In recent weeks there have been reports of autonomous hacking on the part of unreleased AI models. Both Anthropic and OpenAI have admitted to models escaping their testing environments and attacking third parties. The British AI Security Institute has reported similar occurrences during testing, though some have expressed scepticism at the capacity of AI models to act autonomously, while others have questioned the security of the tests. These cases raise some important questions and also help to illustrate certain fundamental issues in moral philosophy.

Freedom and Responsibility

The ability of AI models to act autonomously – or at least to act in ways not foreseen by human developers and testers – and so hack third party infrastructure suggests a need for reconsidering approaches to potential regulation, as suggested by this article. So far, most thought has been based on the assumption that AI will be misused by some human malefactor, but what if an AI model acts ‘independently’ and causes harm unforeseen and unintended by its developers? In such cases, who is to be held liable? There are two questions to consider in this regard. The first is the practical question of whether such ‘escapes’ should be considered accidents or whether the developers bear responsibility for the harm caused by their models, for instance if there is malicious intent or negligence involved. This question is likely a matter to be settled on a case-by-case basis. (An independent audit has been conducted of the escape by OpenAI’s model.) The second is a far broader question of responsibility, which has been discussed before on the CEME blog. As non-conscious machines that simply solve problems and respond to instructions or prompts, AI models are not agents and cannot be regarded as ‘free’ in any conventional sense of the term. They cannot be considered responsible for whatever damage they may do any more than a tree is responsible for the damage caused by a branch that falls from it in high winds. Responsibility must always reside with human beings or organisations (or those who run them) – whether the owners or developers, for example, of the model in question.

Consequentialist Ethics

Cases of autonomous hacking also illustrate an interesting issue in moral philosophy, particularly in relation to consequentialist outlooks such as utilitarianism. This is the theory that considers morality to consist in the maximisation of happiness and the minimisation of pain. When making moral evaluations, we are to focus on the effects or consequences of actions, seeking to achieve ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’, as Jeremy Bentham, one of the founding figures of utilitarian thought, put it. There are many varieties of utilitarianism, some of which aim for the minimisation of suffering as a priority rather than the maximisation of happiness, while others concern themselves with preference-satisfaction as a central aim. Some forms of utilitarianism, such as that of John Stuart Mill, take the view that since there exist different qualities of pleasure or happiness, we should consider more than simply the quantity that any action occasions: some pleasures are more worthwhile than others. In short, however, all aim to increase utility, whether understood as happiness, enjoyment, well-being or preference satisfaction, with a focus on the consequences of our actions. As Bentham stated in the opening lines of his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation: ‘Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.’

This is a very common – even natural – approach to thinking about ethics: when facing certain moral problems, most of us will at one time or another adopt a consequentialist outlook and reflect on the likely outcomes of the options open to us in terms of happiness and suffering, often almost by default. Moreover, utilitarian perspectives are particularly influential in the domains of economics and therefore public policy, as might be expected with an approach that treats moral evaluations as cost-benefit analyses. Indeed, Bentham talked of a hedonic calculus by means of which pleasures and pains could be measured according to various criteria, so as to evaluate the moral worth of an action.

Autonomous Hacking and Moral Agents

Much has been written on the advantages and weaknesses of utilitarian ethics and the theory has been endlessly refined, but the issue of autonomous hacking on the part of AI models illustrates one particular difficulty: accounting for ‘evil done’, or agency. Consider a case in which a hacker breaks into a company’s IT infrastructure and disables that company’s systems. (For the sake of simplicity, assume that this is a case of straightforward vandalism rather than a ransomware attack.) Most would consider this to be wrong and a utilitarian reckoning would support such a view: with the company unable to function properly, staff and investors stand to lose financially and employees have to suffer stress, uncertainty and added difficulty in doing their jobs. Some might be temporarily laid off. Customers experience lower levels of service or diminished product availability. The perpetrator merely enjoys the perverse pleasure of wanton destruction. The harms clearly outweigh the happiness, and by some margin. Suppose, however, that similar damage is done to a second company by an AI model that, in the course of completing some task assigned by its developers, escapes its test environment and acts ‘autonomously’, hacking the second company’s systems. Most of us would want to say that there is something worse about the first case, just as we would want to say that hitting another person over the head with a club is morally worse than a branch falling on someone’s head in high winds. However, utilitarianism struggles to account for this: the consequences or effects are the same, with the same levels of harm or suffering undergone by the affected parties. There is no easy way of accounting for the difference between harm done and harm simply occurring or befalling someone. One could try to address this problem by seeking to ground a sense of responsibility in talk of causation, according to which agents are responsible for harms that they cause. However, this is too simplistic and does not establish why an armed attacker is responsible for the harm he causes but that a tree or high winds are not. It says nothing about what or who an agent may be and why agents are responsible when other beings are not.

Duty, Virtue and the Centrality of Persons

Of course, there are other problems with utilitarian ethics – and arguably of a much more serious nature than its difficulty in accounting for ‘evil done’. This difficulty certainly does not of itself show that utilitarianism is simply mistaken or that we should not consider the effects of actions when thinking about what to do; neither does it demonstrate that happiness and suffering have no place in our moral reflections. What it does suggest, however, is that a straightforward focus on consequences and utility is too thin an approach to ethics. The utilitarian perspective runs the risk of overlooking the actual human beings involved in any situation by simply aggregating ‘units’ of utility. However, when it comes to moral evaluations, the persons involved, what they undergo and deserve, what they have done or failed to do – and why – are often of vital importance.

As such, our moral considerations require more. We often have to look at the nature of the action itself and not just its consequences. This is the thinking behind deontological or duty ethics: that there are certain things one must do, or simply should never do, regardless of effects. As revealed by divine command or the use of reason (as Immanuel Kant suggested, with his reference to ‘the moral law within’) certain types of action or motive are by their very nature wrong, or matters of obligation. This helps to explain why there is a moral difference between striking someone with a club and a falling branch. The nature of assault – what is intended – gives the act significance.

Moreover, persons are central to our moral thinking. We often reflect on the character of the moral agent – and this is the approach of virtue ethics. A full or flourishing life is also a virtuous life – at least in part – with virtues understood as character traits or dispositions to certain types of action. By cultivating virtues such as courage or justice, initially by way of instruction but over time by practice and one’s own efforts, one becomes a certain kind of person, disposed to just and courageous action. Without persons, it is hard to make sense of ideas such as who is wronged and who acts (and why). Again, the notion of responsibility becomes hard to establish. When we condemn an armed attacker, we comment on his character as vicious or cruel. We consider him an agent and, believing that actions flow from character, we might ground our judgement in evidence of his former conduct. It makes no sense to regard an aged tree in the same way.

The Scope of Moral Thinking

Utilitarianism, then, is not ‘simply false’ owing to its difficulty with questions of agency – though it may be false for other reasons. At the very least, however, it certainly requires supplementing. Beyond taking into account consequences and matters of utility, we need in our moral thinking to consider actions themselves and the motives behind them, as well as the characters of the people who commit them. Persons are central – and with them, notions such as freedom, motive and agency. With situations involving autonomous AI, there seems to be no scope for talking about any of these things: AI models are not persons and do not have motives; they are not free and do not exercise agency. They cannot be responsible, so moral questions about the behaviour of AI models’ behaviour are ultimately to be reduced questions about the ethics of human action (or inaction). What this demonstrates in broad theoretical terms, is that consequentialist ethics centred on concerns over wellbeing or harm are not immediately equipped to account for our sense of moral responsibility or the nature of certain types of wrongdoing. Moreover, responsible persons are so intimately bound up with our methods of making moral judgements that in their absence, the purview of our moral thinking is seriously narrowed and its coherence diminished.

