Are Digital Media & AI "(im)Moral?"

Part 2 of exploring what it means to be moral

Last week, I explored link between beliefs and morality. This week, I’m exploring the influence of digital media and AI.

A year ago, Yuval Noah Harari and Mustafa Suleyman debated on the future of AI. It’s been viewed 1 million times. Their debate captures the ethical conversation about digital media and AI. Are they benevolent or dangerous?

As a Lutheran pastor, my work affords me to be an observer of human behavior. I’m certainly no expert, but I notice changes in others and people’s reaction to those changes. There’s the man who used to be so friendly to everyone but is now suspicious and paranoid about his neighbors. There’s the parishioner who responds to each week’s sermon by sending me a counterpoint article from a questionable news source with a note saying, “Did you see this? Something to consider pastor - you can’t trust the media.” When viewing a social media post or reading a headline, I even find myself reacting in disgust and anger at the person who posted it.

Research shows that the increased exposure and use of digital media is affecting our brains and behavior. Researchers have also called for increased research to determine exactly how, and to what extent these changes are occurring. There is also compelling research that demonstrates the effect of digital media on our morality, namely reinforcing confirmation bias and “overconfidence, distrust in science, and endorsement of conspiracy theories.” This is all stating the obvious: digital media is changing how we think and how we behave - the very essence of how we express our morals. Harari and others’ concerns about AI, as the algorithms learn and become more developed, is that it holds the potential to make moral decisions that in turn have a serious impact on our morality. That leads to the question, “Is digital media and AI (im)moral?”

Debates about the morality or benevolence of technology are endless. Viewed through the lens of moral injury, the question of technology’s morality is the wrong one. Moral injuries are fundamentally betrayals of morality that lead to harm. That harm can look like many things - post-traumatic responses, mental health struggles, social isolation, etc. There is also another form of harm that moral injury expert Jonathan Shay and others name: the deformation of character. As examples of moral injury responses show, the deformation of one’s character might be a more devastating form of harm.

Shay, in his therapy work with Vietnam War veterans, observed them struggling with atrocities they committed in war that went against their basic moral sense. “We were told this about the enemy…. but how could I do such a thing?” was a common sentiment. Frustrated by bureaucratic leadership setting rules of engagement, measures of success like “body counts,” and the loss of comrades to an unseen and unknown enemy, soldiers committed atrocities that violated what they knew to be moral. The My Lai Massacre was the public example of this. Shay called this the “berserk state,” and wrote that it “…can destroy the capacity for virtue. Whether the berserker is beneath humanity as an animal, above it as a god, or both, he is cut off from all human community when he is in this state.”¹ Others have observed and described this in other contexts. What they are describing are moral injuries that harm and deform one’s moral character. As a result, it causes a person to behave immorally.

If digital media is changing our brains and how we think, it has the ability to change our moral character. In that spectrum of change, reinforcement of virtue is possible, but so is moral injury. One can’t help but wonder if moral injury is the result of our consumption of and exposure to digital media. The rise of AI and issues of how algorithms are created and develop over time and their level of autonomy, adds another layer of complexity. So, what can we do? There is a need for engagement and advocacy at an organizational level. At the same time, we need to engage ourselves and each other, noticing how words and actions don’t align with what we know to be true about the character of the originator. It’s that age old tension: actions and words are a reflection of character, but it’s imperative we also distinguish that who people are is distinct from what they say and do. We need to understand that while we may experience someone’s words and actions as immoral, that doesn’t necessarily mean they are fundamentally immoral. Moral injury, due to prolonged use and exposure to digital media and AI manipulation, may be the culprit. If their character has been harmed, then it can be healed, too.

Are digital media and AI (im)moral? No, but they do have the ability to make us (im)moral. Our awareness of this leads to individual and collective responsibility in order to prevent harm in ourselves and to each other and heal together when we notice the impact to our moral character.

1. Jonathan Shay, (1995) “Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character.” Simon and Schuster.