A recent article by Ben Shapiro caught my eye: “The Plot to Cripple America’s Future: The Left hates innovation and wants to keep you in the dark.” While I often find Shapiro’s commentary insightful, this title and message left me confused.
Shapiro addresses the growing public pushback against AI and data centers and frames this resistance as proof that “the Left hates innovation.”
Are progressives against change and conservatives for it?
Conservatism traditionally guards existing structures, while progressivism seeks change. So when did rejecting new tech become progressive and embracing it conservative?
It’s an especially conservative impulse to want to safeguard society from harmful innovations, but even “leftists” can discover a conservative impulse if the threat to their communities is large enough.
Shapiro portrays anyone willing to “kill innovation” — meaning here, the AI revolution — as effectively anti-American. Yet again, conservatives tend to be wary of revolutions. And this one is uniquely disquieting: shaped by a soulless, consumerist artificial intelligence whose own creators warn us of its dangers. This tech may already be succeeding in making America in its own image.
In 2023, thousands of people, including tech developers, scientists and even Elon Musk, signed an open letter, “Pause Giant AI Experiments,” which called for a pause on the development of powerful AI systems until appropriate safety measures and restrictions were put in place. The letter warned, “Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.” (Despite such reservations, Musk launched his second AI company two months later.)
The Luddites: Resisting the machine
Pundits sometimes try to shut down legitimate concerns by labeling critics as “leftist” or radical “Neo-Luddites.” But who were these Luddites that we should be so ashamed of?
They were 19th-century English artisans and weavers threatened by another revolution — the Industrial Revolution. As a result, they destroyed the innovative machines they believed threatened their traditions and families.
But they failed. The machines did replace them, and the Industrial Revolution led to the decline of a great deal of artisan culture and home-based cottage industries, pushing many toward a bleaker life of factory labor.
In his deeply insightful book “Against the Machine,” Paul Kingsnorth describes the driving force behind anti-innovation movements during the Industrial Revolution as a “desire to protect a long-standing, self-willed way of life” from a “community prepared to resist for itself the notion that market forces rather than moral values should shape the fate of labor.”
The Luddites don’t sound all that radical. They sound conservative.
The role of conservatism
Would resisting the innovation of AI and innovative technology really “keep us in the dark,” as Shapiro claims? Growing signs seem to show that hastening the expansion of technology into every sphere of our lives may be leading us, in many ways, into the dark.
Progressives have often been more willing to accept social upheaval when they believe the resulting social or economic gains will benefit society as a whole. Many products did become cheaper for the masses because the Luddites failed.
Certainly, the AI revolution itself has brought some genuine benefits. Even so, there is a place for questioning whether the progress a new innovation brings is worth the upheaval.
One especially conservative question to ask is whether what AI destroys is worth more than what it creates. As philosopher Roger Scruton noted, “Conservatism starts from the sentiment that good things are easily destroyed, but not easily created.”
Conservatism insists that some inheritances must be protected because they are invaluable — family, marriage, faith, community. These are among the invisible threads that hold communities together and give life meaning, even if preserving them sometimes yields lower efficiency or less economic growth.
What takes precedence?
Some right-wing leaders insist that conservative doubts should be subordinated to a capitalistic focus on economic growth or global dominance. Scruton, however, warned against a society “that is governed entirely by the imperatives of business, which recognizes no restraint on trade apart from the market,” which he said becomes “both a creative and a destructive force.”
The purpose of life is not to make things easier or generate more wealth but to build virtue, engage in meaningful work, take responsibility and foster real human connection. Since we see many signs AI is increasingly undercutting human creativity, weakening the family and communities, deadening our spirit, and altering how we relate to one another, why wouldn’t we want to restrain this revolutionary tech in some sensible ways?
Before we ask whether it will make us richer, more efficient or more powerful, we should ask whether it is good.
Two millennia ago, Paul warned us to “test everything; hold fast what is good.” For conservatives, morality must take precedence before welcoming any major change. Before we ask whether it will make us richer, more efficient or more powerful, we should ask whether it is good.
Life for conservative normies
Shapiro concludes, “It turns out that normie, rational Americans like things like free markets and American strength.”
OK … but those pale in comparison to what we actually value: our families, work and faith.
Here in Normieville, we aren’t arguing economic systems or philosophy; we are trying to cope with a rapidly changing reality just as the Luddites were.
- We are teachers in rural schools frustrated that we can no longer trust our students’ homework.
- We are homeowners upset that a massive water-guzzling data center is being built in our small town despite a drought.
- We are fathers concerned about protecting our family’s privacy amid an expanding surveillance apparatus.
- Or we are mothers, like myself, seeking to protect our children’s creativity, attention spans and innocence from being swallowed by an algorithm that grows more intelligent every day.
- Or my 17-year-old son, wondering if he will ever find meaningful work in an economy racing to make human actors irrelevant.
Preserving the light
I won’t pretend to know how we should navigate a technological transformation this complex, and I realize there is no realistic way to stop AI entirely. But we can at least limit any damaging influences in our own lives, protect our families and pray that not all the “innovation” AI brings is destructive.
I am personally happy to know that many on the left share these concerns. Perhaps we have found a common cause at last!
I write this because I fear that some “conservative” leaders with the power to shape the debate over AI have become what they so often criticize: too progressive. Too ready to accept the social fallout and sacrifice tradition and human flourishing in pursuit of economic growth and a global AI race.
Instead of dismissing dissent, we need to be having conversations on what sensible regulations and limits can be introduced, whether through government policy or social norms, in order to protect our families and society from the potential harms of this AI revolution.
I know that Ben Shapiro is aware of these kinds of concerns. He has called attention to the often degrading impact of technology on society.
I just hope he remembers the conservatives raising families who are concerned not because we have adopted leftist ideas or want to “keep people in the dark” but because we want to conserve the light of humanity in an increasingly machine-driven world.