We are delighted to announce our next roundtable which will focus on local investment and development:

“Capital with a Postcode: the local multiplier?”

The event will take place on Thursday, 22^nd October with arrivals from 6.45pm, talks and discussion 7pm, followed by a drinks reception and will be held at One Great George Street (Westminster, SW1P 3AA) in the Council Room.
 
Our speakers will be:

Karen Davies, founder of Purpleshoots, a microenterprise lender to unemployed adults looking to start businesses in South Wales 
Aoifinn Devitt, leading advisor to Local Authority Pension Funds on investing in ways which boost their local areas

On 23 September we held a second event in our series for those working in the private sector interested in developing their thinking in matters related to faith, ethics, business and economics. We considered the topic of net zero and energy security in the Vestry of St Mary-le-Bow Church in the City of London where we were hosted by  Fr Simon Cuff.

Our speakers were:

Anne Devlin, who after 22 years as an Oil Trader at BP has focused on the energy transition, investing in utility-scale solar development platforms and cleantech and microgrid solutions. 

Stephen Beer, who has extensive experience managing and integrating responsible investment funds, including recently as Head of Responsible Investment Strategy for L&G with a focus on climate transition.

Each spoke briefly before the questions and discussion and CEME Director Philip Krinks chaired

In the discussion about Magnifica humanitas, a great deal of concern is expressed about the concentration of power in a small number of companies.

The concentration of economic power in an area such as AI can arise for a number of reasons. There can be natural monopolies caused by very high fixed costs of research and development which make it difficult for new entrants to enter the industry. And there can be network effects or ‘winner takes all’ situations. In such cases, the success of a particular company might rely on there being a large number of users interacting with each other and sharing information. This is the main reason why social media platforms tend to be monopolistic.

The dominance of large firms is not always a problem. Consumers may prefer that situation to the realistic alternative market structures. And, often, waves of innovation mean that today’s monopoly becomes tomorrow’s forgotten giant.

But, when it comes to AI, there are real fears that its abuse by a powerful corporate entity could damage the vital functions of society.

What can we realistically do?

We might hope that the political authorities can regulate ‘big tech’ to more effectively promote the common good. They could try to eliminate existential threats, ensure that monopoly power is not abused and try to promote the use of AI in ways that genuinely lead to integral human development.

In Church documents following the financial crisis, such as Caritas in Veritate and Oeconomicae et pecuniariae quaestiones (‘Considerations for an Ethical Discernment Regarding Some Aspects of the Present Economic-Financial System’), a considerable amount of confidence was placed in states regulating the financial sector to avoid crises, such as the financial crisis of 2008. But how do we make sure that statutory regulators promote the common good?

Statutory Regulation

Regulators can become captured by the regulated entities. Furthermore, they simply do not possess the knowledge to be able to perfect markets. Indeed, their actions may cause more harm than good: before the financial crisis, financial regulation expanded dramatically, but there was nothing that regulators did which made the crisis less likely or its effects less problematic. Securitisation was welcomed by regulators and promoted by regulatory codes, for example. And reports by prominent economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz, seemed to hugely under-estimate risks involved with complex financial instruments that were underwritten by US taxpayers in government-sponsored agencies.

The lessons from these, and many other similar errors by those close to the government regulatory system is not that regulators are especially error prone but that they are not especially omniscient. There are limits to what we can expect from statutory regulation.

But when it comes to AI and big data, there is an additional problem. Just as we might be worried about the abuses of AI and big data by large corporations, might we not similarly be concerned about abuses by the state? Are we comfortable with the current administrations in the world’s largest countries (or, indeed, many of the smaller ones) being the final arbiter of how our data is used and how AI is used? We are hardly in an era of virtuous government. When it comes to AI, there is a real danger of accidents or malign actors creating chaos in economic or social systems or of promoting vicious forms of warfare. AI can develop, to use a phrase which is not technically correct but conveys the challenge, ‘a mind of its own’, outpacing any attempts to control it both in general and in specific situations. Even if we limit ourselves to the G20, how many of those countries might we be concerned about being the ultimate gatekeeper of how AI and big data are used?

Shared Responsibility

In the ‘frequently asked questions’ document, published with Magnifica humanitas, a pertinent question was raised about the state and the regulation of AI. Unfortunately, that document seems no longer to be available online. The answer given was both sensible and consistent with the long-standing teaching of the Church down the ages. It is a messy solution, but we are in a messy world. It is a solution that is mentioned in the encyclical itself.

Specifically, Pope Leo wrote:

[T]he Social Doctrine of the Church calls for a shared responsibility. It asks that these processes be guided with foresight: by institutions capable of regulating without stifling, and protecting without taking over; by businesses that recognize work and dignity as measures of success; by intermediary organizations and educational communities that rebuild trust and relationships; and by citizens who cultivate responsibility, moderation, discernment and a sense of truth. Only in this way can innovation genuinely serve integral human development, rather than becoming a source of exclusion and dominance (181).

These sentiments were echoed elsewhere in the document.

Indeed, we can learn from how we regulated markets in the past. In finance, for example, there was very little role for the state in regulating markets before the mid-1980s. Regulation came from professions, bodies such as exchanges, industry agreements, and so on. Their replacement by state regulatory bureaus has not been an obvious success – they can concentrate power and risk instead of dispersing it, as we saw in the financial crisis. Within a diverse regulatory eco-system, states and international institutions should play roles that are appropriate to their nature. Understanding exactly what international institutions can do and what states can do (which other bodies cannot do) to appropriately limit the dangers of AI is likely to lead to better results than an approach in which committees proliferate without any clear understanding of their role and limitations and in which the state alone is responsible for regulation. Instead, we can work to create a ‘polycentric’ ecosystem, within which there is also an important role for the family and schools in promoting virtuous behaviour in all markets, including in relation to AI, tech and big data.

Civil Law

Another long-forgotten instrument for regulating behaviour indirectly is tort law. Those who misuse AI in such a way that it creates harms should be held accountable through the civil legal code. This is not just an instrument of justice; the requirement to provide redress provides incentives to avoid recklessness. To be effective, tort law requires a clear understanding of citizens’ rights as well as effective protections of the right to property, including intellectual property. This includes the intellectual property of citizens – we often forget that the purpose of tort law is to protect the weak from the strong, not the other way round.

Overall, this approach would apply principles developed by Elinor Ostrom derived from her research on the management of environmental resources. Her work, surprisingly rarely mentioned in discussions about Catholic social teaching, is certainly compatible with that teaching. Polycentricity does not seek perfection, but workable and practical solutions with different entities within society taking on responsibilities appropriate to their nature.

Concentration and Dispersal: Further Advantages of Polycentricity

One final consideration is worth bearing in mind. There is an assumption, which seems to come through Magnifica humanitas, that the problems that arise with AI and ‘big data’ come from a small number of big players: ‘When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight’ (95). This is not necessarily so, and it has not been the experience in banking. The much more dispersed US banking model has been historically much more fragile than the more concentrated UK system. The UK experienced the crash of 2008, but that was the first in 140 years and many previous crises were averted by industry (and central bank) action – something made possible by the concentration of the sector. A relatively small number of parties had a strong interest in resolving the problems and could overcome collective action problems.

