Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) was a prominent French philosopher, sociologist, and theologian. He wrote extensively on the impact of modern technology on human society, most notably in his highly influential 1954 book, The Technological Society (La Technique ou l'Enjeu du siècle). In the original French the title renders as the more emphatic: technique, what’s at stake this century, i.e. the 20th. We’re now a quarter of the way into the next millennium, and can conjecture that Ellul’s concerns regarding technological determinism are creating very real issues beyond the academy. Ellul’s comprehensive attention to the conceptual range of what he calls Technique lends support to the descriptive analysis of this scoping agenda’s concerns. A strong account of why the autonomous threads of technological development become a major problem for governance; why it’s effects shouldn’t ever just be considered in terms of the ‘obvious’ benefits of desired for objectives; that like knowledge itself, the very standard of neutral moral standing, it requires the cultivation of judicious steering capacities. The central message of his critical theory is that we must somehow entrain ourselves to step outside of its formidable comforting embrace if we truly want to consider its benefits for the human condition. That this is not easy to do.

Ellul’s broader more sociological conception of technology, that fosters his central concept of Technique, extends beyond autonomous machines to the methods through which production, administration and human activity are organized around efficiency.

“Technique is the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.” [2]

Ellul's concept of Technique seems to be analogous to that of a fish in water. Like fish we humans are swimming around in the ubiquitous sea of technique oblivious to the profound effects it has in determining our ideological mindset regarding the parameters of the human condition. If those parameters are being narrowed by technique, by the obsessive concern with optimization, then there should be a means by which we cultivate resistance to this reality; arguably Ellul’s consciousness raising agenda was the first to critically, systematically, address the all-pervasive embrace of Technique. Its influence becomes difficult to recognize because the standards through which we judge progress, usefulness and even human fulfilment have already been affected-subsumed by it. As in what’s not to like about improving-optimizing our existence. Well one obvious point to make is that we are constantly addressing where we are with the promise of a future state, that like the technology of nuclear fusion(where we are all appreciative of the efforts to harness the sun’s potential energy), its fruition is always just around the corner. In waiting for the future to arrive we are not fully present in the here and now; not attending to the very real injustice and inequality continually experienced by vast swathes of the human population. Obsessed with a particular vision of perfect frictionless optimized existence we are in danger of relinquishing admirable human possibilities that resist those criteria—the art of wistful contemplation, a curious capacity for screenless attention, the joy of unscheduled spontaneity, the halting paradoxical virtue of a cultivated constitutional ambiguity, or simply existing without demonstrating usefulness—something which I’d personally advocate for those who are genuinely confused about tried and tested formulas for ‘getting on’.

Ellul is emphasizing that the conceptual range of technique as rational optimization is also applied to human beings. Human beings become both the practitioners of technique and its objects. This objectification characteristically requires technique to see-subsume the individual from a third person managerial perspective. So the pursuit of economic efficiency extends to organizing their work; so also fundamentally requires shaping their social behavior; so intrinsically needs to narrow-direct their education; so therefore adapting their expectations of what is or what a could be a good Life to the ideological requirements of technological society. That people’s capacities, conduct and aspirations can be assessed according to how effectively they serve technical requirements. So, are technical systems being organized around human purposes, or are human beings being organized around the purposes those systems privilege? Ellul’s concern is that efficiency becomes an overriding criterion for decisions, displacing broader human deliberation about what those decisions ought to serve. Applied to contemporary AI, this concern is exemplified by the emphasis on algorithmic optimization: improving performance against specified objectives, while potentially overlooking whether those objectives adequately express the human purposes behind them.

The notion of Technique as optimization also helps distinguish the effective pragmatic roles at play between government and governance. In reality, a government whilst formally in office, may experience the practical conditions of its decisions increasingly arise and are determined by technological systems, organizational requirements and competitive pressures with a long arc of influence. Administrations are not attuned to the longterm cumulative effects of technology; nor are they able to adequately respond in time to the oft quoted exponential factors now at play in the development of computational intelligence. That is if we are wholeheartedly, or skeptically not, embracing the wonders of the technological singularity, the fact of the matter is it’s already upon us. That AI ushers forth a meta-governance event in human history, that has arguably been in relatively rapid development since the first industrial revolution. So if the political sphere is not currently fit for purpose, whilst being thoroughly determined by technology, the resulting question is: What governs the purposes of the technology that we are increasingly adopting to govern ourselves? This is the central observation and raison d’être of scoping cybernomos. In order to keep at least the question alive regarding human concerns, or at least attempt to head off Ellul’s notion of technique, or keep it manifest given its opaque naturalized ideological operation, we need to make logically moral coherent governance decisions. Ellul’s point is that if we allow technique to just happen to humanity, then humanity will be subsumed by it.

