“Should I keep writing this newsletter? Or will people just ask ChatGPT their urbanism questions instead?”
That’s just one of about a thousand questions I had last week as I (experimented with OpenAI’s new chat bot. Not familiar with it? I’ll allow it to introduce itself:
Just in the last week, people have used ChatGPT as a study aid, a coding generator, and even as a prep tool for creating sermons and worship music for church services:
Though still in the early “learning” stages, the tool is already incredibly powerful. And while it obviously couldn’t single-handedly get us to this place, interacting with ChatGPT quickly starts to evoke images of Wall-E, where robots are doing everything while the humans are lazy, sedentary, and fully replaceable.
My favorite scene in that movie is when Captain McCrea has his breakthrough moment and yells “I don’t want to survive. I want to live.”
And if we want to avoid 700 years aboard the Axiom, we need to ask the question: “How do we live in a ChatGPT world?”
As we step into a future of robots and artificial intelligence, it feels in many ways reminiscent of the invention and embrace of the automobile. An exciting, revolutionary, and in some ways “liberating” technology was built, and rather than thoughtfully considering the ways to leverage it, we moved full-steam ahead to put it at the epicenter of everything.
But we can’t afford to make that mistake again.
Urbanists love to use the phrase “cities are for people, not cars.” And as we move into this new technological moment, it’s worth expanding on: “Cities are for people, not robots.”
When cars came on the scene, it was our streets and homes that suffered. But with robots, it’s our work and social dynamics/infrastructure that are on the line.
There are seemingly-endless ways that new robotic and artificial intelligence technologies can better serve people and the world at large. We should seek to press into those. But replacing humanity is not one of them.
On some level, we all recognize that there is something distinctly different about human beings from other living things. In the scriptures, David asks God “What is man that you are mindful of him?” (Psalm 8:4). Of course, that question is answered much earlier on in the equation:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.- Genesis 1:27
Amongst all created things, people are the only ones with a claim to bearing the image of their creator.
Robots pose a unique problem that differs from most other human creations: they are typically created to replace the need for humans to do something. Andy Crouch, author of The Tech-Wise Family, explains this through a framework of technology as a tool (something that helps humans do their work) vs. technology as a device (something that replaces human work).
There’s a reason you can’t spell “device” without “vice.” There’s something wrong about them. And robots, more than perhaps anything else, can become the ultimate devices if we’re not proactive and intentional in regulating their uses in not just private life, but city life as well.
When robots are built to be devices, the problem is a that we play a game of existential telephone. God creates us in his image, we create robots in ours, they do the work we were created to do, and things get lost in transition.
On the surface, it often seems as though nothing changes. But on a deeper level, we know it is a far more human experience to receive coffee from a smiling barista than to press a button on the coffee machine, or have small talk with a grocery clerk rather than use self-checkout. We would rather have a human doctor or nurse than a soulless robot tending to our medical needs (like any number of Skywalkers).
We may prefer the latter at times, but that is because those automated processes give us an out from being our most human, not because they drive us toward genuine flourishing.
So what does this mean for cities, and how do we avoid car-nobyl with robotic technologies?
It means that more than ever, it is imperative to incentivize human-centered places in every way. Incentivize density and nearness. Incentivize and reward businesses that hire humans where they could otherwise rely on automation. Incentivize mixed-use communities where all needs are locally accessible, making delivery drones and the like largely unnecessary.
And it means avoiding shiny object syndrome, which is probably the most difficult of these objectives to accomplish. But politicians are held in check when their constituents don’t bite. Don’t be a sucker for renderings.
The future can be an incredibly exciting time. We have access to technologies that can assist us in tackling problems that have plagued mankind for generations. But human interaction, and humans themselves, are not problems to solve. And we need to build like we believe that’s true.
Because cities are for people. Not robots.
One way a robot would save the human race: design streets to calm vehicular traffic.
I'm continually amazed at how much human engineers ignore.
I agree that automation shouldn’t replace meaningful parts of the human experience like conversations and creative expression. But I don’t think humans are exactly made or designed to be grocery store clerks - I think most grocery store clerks would much rather spend that time with their families and hobbies! In cases where automation replaces money-making tasks that humans would rather not do, it paves the way for UBI - a human centered system which has been proven to increase overall well-being and community involvement. Yes, there is quite a lot of work to be done if UBI is to be implemented, but the argument remains that automation is at its core. That makes it important. I do very much agree though that as with anything, we need to create and enforce boundaries - there are certain places where AI just doesn’t belong.