My hunch would be that the most dangerous events in AI will actually come from somebody working on something we don’t know about. It is the hundreds of millions of actors, some of whom will be deliberately malign and who will be extremely innovative, who may well create the fragilities about which we should be most concerned. A large company with a huge research lab might create a deadly bacterium using AI techniques. But there is good reason to be more concerned about the large number of small organisations that may well cause problems about which few people know until it is too late. There are, currently, literally millions of cyberhackers in the world. Whilst we might be worried about Google, Nvidia, Amazon, and so on, it is not clear that they are the biggest dangers in the world of AI. This is not an argument for or against state regulation. However, the more society as a whole is orientated towards promoting the common good as a result of the actions of families, educators, civil society, the civil legal code and tort law, supported by appropriate, but limited, regulatory responsibilities for states and international institutions in a polycentric order, the more exceptional bad actors will be. We cannot perfect the world; we cannot expect everybody to be a paragon of virtue; but we can try to make the promotion of vice less likely and create structures that seek to promote virtue.

CEME is proud to be part of a conference taking place at St. Mary’s University, London on the rapid development of AI and the recent publication by Pope Leo XIV of the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas.

Location: Waldegrave Drawing Room, St Mary’s University, London (Twickenham TW1 4SX)

Cost: £25 (free for St. Mary’s University students and staff, and contributors to the programme)

The conference is hosted at St Mary’s University, London and cosponsored by the university, CCLA and the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics.

Schedule:

9.30 am Tea/Coffee

10:00 am Welcome – Philip Booth (Professor of Catholic social thought and public policy, St. Mary’s University and Director of Policy and Research, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales) 

10.15 am Reflections on AI and Magnifica Humanitas – Bishop Paul Hendricks (Lead Bishop for AI, Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales)

10.45 am AI and the future of business – James Poulter (ThreePoint Labs). Chair: Rev. Philip Krinks (Director, Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics)

11:15 am Break

11:30 am AI Christian mission and evangelisation – Joe Hartropp, (Digital Labs Manager, Church of England), Dr. Collette McGovern (Permanent Mission of the Holy See, Geneva), Brenden Thompson (Director, Word on Fire UK), Maggie Doherty (Director, Centre for Living and Dying Well, St Mary’s University, Twickenham). Chair: Dr. Karen Singarayer (Vice Chair, Catholic Union)

12:30 pm Lunch Hosted by the Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics, CCLA and the MA in Catholic social teaching with short talks by Rev. Philip Krinks, Celia Waring (Head of Client Relationships, CCLA), and Fr Ashley Beck.

1.30 pm AI: Enterprise, innovation and investment – Kumar Jacob (Mindwave Ventures). Further speakers to be announced. Chair: Josephine Carlsson (Church Ethics Lead, CCLA)

2.30 pm AI and the future of humanity – Prof John Wyatt (Faraday Institute for Institute and Religion, Cambridge). Chair: Naoise Grenham (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales)

3.00 pm Human flourishing in the age of AI - Sr. Liz Dodd (Sisters of St Joseph of Peace), Rev. Philip Krinks (Director, Centre for Enterprise, Markets and Ethics), Delphine Chui (Independent Writer, Speaker and Content Producer), Rabbi Dr Harris Bor (London School of Jewish Studies). Chair: Rev. Prof. Oystein Lund (Vice Chancellor, St. Mary’s University)

4.00 pm Closing remarks, reflecting on the event and its relevance to the Catholic and Anglican traditions – Bishop Paul Hendricks and Rev. Philip Krinks

4.15 pm Finish

Criticism has not been lacking of a recent project to train AI models that resulted in the destruction of books. According to reports, tech companies have been approaching dealers of rare and antiquarian books and placing large orders – sometimes for over a hundred volumes – in order to train their AI models on the content. The use of high-speed scanning machines in the process involves spines being cut off pages being shredded or pulped, thus destroying the books. While one of the companies involved has claimed that its offer to acquire content was made to explore demand and was never actually pursued, the nature of the project has provoked disapproval.

Criticisms: The (De)Valuation of Human Endeavour

There are numerous reasons for which people object to the mass ingestion and destruction of books: breach of copyright, the threat of human obsolescence and the straightforward destruction of books – a practice with grim historical precedents. All have merit, albeit to varying degrees.

If the term of copyright has expired on books, then feeding their content into AI is not a breach of the rights of estates or authors, but for titles used in this way that are still copyright protected, there certainly are questions of ownership. Indeed, many publishers have licensed their content to tech companies for the purposes of training their AI models, though there have been suggestions that in reality, such agreements constituted a surrender on the part of publishers who were struggling to protect their content from being scraped by online bots anyway: if the content is going to be taken and used without an agreement, there is sense in reaching a formal licensing arrangement with a fee.

The argument regarding human obsolescence is more complicated. It is probable that human work in some fields will be replaced by AI and this may well become more likely if training AI models on human-produced content renders them better able to compete with human authors. However, it is far from clear that the development of AI will result in a ‘jobs apocalypse’. It is quite possible that while rendering some forms of work obsolete, AI will create new jobs or render existing roles more rewarding by removing a measure of repetitive work. Moreover, while the writing prepared by AI models is improving, most readers seem to agree that it is formulaic and inelegant. Perhaps the human (in literature) will not go the way of the horse (in agriculture) as a result of automation. Nevertheless, while perhaps over-stated, potential human obsolescence occasioned by a mere likeness of human effort, itself made possible by the use of genuine human-produced content, is a legitimate area of concern.

Opinions might vary but the destruction of rare or antiquarian books is surely distasteful. Books are cultural objects, the products of human endeavour and part of humanity’s collective heritage. Even if the content of those books is preserved in digital form and made accessible in its entirety to a wider readership – which is surely a service to culture and education – something of importance is irreplaceably lost when the original object is destroyed. Old or rare books have a value not simply because of their scarcity, but because they are the incarnation of human effort. Their embodiment of the intellectual concerns or literary (and manufacturing) endeavours of those who produced them goes beyond their monetary price: no pecuniary reward can replace them or compensate for their loss as products of human thought and creativity.

While these objections each have a different focus, they share an underlying concern with the devaluing or inadequate recognition of human effort and creativity. This fact invites an observation on the nature of AI and a question about the trade-offs involved in its development, as illustrated by the AI training project that provoked such visceral condemnation in some quarters.

Training AI and the Value of Human Content

Books can be scanned without destroying them, so a certain amount of the opprobrium occasioned by the project in question is connected to the needless destruction involved. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind the fact that the destruction, though thoughtless, lazy or wasteful, was not capricious: there was no desire to destroy purely for the sake of doing so. There was a purpose, of sorts: to train AI models. This can take place in various ways, sometimes through human interaction as ‘trainers’ correct the model’s ability to recognise images, for example. Alternatively, models can crawl the internet and scrape information from websites. It is now possible for more advanced AI models to train other models and there is talk of recursive AI development, whereby models improve their own code and capabilities without the need for human input.

However, the use of books reminds us that the training of models also relies upon human-produced content. As the website that originally reported the story states, the models have absorbed so much data and the internet is now so full of AI-generated ‘slop’ that fresh, human-made data is required if the models are to improve.

Human Exceptionalism and AI

This in itself perhaps tells us something of significance: no matter how sophisticated it has become, no matter how much data it is fed, AI remains substantially less than human. In order to advance further, it needs content created by human beings. What it is crucial to recognise, however, is that even were it to absorb all of the books in the world, it would still neither know nor understand anything. Creativity, understanding, critical thought and imagination are fundamentally human traits, and for all the advances in artificial intelligence, such capacities remain – and one might believe will forever remain – beyond the reach of machines. Put simply, in important respects human beings are by their very nature fundamentally different from AI. Human creativity has a unique value and this is recognised by AI developers – albeit perhaps for different reasons – even when they are destroying its fruits.

