Skolimowski, AI, and Linus Torvalds

In his book Eco-theology, Henryk Skolimowski says,

The question of courage is by no means theoretical or theological. Western scholars live nowadays in comfort and freedom, with their jobs well secured, and with their pensions well provided for. Yet courage is totally lacking in Western universities. ‘Intellectual’ courage is not courage but hiding behind the screen of established orthodoxies. The roots of real courage are invariably moral. Present academics, by and large, have no firm moral convictions. Living by the creed of rationality leads to the atrophy of courage in a deeper sense of the term. As they do not have it themselves, they cannot instill courage in their students. Thus we are breeding, on the campuses, a spineless generation, with no courage and no moral sense; the two are connected; and the consequences are devastating.

Although Skolimowski only applied his statement to academics, I believe it should be extended to anyone who participates in an academic, scientific, or engineering endeavour. But first, one should ask, what does Skolimowski mean here when he says, “[p]resent academics, by and large, have no firm moral convictions”? He reveals this by saying,

Living by the creed of rationality leads to the atrophy of courage in a deeper sense of the term.

It’s important to note that Skolimowski doesn’t reject rationality. Instead, he rightly points out that when rationality and technical achievement is glorified and put above all else, then there is no room for anything but the technical. In turn, this obviously leads to moral decay because one cannot do the right thing when the only path is a technical one.

I was instantly reminded of Skolimowski’s text when I saw a recent public email written by Linus Torvalds, who created Linux. It’s worth reading the whole thing, but he argues that there is no place for a firm anti-AI stance in the Linux project. He says,

Sure, the social angle of working on open source is important and often a very motivating part of the project, but in the end that’s a side benefit, not the _point_ of the project.

This is *NOT* some kind of “social warrior” project, never has been, and never will be.

In the kernel community we do open source because it results in better technology, not because of religious reasons.

And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear of new tools.

This is exactly what Skolimowski was referring to. Here, we see that Torvalds even explicitly states that the main and overriding goal is simply better technology. This is what Skolimowski meant by the phrase “[l]iving by the creed of rationality”.

But the policy of making “decisions primarily based on technical merit” is an immoral stance because we are all responsible for what we do, and if we create anything, we must always consider the consequences of what we create. No exceptions.

And, if the consequences cause more harm to the world, then we should reconsider our creation, even if that reconsidering slows down technical progress. We don’t have the right to prioritize technical progress above all else.

This phenomenon occurs in all technical fields. Scientists go on without any regard to how their invention will be used with no real ethical constraints. Big-tech companies advance and create tools at a lightning pace without any regard to how those tools will modify society and without regard to their energy use. And, even we do it in our daily lives because we have converted life into a technical process, rather than an organic one.

We need to hold those who advance technical progress accountable. They should be held accountable in the same way as if they were careless with matches in a forest causing a forest fire. We should stop our glorification of those who advance technical progress merely for their technical abilities.

Unfortunately, this is a difficult task. Children from an early age are given awards and praise for technical achievement. Teenagers are given scholarships and money for technical achievement. Scientists like Richard Feynman are given prizes like the Nobel prize. But I’m not impressed. A deep care for nature would be much more impressive.

But a deep care for nature is never rewarded. When Ruby Montoya and Jessica Reznicek tried to protect the natural earth and the soil and water and habitat in North Dakota and Illinois from the Dakota Access Pipeline, they were thrown in prison.

This is the society we live in. And yes, AI in the Linux kernel may not seem like a big deal. But whenever a person like Linus Torvalds stands up and puts technical advancement above all else, he supports the status quo of destruction. Imagine if he had rejected AI outright for the sake of the long-term consequences of AI. How much good would that have done? He’s pretty famous and a rejection of AI by him would definitely have a lot of good influence in a time when doing something good for the world is desperately needed. No firm moral convictions, indeed.