“The moment man stops and resigns himself, he becomes subject to determinism.” [3]

“Psycho-sociological techniques result in the modification of men in order to render them happily subordinate to their new environment, and by no means imply any kind of human domination over Technique.” [4]

Ellul envisages a relentless technological order in which means acquire primacy over ends; our very preferences and judgments are themselves shaped by that order. We cannot simply assume that the purposes people assign to technology remain independent of its influence. The vigilance advised in the above first quotation soon gives way to the reality of the second, to Ellul’s comprehensive understanding of the pervasive influence of Technique. Setting aside philosophical discussions of free will, that at least conceptually negate some of the force of Ellul’s position, arguably the inherent value of the humanities is how we choose to formulate a response—in this particular case an agnostic theological position in relation to the specific technological impact of AI. How do we use our reason to countervail-measure the ubiquitous influence of our never-ending awe inspiring creations.

ASI addresses this problem by identifying a relationship that governance should formally establish: the moral and logical virtue that each person’s individual interests should be considered through their interdependence with the interests of others. Applied as a governance principle of an Institute, this would mean asking whether a particular technological development improves the conditions of reciprocal security and development. Perhaps Ellul’s most valuable contribution is his warning that organizational techniques introduced to remedy technological problems can reinforce the same system. Better administration can make a society function more smoothly without restoring meaningful human freedom. Cybernomos Institutes would therefore need to demonstrate how they avoid becoming another layer of technical administration. They would arguably need to make Ellul central to the scoping process itself: his critical insight becoming a continual test of institutional viability, purpose and conduct. A process that is never necessarily in remission.

There are two (at least) main Ellul issues that the Cybernomos Institute should be wary of,—if we accept, despite differing political systems, that the digital informational/intelligence sphere is rapidly converting nation states into technological republics— that is the notion of technique as optimization, and the problem of centralized technological power being used to manipulate populations, that lends itself to forms of political authoritarianism, which are of particular concern. Two connected problems to which the Cybernomos Institute must respond: (1) What technological governance (inevitably, in an Ellulian sense) optimizes for. How do we establish a framework of viable purpose to counteract, to hedge against, the erosive capacities of Ellulian Technique on the human condition? Here propositionally set forth as the governance principle of ASI, the nomos of cybernomos. And (2) how the power to determine those objectives is created and distributed—that is the mobilization of the SBI as PI.2.0, as the globally distributed inherently diverse set of 1—the means of creating the act of political possession as the foundational goal of the Cybernomos Institute. Both bear directly on whether the UGGO protects the SBI and gives constitutional expression to PI:2.0. In an Ellulian analysis, technique becomes problematic when efficiency acquires authority over the ends it was supposed to serve. Even an Institute, committed to human security and development, could gradually come to judge success by what its systems can measure, allowing indicators of human welfare to displace regard for the Lives they are intended to serve. Ellul’s warning is pertinent: the means of assessing progress can acquire independent authority over human purposes that ultimately give progress its meaning.

In theory the conception of the SBI as PI:2.0 supplies an important constraint: the individual’s sovereign biological standing is possessed, unconditional and prior to institutional control or assessment. Its recognition cannot depend on a favorable or not calculation of that person’s contribution to collective welfare. ASI, and other principles like it, would consequently have to govern the choice and limits of optimization, including circumstances in which an apparently efficient outcome must be rejected because it compromises that standing. This is where the insistence on the sacred status of every single Life becomes politically consequential.