Addressing AI Trade-Offs

In light of this observation about the uniqueness of human thought and effort, how are the trade-offs involved in the development and implementation of AI to be addressed? In short, are the costs ‘worth it’? The answer will depend on what it is that AI is believed to be capable of and what it is that is being lost. One social media user commented that books that had survived wars and fires were being destroyed so that AI could write a better marketing email. If that is the case, the standpoint is obvious: valuable and rare artefacts are being lost to pursue an end of highly questionable value.

The trade-offs connected with artificial intelligence are unlikely always to be so clear-cut. In order to assess them, it is important to keep in mind the status of AI and the uniqueness of human beings. Artificial intelligence is emphatically not human and remains only an artifice or tool. As such, the question that must be asked is what AI is being developed and used for. Is it in the service of human beings – and if so, does it meet some genuine human need or realise some definite good?

Much is said at present about the capacity of artificial intelligence to transform the way we work, to increase productivity, to assist with medical research and improve healthcare. The destruction of books – some of which were rare and valuable – to increase incrementally the power of a large language model is of dubious worth. It is far from clear what good this achieves. Will faster or more accurate answers to users’ online queries compensate for what has been lost? Would the development of an ‘agentic’ AI bot that can book flights for busy executives be sufficient? Perhaps tech companies have reason to believe that the more advanced models that emerge will lead to medical breakthroughs. Or are they simply engaged in a development race based on ever greater levels of investment and spending without a clear object in view?

Moreover, the costs – real or potential – beyond the destruction of books must also be considered. Are these – the surrender of copyright or the loss of livelihoods – justified by concrete human goods realised by advancing AI?

Conclusion: Human-Centred AI

Put simply, the development of AI, as a device, is properly conducted in a manner that focuses on genuine goods and human flourishing. (For a fuller discussion, see Andrei Rogobete’s work on human-centred artificial intelligence). In the case of this project, much of the opprobrium online was fuelled by the destruction of books and putative breaches of copyright. However, even with proper licensing of copyright-protected material, even with the preservation of rare books or their return to suitable custodians or re-circulation in the market, the question that needs to be addressed is, ‘To what end?’ or more specifically, ‘For what human good?’ It is the failure adequately to value such human goods that lies at the heart of the major criticisms levelled at the project in question. This single instance illustrates a far broader principle: without some clearly defined human good in view, AI-development risks appearing speculative, indeterminate and of questionable value.

The worldly wisdom of the corporate executive: A parable

Anyone who has worked in a large corporation, or NGO, or even public sector organisation, will be familiar with the dreaded term, Organisational Restructuring – as in, there’s going to be … A Restructuring. That means everyone’s jobs will change. Some people will advance a bit, some people will lose out a bit, and sadly some people will have to leave the organisation. It can be a time of horrible uncertainty, and it can bring out the worst in people.

Imagine a corporate executive who listens to what her CEO is saying on the monthly management calls – and realises that restructuring is coming. The politics is against her. It’s been made to look like it’s her unit which is underperforming. So, sadly, her time with the firm is going to end. She’s going to be made redundant and at a very awkward time in life.

And then she says to herself: ‘What shall I do? For the restructuring is going to take away my job. I’m not suited to more manual work. I don’t want to be reduced to begging. But maybe … I’ve got a better idea: an idea which will make sure there’ll be something for me after this – on the buy side.’

So she calls each of her clients one by one. She says to the first, ‘How much have we invoiced you this quarter, how much are you due to pay us?’ And the client says: ‘£100,000, as I remember.’ And she says to him, ‘Take the invoice I sent, quietly cross out £100,000 and write £50,000.’ The client is a bit surprised, but goes away not exactly unhappy at the retrospective discount. And then she says to the second client, who’s in the Eurozone, ‘How much did we invoice you?’ and the client says, ‘€100,000.’ And she says to him, ‘Take the invoice we sent you – and quietly write €80,000.’

And the CEO hears about what the outgoing executive has done, and the CEO is actually rather impressed with her. ‘Very shrewd,’ the CEO thinks – and perhaps he’s even regretting his restructuring decision. ‘Very shrewd, to use the company’s money to hand out these discounts, and make friends on the buy side on the way out. That might well give her a safe harbour after she leaves our organisation.’ Because the CEO knows a man or woman of the world when he sees one. And he knows wisdom – at least, worldly wisdom – when he sees it.

The worldly wisdom of the rich man’s steward: Jesus’s parable

If you know your Bible, you’ll know that Jesus, perhaps surprisingly, tells a version of exactly this story. My parable is just a modernised version of Jesus’s famous one about the worldly wisdom of the rich man’s steward, a kind of estate manager, who is about to be dismissed. You can find ‘The Parable of the Unjust Steward’ in Luke’s gospel at the start of chapter 16. Like the executive, the steward goes round all those who owe his master money, and, to give himself some prospects for the future, gets them to discount his bills.

And what Jesus says to his disciples about his parable is something which most people initially find rather shocking. He says that, even though we are called to be children of light – and not children of this world – we can learn something from this kind of situation.

What on earth can we learn from these unedifying stories?

There are two things which Jesus suggests we can learn from his story, unedifying as it may first seem.

The first is that, even though as his disciples we are called to be children of light, and not children of the world, we must still live for now in the world as it is.

And in the world as it is we have to reckon with what Jesus calls ‘mammon’: with money, with finances, with all kinds of choices about how we acquire resources and how we steward them once we’ve got them.

The second is that in this world wisdom isn’t optional, but that there are higher forms of wisdom than the worldly wisdom, or shrewdness, of that corporate executive or unjust steward, who use their employers’ money to buy themselves into safety after the redundancy axe falls.

Jesus says that, when we as disciples deal with money, we must have as much, or even more wisdom, than the children of the world; not less. But it is not the same kind of wisdom. Jesus tells his disciples that we are to use our resources, and in particular our money, to make friends, to build relationships, yes; but not the kind of instrumental relationships of narrow self-interest sought by the worldly wise. Instead we are to form relationships which have ethical and spiritual integrity, friendships which will keep us safe, not just for a few years in a new role, or until we can take our pensions, but for eternity, because they are good for our souls. These friendships are as much, or more, about helping others, as getting them to help us. And we all have people we are in a position to help through our engagement in the economy: whether through our positive-sum exchanges in markets, or through our charitable giving, or even by paying our taxes.

Money as idol – Or icon?

We all know that mammon is able to express and cause all kinds of what previous generations would have called ‘unrighteousness’. And in fact in the passage Jesus calls it ‘the mammon of unrighteousness’. But that’s not all he says. He also says that mammon can be used for good. And that is the call Jesus makes to us in our economic exchanges: to use our money to do some good in the world, and to do ourselves some spiritual good in the light of eternity.

One way to express this is to say that human beings are always liable to make an idol out of money, to treat mammon itself as a kind of god. And indeed it is in this passage that Jesus famously warns us, ‘you cannot serve God and mammon’. He is telling us that only one of these can be ultimate in our lives. And that it is not in fact true wisdom to choose mammon as ultimate, but true foolishness, and indeed a kind of idolatry.

So let us not allow our use of money to make it an idol which competes with God. Rather let us make our use of money into the kind of beautiful icon we see in Orthodox churches, through which God’s goodness may be glimpsed. And if we can look at life’s challenges that way, we will find that God’s goodness helps us. We will find that Jesus’s call is not one we have to respond to solely in the strength of our small selves, but one for which we can draw energy from the transcendent, magnetic goodness of God, which we see revealed in the words and sacrificial love of Jesus himself.

