Rob Field, CSW Director
Even Richard Nixon has got soul ~Neil Young (“Campaigner” 1976)
Neil Young, the iconic 1960s folk-rock musician, stunned many of his fans when he declared in song that former President Richard Nixon — an avowed enemy of hippies and peaceniks — “has got soul.” The shock was understandable in light of Young’s earlier, excoriating portrayal of Nixon in 1970. In the song “Ohio,” Young implicitly blamed the president for the deaths of four unarmed anti-war protestors at Kent State University.
The 1976 song “Campaigner” wasn’t a one-off provocation. In later years, Young invoked other Republican candidates and presidents, such as Ronald Reagan, when he introduced the song during live concerts. The original inspiration for the song came when Young saw a tearful Nixon speaking about his wife’s unexpected hospitalization.
I don’t agree with Young’s choice of words. I would have written “Richard Nixon’s got a soul,” but, hey—I know I’m quibbling. I understand what Young was trying to say. However much I might want to make someone out to be my enemy, I must never forget that he/she/they are ensouled human beings, endowed with inherent dignity and worth simply by virtue of being human. We need people like Neil Young to remind us of this, especially in light of the ever-present temptation to reduce opponents and enemies to a subhuman level.
Thank you, Mr. Young.
Meanwhile, I wear my own bias on my sleeve: whether it’s Narrow A.I. (eg, chatbots), General A.I. (eg, a super-charged internet search engine), or Super A.I. (powered by large-language models), I am convinced that a conglomerate of fancy computer code and A.I. “agents” will never have a soul. A powerful tool with the ability to help or harm? Yes. But Super Intelligence, existing by itself, disembodied, and un-creaturely, is by definition soul-less. Although it might possibly come to mimic humans in our capacity to seek transcendence (and discover the source of transcendence within), it will never have a spirit. I will go so far as to say it’s a categorical error to even imagine that A.I. could ever become ensouled.
In a nutshell, that is the promise, the Achille’s heel, and the horror of A.I. Because it’s not human, it has the potential to outsmart human beings. Because it has no soul, it will never experientially know friendship, kinship, or love. Because it’s not human, it may soon have the capacity — and some worry the inclination — to conclude that human beings are a problem, and therefore must be destroyed.
Recently, I‘ve heard commentators compare the development of A.I. to the development of nuclear fission, which led to nuclear energy and the nuclear bomb. It’s a chilling comparison, given that we now live in a world haunted by the prospect of nuclear war and worldwide destruction. Do we really want to unthinkingly cheer on the development of a new technology with similar capacities — without slowing down to consider safety and oversight? That doesn’t sound very soulful to me.
Just before we published this month’s newsletter, I stumbled upon a recent comment by Neil Young on the music now being created by A.I.: “You can tell artificial intelligence doesn’t have the soul,” he told National Public Radio. “There’s no soul.”
Amen, Mr. Young.
Keeping on preaching.
photo montage by R. Field