The proper approach to evaluating "AI" - From the comments...

From commenter No Longer Reading:

There's an idea that you need to have written the Summa Technologica to criticize technology. But it's a lot more basic than that. If it has bad effects or it's based on a bad ideology then it's bad. 

Techno-totalitarian mass surveillance has obviously had bad effects. There's no need to debate whether "the true mass surveillance has never been tried". It's also based on a bad ideology. So, it's bad. 

Also, there's a mixing up of two separate things. On the one hand there's the fact that the universe is set up such that a particular technology can be invented. On the other hand is the technology itself. Nature works how it works, but then humans choose what to investigate and what to try to invent within the bounds set by nature. 

Whether the universe is set up in a particular way is neutral, well, no living human being knows that, so it's a moot point. But technology is a human endeavour. 

If religion doesn't get a free pass that it's always good or at least neutral, why are we supposed to give such a fee pass to technology, which is every bit as human as religion?

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My comments: 

I was struck by the incisiveness of that last sentence. It makes a telling point. 

The exact same people who are defending-promoting AI are often-usually people who are hypercritical of some religions (and of leftist politics, or its components such as the climate agenda). 

What they are doing is to regard some mass-scale coordinated human endeavours as appropriate to be evaluated morally in terms of their overall intent and nature... 

But other mass-scale coordinated human endeavours - specifically AI - are exempted from evaluation; and assumed to be neutral tools.

A further point that strikes me is the "but its only an incremental extension of... [something already existing]" argument. 

Such that AI is only an (admittedly multi-trillion-dollar and coercively implemented) incremental development of the already-existing internet. 

It is, of course, true that AI is a development of the internet - the problem is that word "only"! 

As if a vast and coordinated political/ administrative/ financial/ industrial/ mass media program was rendered insignificant - simply by inserting the word "only"!

Further; almost-all evil is an extension of pre-existing evil. 

In a sense; horrific world wars are only "politics by other means"; and politics is only interpersonal interaction writ large. Each increment of the sexual revolution is built on what went before, so that SSM is only an extension of no fault divorce. 

True enough in terms of lineage. But are we not, then, to notice when some big new evil is being imposed upon us? 

Or to pretend that - because a development of what already is - it doesn't matter; or that it is not evilly motivated?

This is why repentance is so vital. We made an error of judgment that leads to further errors of judgment - often to rationalize or justify that first error. We then find ourselves (individually or collectively) a long way down a path to evil.

But for a Christian, this is not too late - it is never too late!

This is when we ought to recognise and acknowledge that the first and subsequent choices were actually on the side of evil, although not recognized at the time they were made. 

It does not matter how we got here, or that we are far advanced in evil. We can always repent evil, at any time or place, and from any degree of corruption. 

It's not a matter of whether this repentance can or will lead to some positive change in the world as we know it - that is not the point. Repentance is about our attitudes and allegiances - repentance is not about palliating or reforming this mortal life.

Of course repentance may lead to betterment, and spiritual progress (in an individual or socially) can scarcely be made without repentance. But that is not the point of repenting; and anyway all such this-worldly benefit is of-its-nature extremely partial, restricted, and temporary.    

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BUT, as WmJas Tychonievich wisely opines:

Arguing the point with people who don't immediately and intuitively get it, unfortunately seems to be a waste of time. 

Let the dead bury their dead.