Image: Drawing of L’Économe infidèle (The Unjust Steward) by Eugène Burnand, 1908

S. L. Frank’s liberal philosophy is a hidden twentieth century gem which integrates Orthodox Christianity and spontaneous order. It offers a way to ground personalist freedom, limited government, and Christian realism against utopian tyranny and autocracy today.

Finding Frank

It was the end of a long day in London last July. My wife Kelly and I had seen Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral that morning, and I spoke with the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales that afternoon about my research and then-forthcoming book. Hendon Cemetery was only a mile or two north, though. How long could it take get there? As with anywhere in London traffic, the answer was about two hours.

As sundown approached, Kelly and I wandered lost in the graveyard. He was here somewhere, we knew that, but we hadn’t anticipated how large the cemetery would be. The London sky threatened rain, but it held off, and the happy chirps of rose-ringed parakeets kept us hopeful, even when we split up and I worried my phone battery might die before either of us found him. There among the graves, we passed many Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Muslims, all resting in peace together. My mind wandered to the great Scots novelist George MacDonald’s Lilith: ‘Of such as I could see, all were alike in the brotherhood of death, all unlike in the character and history recorded upon them.’ We’re all religiously tolerant in the end, whether we want to be or not. Then my phone buzzed. She had found him.

A tall, wooden, Russian cross, at least four feet high, with an engraved icon of the risen Christ over the top and middle, marks the final resting place of S.L. Frank. Kelly had to clear away a dense brush of vines just to read it. We must have been the first to visit in a long time. With the help of AI, we translated the epitaph. A plaque with a biblical quotation from the Wisdom of Solomon there reads, in Old Slavonic, ‘I loved wisdom and sought her from my youth … Knowing that I shall not otherwise obtain her unless the Lord gives her, I came to the Lord’ (Wisdom 8:2, 21). I couldn’t come all way to London and not pay my respects to Frank.

When people think of Russian civilization, ‘liberal’ isn’t their first descriptor. From Moscow’s tsars, to the Russian Empire, to the Soviet Union, to Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation today – words like ‘autocratic,’ ‘totalitarian,’ ‘repressive,’ and other illiberal modifiers make more sense. Nevertheless, that is not the whole story, and the Russian Orthodox philosopher S.L. Frank puts the lie to the claim (often portrayed in positive terms by opponents of liberalism) that Russia and its dominant religious tradition, Orthodox Christianity, are fundamentally opposed to liberty.

Frank’s ‘Remarkable Life’

‘Quite apart from his philosophy,’ writes his biographer Philip Boobbyer, ‘[Frank] lived a remarkable life.’ Semyon Lyudvigovich Frank was born to a Jewish family in Moscow on January 19, 1877. His father died of leukemia when he was only five years-old. His maternal grandfather taught him Hebrew, instructed him in the Bible, and took him to synagogue. Frank’s grandfather died when he was fourteen, however, and his teen years were shaped more by his stepfather, who fostered in him a growing interest in revolutionary Marxism. This phase, however, did not last long. According to V. V. Zenkovsky, ‘In 1899 Frank was arrested and exiled from the university cities; he went abroad, working in Berlin and Munich on political economy and philosophy. His first published work (Marx’s Theory of Value) was devoted to a critique of Marxism (1900).’

Though Frank soon made philosophy his lifelong vocation, his years studying economics, as well as his longtime friendship with economist Petr Struve, another Russian liberal, made their mark on his later work. In particular, as we’ll see, Frank has a clear appreciation for spontaneous order. ‘All that is generally accepted in society,’ he writes in The Spiritual Foundations of Society,

e.g., mores, habits, fashions, even law (insofar as it is common law) and the price of goods (insofar as taxes and tariffs are neglected), exists without any special contract or agreement, appears ‘spontaneously’ in some manner and not as the consciously set goal of the general will. History shows that the state itself and state power arise and exist precisely in this manner: ‘spontaneously’ and not as the result of conscious social agreement. Only on the basis of this elementally and unconsciously formed common order and unity is it possible to have, in certain particular and limited domains and cases, the conscious agreement of individuals (e.g., rulers, national representatives, statesmen) and the conscious action of these individuals upon social life.

For Frank, however, this spontaneity represents more than historical, cultural evolution – as it does for F.A. Hayek, for example, who was working in parallel in London in the 1930s and 1940s and with whom Frank otherwise has a lot in common, although there is no evidence that he knew of Hayek’s work. ‘The forms of social relations,’ writes Frank, ‘are normalized by rules … that are not consciously instituted by anyone but are generated spontaneously and have a direct religious sanction; common law is conceived as the self-evident eternal expression … of the “obligatory” in human relations.’ In this, Frank is closer to Adam Smith, who wrote in his Theory of Moral Sentiments, ‘When by natural principles we are led to advance those ends which a refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we are very apt to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends, and to imagine that to be the wisdom of man, which in reality is the wisdom of God.’

Following a brief period of youthful atheism, Frank came back to religion like many of his friends and peers, including the philosopher Nikolai Berdaeyev and theologian (then economist) Fr. Sergei Bulgakov. After a decade of discernment, in 1912 Frank was baptized into the Orthodox Church. Together with them and other critics of the Bolsheviks, Frank was exiled from Soviet Russia in 1922, settling in Berlin. By 1937, he again fled for his life, this time from the Nazis, to Paris. After the Fall of Paris in 1940, he and his wife Tatiana sent their adult children to London while they hid out in the mountains near Grenoble. These years of exile were remarkably productive for Frank. Several of his major works date to this period, all marked by an unmovable faith in God who both transcends the turmoil of the world and yet grounds its very existence, suffering along with us in Jesus Christ. Frank was acutely aware of the reality of evil and the perils of political power. Many of his friends and relatives died in the Holocaust. In 1945, after the end of the war, the Franks reunited in London, where Semyon died of lung cancer on December 10, 1950, three-times-over a refugee – a ‘remarkable life,’ indeed.

Frank’s ‘Christian Realism’

Two Kinds of Order

Against the conceit of central planners, Hayek distinguished between two types of knowledge: (1) ‘scientific knowledge’ of ‘general rules’ and (2) ‘unorganized,’ local ‘knowledge of the particular circumstances of time and place.’ Frank makes a similar distinction: ‘We have not one but two kinds of knowledge: (1) abstract knowledge about the “object” expressed in judgments and concepts – knowledge which is always of a secondary order; and (2) immediate perception or intuition of the “object” in its metalogical wholeness and indivisibleness – primary knowledge upon which abstract knowledge is based and from which it originates.’ Both reject the scientistic claim that all that can be known, or at least all that matters to know, is empirical observation, measurement, and deduction.

But for Frank, as we’ve already seen, there is a deeper, ontological dimension to this. As he writes in another work, ‘reality in its living concreteness is wider and deeper than “the world of objective fact.” A philosophy adequate to the task of obtaining true knowledge of reality is therefore always based upon the living inner experience, in some sense akin to the experience that is called “mystical.”’ The unfathomable aspect of reality that we know through living experience is possible only through an ultimate, ontological connection between all existing things, or ‘all-unity,’ a common theme of Russian religious philosophy.