The issue regarding concentration of technological power, and its potential conversion into authoritarian rule, inherently lends itself to undemocratic processes, or indeed the cynical simulation of co-opted democratic institutions. Whoever controls the systems that classify people, allocate resources and mediate public decisions can acquire considerable power over the conditions of individual existence. The concern is therefore about computational intelligence capability and potential forms of authority exercised through it. The broader obvious danger is technologically enabled authoritarianism. Yet Ellul’s critique is especially useful because the subordination of people to technique can also occur through ordinary benign administration and apparently benevolent organizational reform. That is with the best of noble intentions, with even the sincerity displayed here, there is a very real possibility of creating a digital prison rather than a utopian platform for sharing the profits of computational abundance. The two problems reinforce one another. Optimization can supply the justification for concentrating power: where coordination, consistency and efficiency appear to require greater central control. Concentrated power can then determine which objectives count, whose interests are recognized, and whether dissent is permitted. Even security and development could become paternalistic justifications if institutions acquire the authority to define those goods without effective challenge from the individuals concerned. This makes Ellul a particularly demanding interlocutor for Cybernomos. Can the proposed Cybernomos Institutes advance a universal global governance objective whilst—say through distributed networks of globally coordinated power—and still preserve the standing and agency of every individual through whom that objective intends to give meaning?

My concern, in developing an agnostic theology of governance for AI, is that very much like Ellul's dismissal of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, it presents as an equally grandiose solution. One based on a vision for how humanity necessarily needs to morally logically evolve to meet the challenges of AI as a meta-governance event in human history. That the pragmatic visionary aspect, even if the descriptive analysis is ostensibly correct, might well be not taken seriously because it is attempting to mobilize an equally seismic and ambitious response. Teilhard offered a spiritual vision of humanity’s planetary unification more than a pragmatic logically moral program for global governance. He understood growing technological, social and intellectual connections as part of an evolutionary movement towards the noosphere: a shared sphere of human thought and consciousness. Its ultimate fulfilment was the Omega Point, which he identified with Christ. Envisaging humanity progressing from enforced interdependence towards freely embraced unity through mutual understanding and love. Positing planetary convergence as an irresistible evolutionary process—a tension between necessity and freedom. Scoping Cybernomos, whilst sharing this global ambition, does not assume the inevitability, the teleological nirvana, that Teilhard can envisage. The Cybernomos Institutes should rather be seen as transitional bodies that facilitate the switch between ostensibly competitive nation states to networks of stringent reciprocity. If, and it’s a big behavioral if, that transition can be made and the Cybernomos Institutes facilitate something like Teilhard’s Omega Point then they will have done their job. However, relatively speaking, a less ambitious aspiration, is that in establishing the political philosophical goal of PI:2.0, there will be an overriding human purpose to strive for the abundance, the risks undertaken, in our collective pursuit of the promise of computational intelligence.

The value of Ellul’s critique is that it challenges the idea of a natural unreasoned passage from increased technological connection to moral and spiritual improvement. Technical integration does not establish that people become freer, more loving or better able to govern their collective existence. Ellul also warns that presenting technological development as the fulfilment of a divine or historical destiny can sanctify the very forces people need to question. For Cybernomos, the useful lesson is that interdependence creates the occasion for reciprocal moral commitment; it does not automatically produce that commitment. Acknowledging our collective SBI as PI:2.0 stresses a human performative act that must be cultivated. Possession requires intentional occupation; it does not assume that technology or advanced computational intelligence will accomplish logically morally coherent transformation for us; we must state the values we want, that we can actually agree on, and commit to evolve. That is AI alignment requires humanity to position itself to take advantage of computational intelligence. Not just expect computational intelligence to align itself with humanity as we currently present ourselves.

References

[1] Ellul at home in Pessac on 12 December 1990, photographed by Jan van Boeckel, ReRun Productions. Wikimedia Commons. Creative Commons Attribution–ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA 4.0). Cropped and rotated from the original.

[2] Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. “Note to the Reader,” p. xxv.

[3] Ellul, Jacques. The Technological Society. Translated by John Wilkinson. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. “Author’s Foreword to the Revised American Edition,” p. xxxiii.

[4] Ellul, Jacques. “The Technological Order.” Translated by John Wilkinson. Technology and Culture 3, no. 4 (Autumn 1962): 394–421, p. 395, section I.5. https://doi.org/10.2307/3100993. Read the paper.