of delicious meals I have produced. Stop seeking from pharmaceutical products that which I can achieve through my lifestyle, eating, and volunteering for social causes.

Departure and Refusal

Steps like these are a form of political action. They are a refusal to participate in what separates us and does not serve the common good. They depart from the overreach of the market mentality and give priority to building social capital. They are a personal version of the paths to societal change such as protest, marketing and public relations, passing legislation, and starting large-scale, well-funded programs. These take us just so far. We have declared war on poverty and drugs, invented the minimum wage to create economic equity, implemented Opportunity Zones to drive investment in Black neighborhoods, required banks to implement the Community Reinvestment Act to provide access to real estate ownership and wealth creation to atone for redlining after the war. All well-intentioned, all too easily co-opted by the market economy.

Another form of refusal and departure is where we give our attention. There are many efforts in each neighborhood where connection is produced, and the common good is served. There are growing efforts among churches to reimagine communal forms of the gospel. There are efforts to take land off the market and into community land trusts. Cooperatives, co-working, community gardens. We can choose to consider them to be news as a refusal to participate in the negative bias of current news channels.

Departure means that we can create the changes we want in small, slow ways wherever we are. No need to switch jobs, change locations, leave family, raise funding, or take to the streets. We can, with a little help from our friends, choose in this moment our liberation through connecting with people nearby and making a place better.