To Frank, this unknowable ‘other’ at the base of and uniting all things is the divine, which, consistent with Orthodox Christian theology, we can conceptually only gesture at through apophatic reasoning and metaphor: ‘Although no positive determinations in the usual sense are applicable to God,’ he writes, citing the ancient Christian mystic Dionysius the Areopagite, ‘they are applicable to Him in a different, metaphorical sense. It cannot be said, for instance, that God is “good” in the sense of possessing this quality as something that determines His nature, but at the same time it can and must be said that, being the source of goodness, He is “surpassing good” ….’ As such, evil constitutes the rejection of this mystical aspect of life, thus always entailing, if only subconsciously, the rejection of God. Conversely, all good, even that done by atheists, represents some expression of communion with the divine or ‘Godmanhood,’ a term Frank takes from the Russian Orthodox philosopher Vladimir Soloviev. On this generous ecumenical basis, Frank affirmed freedom of conscience and religious liberty.

For Frank, errors of knowledge come from either mistaking one of the two types of knowledge for the whole, or else from confusing one with the other, rather than seeing both as reflecting essential aspects of reality. Because this applies to all reality, it also applies to society, which rests on this same spiritual foundation. ‘On the one hand,’ writes Frank, ‘society is constructed through conscious planning; on the other hand, it is formed and grows “by itself.”’ Thus, Frank outlines an identical distinction to Hayek between spontaneous order and centrally-planned order. Hayek laments that English does not contain two different words for this, so he employs the Greek cosmos and taxis, respectively. Frank, however, is able to use the Russian terms sobornost’ and obshchestvennost’. Sobornost’ literally means ‘catholic,’ deriving from the phrase ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church’ in the Nicene Creed in Old Slavonic. It refers to the conciliar nature of authority in the Orthodox Church – as distinct from papal authority in Roman Catholicism and sola scriptura in Protestantism – but by Frank’s time had been expanded to a general social and philosophical principle.

How the Worst Get on Top

Failing to understand this twofold nature of social life generates errors of social theory, leading Frank to a Road to Serfdom-esque analysis of how the worst get on top. He writes in his political philosophy, The Light Shineth in Darkness,

All utopians transfer the function of salvation to the law, to measures of state compulsion or, at best, moral compulsion – a function that, in essence, only the free powers of God’s grace are capable of performing … Since the law in its essence is incapable of performing this task, it is necessary, in a vain attempt to perform this task, to immeasurably intensify the force of the law, to have recourse to tyrannically harsh and despotic forms of the law, normalizing all aspects of human life.

Just like Hayek, Frank notes how the impossibility of centrally planning all of social life leads to moral compromise – a Gresham’s Law of leadership. Bad leaders drive out good. He writes,

The bloody torture of living people, the crippling and repression of concrete life in the name of the attainment of absolute truth on earth, continues without end and without leading to the desired goal. But then, in the long process of this crippling of life, one more unexpected transformation occurs that is not part of the original plan of its initiators: the final goal itself, the kingdom of absolute good, begins to disappear from the consciousness, blocked by emotions that are necessary for this arduous path to its attainment. Power gradually passes into the hands of people whose character is adequate to the cruel, bloody work of the crippling of life, into the hands of villains and executioners, who naturally think of nothing but the protection – by all means of repression and falsehood – of their power. The radiant dream of salvation and the happiness of all people is transformed into the somber glorification of hate, cruelty, [and] inhumanity as normal motive forces of human life.

No doubt, Frank would agree with Acton (whose work he knew): ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority.’ The most noble ideal, combined with unchecked power, too often leads ‘great men’ to become ‘bad men.’

Personalism and Political Power

So if Frank rejects all such utopianism – and he lived through many tragic forms of it – what did he affirm? Boobbyer rightly refers to Frank as a ‘Christian liberal.’ ‘In practice, liberalism or Manchesterism contains a considerable amount of truth. But this truth usually receives an incorrect philosophical explanation,’ Frank explains. In particular, he takes issue with egoism, utilitarianism, and social atomism. He would not be a fan of Ayn Rand. Because Frank believes that all things are grounded and fulfilled in the ‘all-unity’ of ‘Godmanhood’ or sobornost’, he rejects atomistic individualism in favor of philosophical personalism. Or, Hayek might say, he rejects false individualism for true.

We could add to this by calling Frank a personalist liberal as well. There is a spiritual unity at the base of all human society that turns an external collection of individuals – ‘he,’ ‘she,’ and ‘they’ – into an inner unity of ‘I and thou’ or simply ‘we.’ All people come from ‘we’ as basic fact of biology, not to mention sociology. The family and religion thus represent the holiest of social spheres, but Frank insists that business and even the state can and must manifest this inner unity as well. Regarding the state, Frank insists that ‘state power is necessarily limited by the presence of civil society and the uneliminability of the latter.’ As we are not isolated individuals but rather persons embedded in various communities, the state must respect the autonomy of those communities. The state can impose rules that externally order collections of individuals, but it cannot create the inner unity necessary for healthy social life. Through civil law, solidarity and freedom – the planning of the state and the spontaneity of non-state social spheres (‘civil society,’ in Frank’s usage) – are harmonized into mutual service.

Thus, Frank insists, the law, which addresses impartial justice based upon natural law, must establish the necessary structure for free and personal mercy (or, Adam Smith would say, ‘beneficence’), by protecting rule of law, private property, religious liberty, economic freedom, freedom of speech, academic liberty, and democratic consent. At the same time, mores and common law must establish a moral culture that preserves the responsible use of freedom. For Frank, as for Edmund Burke, the extent of law will reflect the extent of a people’s moral character. Going beyond Burke from his Orthodox Christian perspective, Frank therefore insists on the importance of ascetic practices (e.g., prayer, fasting, almsgiving) for people to learn the self-restraint they need to be free and to encounter the unfathomable source of true freedom, God.

Like Reinhold Niebuhr (but independently of him), Frank accordingly refers to his own political position as ‘Christian realism.’ Acknowledging the imperfection of a world fallen into sin, from his Christian point of view, he does not expect utopian perfection, even while considering the task of saving or ‘perfecting the world,’ exercised within these constraints, to be a noble one. Understood in this context, Frank fondly quotes Vladimir Soloviev, who wrote, ‘The purpose of legal justice is not to transform the world which lies in evil into the kingdom of God, but only to prevent it from changing too soon into hell.’

Because, for Frank, a divinely-grounded freedom and unity lies at the basis of all society and, for that matter, all reality, he can only justify coercive force as a matter of the doctrine of double effect, i.e., when inaction or indifference would be a greater sin. ‘War is an evil and a sin,’ he said in a series of lectures, citing the most extreme example of state power, ‘and a monk and hermit is right when he abstains from participation in it. But he is right because he never uses the fruits of war, because he does not need the political state which is waging the war and all that the state gives to men.’ By contrast, ‘Those who are ready to use the fruits of war, those who still need a state, bear responsibility for the destiny of the state and, sinning together with the latter, they sin less than those who wash their hands of the matter and shift the sin to others.’ Thus, when coercive force is necessary to preserve the institutions of free and gracious spontaneity in social life, Frank supports it, but only as the less sinful option in an imperfect world.

Conclusion: A Road Once Travelled

Religious illiberalism is ascendent today with the surprising popularity of such books as Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed, Adrian Vermeule’s Common Good Constitutionalism, Yoram Hazony’s The Virtue of Nationalism, and Stephen Wolfe’s The Case for Christian Nationalism – along with a Vice President and Secretary of War in the United States known to repeat their rhetoric. Yet what these authors still only hope for, Russia sadly has been doing in recent years. However, that is not the whole story. S.L. Frank, though an original thinker in his own right, nevertheless saw within his Russian Orthodox Christian tradition the foundations of a free society. Indeed, Russian history includes not only the despotism of its tsars and emperors, but also the more-than-three-centuries-long medieval republics of Pskov and Novgorod, and a century of Church-led liberalization in the Russian Empire before the tide turned following the Decemberists’ failed uprising in 1825. Even afterward, it was Metropolitan St. Filaret of Moscow who authored Emperor Alexander II’s 1861 Emancipation Manifesto, liberating the serfs.

