Have you ever paused to consider what the “artificial” in “artificial intelligence” means? To the colloquial ear, it denotes a fakeness, a trickiness. “It’s not real!” — one might say. While this is true, there’s an older definition that may shed light on the word’s fuller meaning. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “artificial” as such: “Of a thing: made or constructed by human skill, esp. in imitation of, or as a substitute for, something which is made or occurs naturally; man-made.”
We don’t need the dictionary, though, to understand the word or its underlying concept. Dante Alighieri, in his “Divine Comedy,” gives us a far more evocative picture of artificiality. In Canto XI of the Inferno, Virgil brings Dante to the threshold of lower hell. Giving his pilgrim a view of what’s to come, the Poet describes the next stop on their odious odyssey.
“The first below are the violent,” Virgil tells Dante, “But as violence / sins in three persons, so is that circle formed / of three descending rounds of crueler torments.” The circle of the violent is broken into three categories: the violent against their neighbors, the violent against themselves, and the violent against God. Imprisoned within the third round are not, however, just the blasphemers — those who commit the most obvious acts of violence against the divine. Their cellmates are the usurers, the “violent against art.”
“What?” one may ask. If the reader stops to wonder why these sinners are placed so low — lower, in fact, than gluttons, heretics, and murderers — he can find consolation in Dante’s own confusion. “‘Go back a little further,” the poet asks, “to where you spoke of usury as an offense against God’s goodness. How is that made clear?’” Virgil responds:
“Philosophy makes plain by many reasons,” He answered me, “to those who heed her teachings, how all of Nature,—her laws, her fruits her seasons,—springs from the Ultimate Intellect and Its art; and if you read your Physics with due care, you will note, not many pages from the start, that Art strives after her by imitation, as the disciple imitates the master; Art, as it were, is the Grandchild of Creation. By this, recalling the Old Testament near the beginning of Genesis, you will see that in the will of Providence, man was meant to labor and to prosper. But usurers, by seeking their increase in other ways, Scorn Nature in herself and her followers.”
By “art” (“l’arte”), Dante broadly means the works of human hands, not our modern notion of aesthetic creation. In the same way that the “wright” in playwright — like that in “shipwright” — denotes a “maker or builder,” “artist” denotes one who is skilled in his labor. Think, too, of the word “artisan.” “Art” during the Middle Ages considered “nature” its antonym. To gain or create things by “art” meant to shape nature according to human will. In this logic, if we, the works of God’s hands, are the children of God, then our own efforts are His grandchildren.
Usury, then, is gain without labor. Applied to artificial intelligence, this idea has special purchase. When we use AI to think, write, or assist with creative endeavors, we gain the fruits without the toil. In refusing work, we also disobey God’s curse to Adam and Eve: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.” Though Christ’s bloody sweat in Gethsemane redeemed the curse of sin, it did not release us from the necessity of worldly work. On the contrary, through vocation, we honor God through our earthly labors.
Though it is a product of human hands, AI — as Iago says of jealousy — “mock[s] the meat it feeds on.” It takes its pound of flesh in the great corpora of human ingenuity, and it hands it back — bleeding, swollen, mauled — to the unsuspecting victim. It adds nothing. Rather, it absorbs what has been created and regurgitates a pastiche.
To combat this vision of artistic usury, conservatives must invest in new creations. Conservatism isn’t known for being a “creative” enterprise. We’re the maintainers, not the makers. The reactionaries, not the revolutionaries. The preachers, not the poets.
Yet, as metaphysical poet and Anglican Priest George Herbert wrote in “The Country Parson,” “Preservation is a Creation; and more, it is a continued Creation, and a creation every moment.” Every moment is held together by Divine power. Every second, the threads of the universal fabric are pulled together. In the atomistic view of the ancients, the world was constantly being made anew.
Each moment also calls for a new creation. If conservatives are those who defend the human person against all encroachments — whether by technological progress, social pressure, or utopian promise — they must also be the ones who exemplify his potential. The best way to show our fellow citizens that human beings and human efforts are worth protecting is by creating works worth reading. Words, like the lives of those who utter them, are not mere instruments for a greater or ultimate good. They are good unto themselves, and they must be treated as such.
It’s not enough to wring our hands in opinion pages, and it certainly is not enough to legislate ourselves into a better future. Conservatives must create, but more importantly, we must create well.
We do best for ourselves, our country, and our fellow man by viewing art as a vehicle for human insight, not for simplistic sermonizing. Our conservatism must shine through in our attention to the human person, in our realistic view of his capacity for good and evil, and in our care for linguistic and aesthetic excellence in communicating his experience. We must, as Hamlet instructs, “hold a mirror up to nature,” reflecting in our works the works of God’s hands. We do our subject a profound disservice if we laden him with undue scorn or lavish him with unearned praise.
In an age that seeks perfection — in technology, appearance, politics — we must defend imperfection. In a culture that seeks passing pleasures, we must seek the pains of the past and future. We must consider our limits, and we must face our failures. As Aldous Huxley, through John the “Savage,” says in Brave New World: “I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.” In our algorithm-addicted, soma-saddled culture, we must dare to create things which refuse immediate gratification.
Hell on earth looks like a paradise. Yet, as Dante reminds us in his ghastly depiction of the inferno, the cost of momentary pleasure is endless pain. The irony of La Commedia is the beauty with which it portrays the horrible. In the medium of poetry, the vessel through which Dante depicts hell is a heavenly ambition, a striving after beauty, significance, and permanence. We must take after Dante and try, however we can, to bring forth God’s grandchildren.