Liberty is not just a ‘road untraveled’ in Russia and the Orthodox Church, it is a ‘road once travelled, but too briefly,’ a road on which, with S.L. Frank as a guide, others – of any nation or religion – could travel even farther today. It is high time to clear the brush away from this lost liberal’s grave and, in the words of the Orthodox memorial service, ensure that his ‘memory be eternal.’

Image: S.L. Frank portraits on Radishchev Street, between buildings 16 and 18; Saratov. Sourced from Wikimedia Commons on a creative commons licence.

Plenty of people have probably inadvertently thanked a machine at some point in their lives, perhaps when taking a cup of coffee from the dispenser or before leaving a self-service checkout. Evidently, this is a momentary lapse of thought: offering thanks amounts to recognition of a service rendered, whether gratuitously or as part of an exchange, and where there exists only automation devoid of consciousness and therefore any intention to serve, thanks are out of place.

When this occurs, the individual has simply responded – a result of a childhood education or training – in a perfectly normal fashion to the experience of receiving something. He has merely overlooked, temporarily, the fact that he has received from something rather than someone. We might even say that his mistake demonstrates good manners, albeit in error, and a measure of decent character.

Duties to Machines?

Clearly, no thanks are due to a coffee machine, but we might ask whether we have any moral duties to machines, particularly apparently intelligent ones, such as advanced artificial intelligence. On one level, it would appear not. We can no more be duty bound to treat an unthinking assemblage of silicon and plastic in a particular manner than we can have a moral obligation to our car or mobile phone. Would this remain the case if the technology were more advanced, however?

Imagine a situation in which artificial intelligence is so advanced as to enable humanoid robots to behave more or less exactly as human beings do. They are able to communicate, process information quickly and perform all manner of tasks just as well as human beings, or better – so much so that they begin to displace human beings from their places of work. Some are even programmed to respond to certain types of behaviour just as humans do, such that, while not conscious or possessed of feelings, they might cower and cry out if damaged, as though in pain and afraid. Suppose a worker who has lost her job to one such robot returns to her former place of work and, out of frustration and anger, attacks one of the machines that she believes has cost her her livelihood.

In these circumstances, what has the frustrated ex-employee done wrong? This question admits of different answers. One response would be to say that she has done no wrong to the robot at all. In spite of its apparent cries for help and ‘fear-behaviour’, as a non-conscious, unfeeling machine, without subjectivity, intentions, future-orientation or any conception of its own wellbeing, there is no real sense in which she can have wronged it. She might completely destroy it, but since the notion of ‘wronging’ another appears to depend on the presence of some level of personhood, and ‘harm’ to require at the very least life if not consciousness in the other, we would probably not say that she had ‘harmed’ it in the usual sense of the word – not as we would say that she had harmed or wronged her manager if she had turned upon him after destroying the robot.

Duties to Other People

Nevertheless, our neo-Luddite has clearly done something wrong. In the first instance, she has violated the property rights of the owners of the robot and, we might suggest, failed to accord respect to the work of its creators. In a sense, she is guilty of a similar kind of wrongdoing to that of a protester who enters a car showroom and damages one of the display vehicles. This perhaps provides a clue as to where our moral considerations in relation to artificial intelligence ought to be focused: not on the technology itself, but on other human beings according to their relationships with it. Perhaps there is a sense in which, by according a degree of respect to artificial intelligence, as with any product of human creation, we do right by according respect to those who create, own and make use of it.

Virtue: A Duty to Ourselves

By extension, our moral concerns might also focus on ourselves. That is to say, turning our attention from the act to the agent, we could go beyond the claim that in smashing the robot, the angry former-employee has wronged other people and ask ourselves what sort of person she is. At the very least, we might say that in acting in this fashion, she displays certain vices and in so doing harms her own character. Her actions show insufficient self-control and manifest vices such as irascibility and even spite or envy (as opposed to good-temper or righteous indignation, which, incidentally, does not preclude a measure of anger, properly manifested), along with impatience and foolhardiness (or a lack of fortitude).

Virtue-based approaches to morality, with their focus on the character of the moral agent, contend that in being taught to be good as we grow up and in seeking to practise the virtues, we cultivate our character in such a way that, as we acquire and develop certain excellences, good conduct becomes more natural to us. Where we neglect to do this or have never been taught, we fall into vice and good conduct is rendered difficult. Just as good conduct emanates from and reinforces virtuous dispositions, poor conduct encourages vice and itself flows from a vicious character. Thus, where the agent in our example gives in to rage and attacks a robot, we might identify not only failures of virtue but a corrupting influence on her own character.

The Human Focus

It is perhaps fair to say that we have no duties to machines. We cannot harm or wrong them in the way that we can harm or injure human beings – at least not in the current state of technological development. However, there are relevant moral considerations to reflect upon. Thanking a machine for dispensing a cup of coffee is clearly unnecessary, while vandalising a machine does no wrong to the machine. Each, perhaps, can be considered indicative of certain attitudes and character traits that are morally significant. If we look beyond the machines themselves as the objects of our conduct, it becomes clear that our interaction with and treatment of artificial intelligence is not morally neutral.

We have duties to other people and insofar as our interaction with artificial intelligence is germane to those, our treatment of technology matters. Similarly, our treatment of artificial intelligence is potentially significant for our own moral development. As such, while we owe nothing morally to machines in any direct sense, through our treatment of them we can meet certain moral obligations in relation to others and ourselves. Any duties we have to machines, therefore, might best be considered indirect duties to human beings.

In some economic theories we are told to trust the market: as a reliable arbitrator between supply and demand, and as a price-setter. Yet in their daily decisions Christians are encouraged to trust God. Are these the same kind of trust? If they are two different types of trust, are they in competition with each other?

It might be tempting to think that the two kinds of trust are at least similar: that proponents of the market economy call for trust in markets in the same way Christians are called to have faith in God. For Christians, however, believing in free markets cannot quite be the same as faith in God – and not only because market models inevitably contain oversimplifications, flattening particular aspects of reality to fit general economic theory.

Rather, Christians are called, first, to shift our trust to God rather than any human being, institution or other created thing, and, secondly, to relate to one another in a moral way. These two are commandments and are absolute: trust in God and loving our neighbour cannot be conditional.

This does not mean we cannot trust markets to do certain things well. But the two sentences I started with were not talking about the same kind of trust. What we mean by trust needs further differentiation. My argument is that how we trust, and whom we trust, is both the basis for economic decision-making and a profoundly moral choice.

The Meaning of Trust in Luke’s Gospel

Luke the Evangelist offers radical teaching on faith and economics. Some have portrayed Luke as an early opponent of a market economy, misunderstanding his calls to all believers to hold goods in common and share resources in Acts 2 and Acts 4. Yet these are in fact best interpreted, not as a narrowly economic teaching, so much as a teaching about our relationship to God, and how it informs our economic decisions.

Luke’s focus is on the call to radically trust God, including in our economic choices. The Greek word Luke uses repeatedly, ‘pistis’, is arguably closer to ‘trust’ or ‘fidelity’, than to ‘faith’ or ‘belief’ in our contemporary understanding – although it is often translated with these terms. For example Luke’s description of the Early Church, often translated as the ‘Community of Believers’, or ‘Community of Faith’, could equally be translated literally as ‘the group of those who trusted’.

In an earlier blog post for both the LSE and the World Economic Forum, I argued that, ‘throughout Luke’s Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles, those who trust in God and his providence are able to be generous: Zacchaeus and the poor widow are examples given by Luke. That trust in God is so central to Luke’s message, that those who preferred to trust in their own investments rather than in God were chastised by the Early Church: Judas, who bought a field with the betrayal money, and Ananias and Sapphira, who kept part of the proceeds from the sale of their land.’

For Luke, trust in God, or a lack thereof, is what informs economic decisions and makes them intrinsically moral acts. There is a direct correlation, arguably a causal relationship, between the level of trust in God that the Community of Believers then, and the whole Body of Christ now, places in God, and the generosity they demonstrate.

What Luke invites us to see is more profound than simply teaching us not to put trust in idols, including any form of economic ideology. He is asking us to see that our economic actions go beyond material advantage, or rational calculations driven by our self-interest: in Acts 2, Luke describes how the newly baptised, who received the Holy Spirit, make certain economic choices as a direct result of trusting – having confidence – in a faithful God who has shown himself to be at work in this world. It is not that we know ex ante that this trust will necessarily be materially rewarded, either immediately or even long-term. Otherwise it would not be trust, but expectation with a high, if not absolute, degree of probability. The basis of Christian economic decision-making is therefore not rationality in the secular economic sense, but rather it is rational morally and spiritually, because it is doing the objectively right thing.

At the same time Luke’s teaching cannot be understood as encouraging us to be bad stewards of our money, or not to plan long term. Someone might look at the case of Ananias and Sapphira, and, assuming good intent on their part, ask what they did wrong. After all, all other things being equal, buying and keeping land whilst collecting rent from it, for example, to give it to the poor would be a perfectly rational thing to do. But in the context of the decision of that group of believers to engage in a practice of radical sharing, Luke’s point is to ask why they could not trust God sufficiently to join in with it.

This thought has the potential to create radical freedom for those who are fortunate enough to have assets to invest. They are not obliged to focus purely on financial return. Consider an entrepreneur who invests in a community project with a high risk of financial failure because it serves the vulnerable. A standard economic model might label this to be economically irrational, due to the likelihood that the return on investment will be low at best. Even if the decision to invest is construed as maximising a sense of doing the right thing, this still misses Luke’s point. For the believer, this is neither a miscalculation of risk, or nor a matter of optimising their feel-good factor: it is a deliberate act of ‘pistis’. In other words, an investor who commits to a morally worthwhile venture despite financial risk is not doing it to maximise ‘warm, fuzzy feelings’ or virtue signalling; they are investing because the act itself is a moral act, fully aware that the venture may fail.

It would not be going too far to say that Luke has no opinion to offer on whether markets are a good thing or not – only on how we ought to act within them. Ananias and Sapphira, and Judas, used a market exchange to invest and receive their proceeds, but it was not the mechanism which was at fault. It was their own lack of trust in God.

Beyond a Reductive Economics

Accounting for the role of trust in economic exchanges is a question relevant both for Christians and others. This is because markets must be understood as more than mechanical instruments to regulate supply and demand, even if that is their primary benefit. They are also social institutions, embedded in relationships, which inevitably have a moral dimension. Trust is key in enabling voluntary exchanges between participants. At a first order of analysis this is about trust between individuals, but that is related to shared values and to the belief systems in which they are grounded. For Christians, and those of other faiths, these include trust in God.

Critics might argue that if everyone acted on unconditional trust, the market would collapse, as free riders would exploit the virtuous. This is a valid concern, but it misses the point. Lukan trust is not naïve. Indeed it is explicitly viewed as a virtue that requires a community to sustain it. A market economy cannot create a community of believers, but it turns out to depend on multiple forms of trust and belief. This – and relatedly whether it is based on generosity or greed – will determine what its outcomes are.

When we conflate trust in market mechanisms with trust in human relationships, we miss the moral prerequisites that markets cannot generate themselves. As the Vatican’s 2018 economic teaching document ‘OPQ’ observes, ‘the market needs anthropological and ethical prerequisites that it is neither capable of giving for itself, nor producing on its own’ (s.23).

From Pius XI’s warning in Quadragesimo Anno that ‘the right ordering of economic life cannot be left to a free competition of forces’ (s.88), to Pope Francis’s rejection of ‘trickle-down theories’ in Evangelii Gaudium (s.54), the Catholic Church has consistently called for discernment rather than ideological adherence. Yet this is not a call to abandon markets, but to recognise their proper role. The question we are called to discern is how markets and our actions within them can serve the common good.

As Christians, we are called to recognise that we are moral agents as much as economic ones when engaging in exchanges; we bear the responsibility to ground economic activity within the realm of morality, acting through both personal choices and the creation of structures that empower good decisions without coercion. The challenge for secular economic thought is that such good choices are not easily reduced to utility-maximising functions.

Conclusion

Luke invites us to consider trust (‘pistis’) in God as a virtue with great salience for economics. Whereas some market logics may attempt to reduce trust to a calculation, the biblical tradition calls us to act on the basis of our trust in God. From that Biblical perspective the debate is not ‘pro-market versus anti-market’, but rather whether markets can be tools for human flourishing. If we determine that trust is a virtue to be pursued by moral agents in a market economy, the question then is not whether to trust markets, but rather how markets can enable virtuous behaviours. For the believer the market is not a god to be trusted, but a stage upon which the virtue of ‘pistis’ is tested and lived out.

Our sixth Fforestfach Colloquium was held in the House of Lords on Thursday, 16^th April, 2026.  We had the pleasure of listening and responding to three excellent speakers addressing the question, ‘How Much Love, To Which Neighbours? Our Duties Within the Nation and Beyond.’

Our three presenters included Dr Nick Spencer, Senior Fellow at Theos, a Christian think tank; Daniel Johnson, journalist, and founding Editor of TheArticle, an online journalism platform, and a former senior editor, editorial writer and columnist for The Times and The Daily Telegraph; and Dr David Miller, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford and author of On Nationality and National Responsibility and Global Justice (2007). The audience of about 20 invited guests listened intently and responded readily with insightful questions and comments that ranged freely across the speakers’ remarks.

Our speakers have kindly provided us with the text of their presentations, which can be accessed below.

Presentation 1:

What are our Moral Duties as a Nation? by Nick Spencer

Dr Nick Spencer is Senior Fellow at Theos. He is the author of a number of books and reports, including Magisteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion (Oneworld, 2023), The Political Samaritan: How Power Hijacked a Parable (Bloomsbury, 2017), The Evolution of the West (SPCK, 2016) and Atheists: The Origin of the Species (Bloomsbury, 2014). He is host of the podcast Reading Our Times.

Presentation 2:

How Much Love, to Which Neighbours? Our Duties Within the Nation and Beyond, by Daniel Johnson

Daniel Johnson is a British journalist and author who was the founding editor of Standpoint magazine and a former senior editor, editorial writer and columnist for The Times and The Daily Telegraph. Since 2018, he has been founding editor of the online journalism platform TheArticle, as well as being an associate editor of The Critic magazine and commentator for The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph.

Presentation 3:

And Who is My Neighbour? Moral Duties at Home and Abroad, by David Miller

David Miller is an English political theorist. He is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford and an Official Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. He previously lectured at the University of Lancaster and the University of East Anglia.  He is the author of a number of publications, including Social Justice, On Nationality (Clarendon Press, 1995) and Citizenship and National Identity (Polity, 2000).