Let's stop doing really bad stuff with technology.

I'd take dinosaurs any day.

Maybe I need to stop listening to podcasts. I listened to two over the last couple of days, neither of which was encouraging. The first was from Plain English with Derek Thompson. The episode was “Will AI Usher In the End of Deep Thinking?” Answer? Yes. In fact we’re already headed in that direction. The conversation focused on large language models like ChatGPT that can write entire essays in a matter of seconds. The use of these models among college students is ubiquitous.

The work of writing, however, involves thinking through complex ideas and ordering our thoughts into a coherent structure. When we stop working through complex issues and problems, our ability to confront them without the assistance of AI diminishes. This is very similar to the care of the body. If I stop exercising, I get out of shape. I gain fat, lose muscle, and my stamina suffers. Likewise, if I stop certain kinds of mental exercises, I’ll become intellectually flabby in those areas. But what happens when the better part of an entire generation of college students neglects this kind of intellectual work?

As I listened, I was fearful of what might happen to the discipline of theology in the coming years. Theology involves lots of reading and writing. It involves thinking through complex issues. It requires the constructive work of bringing a long train of ideas into dialogue with the issues of the present age. How might the church’s history of reflection on the nature of human beings come to bear on practices like genetic testing, IVF, and gene-editing (think CRISPR)? Do we want to outsource our theological reflection to computer programs that do not bear the image of God? Are we content to allow ChatGPT to tell us about our freedom in Christ, the nature of sin, the human soul, or the love of God? For some reason, I’m tempted to say this might not work out well. Remember: sloth is one of the cardinal sins.

Prompt by JPxG, model by Boris Dayma, upscaler by Xintao Wang, Liangbin Xie et al., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons...

I must be a glutton for punishment, because I then started another podcast. It was an episode of Interesting Times with Ross Douthat called, “The Next Parenting Trend Starts Before Conception.” The guest was Noor Siddiqui, founder of Orchid, a company that conducts genetic tests on embryos before they are transferred to a woman’s uterus.

“What orchid can do is give parents the power to protect their children before pregnancy begins,” said Siddiqui. Well, that’s a bit simplistic … and also completely false. These aren’t sperm or egg cells we’re talking about. They’re embryos brought into being through IVF. When Siddiqui says parents can “protect” their children, she means that parents can select embryos that are free from undesirable genetic characteristics.

The ethical matters related to IVF for infertile couples are complicated and controversial. Opponents will insist it is unethical to discard fertilized embryos after selecting one for transfer to the woman’s uterus. Proponents might say that IVF allows a child to be born where it wouldn’t be possible otherwise. In thinking through the ethics of IVF, we have to weigh the moral freight of discarding viable embryos against the possibility of bringing a child to full term.

With Orchid, however, we’re not talking about infertile couples who cannot conceive otherwise. The parents involved may very well be quite capable of conceiving, but don’t want to risk having a child who is too fat, susceptible to certain kinds of cancer, or predisposed to mental illness. Parents and medical professionals evaluate an array of embryos and choose one to be born based on the embryo’s genetic characteristics.

I’ve written about the devastating effects of genetic testing of fetuses for Down syndrome. In parts of the world (Northern Europe, Iceland), people with DS have been all but erased from the population. In the U.S., perhaps 80% of such fetuses are aborted, possibly more. Saddiqui seems to believe that genetic testing of embryos provides a better way of avoiding the birth of children with DS:

So at 10-12 weeks, you can get Down syndrome screening or chromosomal screening and women are in a really difficult position, right? Because if that test is positive, if Down syndrome is detected, the only choice that they have at that moment is either to terminate the pregnancy or to proceed, versus being able to give that information at the earliest possible stage before a pregnancy has even started. [This] avoids families having to make that really difficult decision.

Embryonic testing doesn’t resolve this moral issue, however. It simply moves it to an earlier stage in the process of conceiving the child—from the fetus to the embryo. Siddiqui clearly doesn’t believe embryos are human. She seems to believe they can be discarded without consequence, and that parents should be able to choose the child they want. Orchid tests for around 1200 conditions. If you don’t want a child with a particular condition, you simply don’t have that child. According to the logic of consumerism, this makes perfect sense. It’s like Carvana, except for kids. Parenting becomes about getting what you want, rather than the sanctifying process of self-giving.

There’s a word for this, by the way: eugenics. It has an ugly history and, very likely, an even uglier future. It does not, and cannot, make sense for Christians. Our commitments to the love of all people, the providential work of God, and the value of all human life means that we cannot support eugenic practices. It is antithetical to virtually every claim we make about human beings.

Even the secular world seems squeamish about Orchid’s process of testing. An article in Science quotes University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill psychiatrist Patrick Sullivan, who is the founder of the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC), “an international group of more than 800 researchers working to decode the genetic and molecular underpinnings of mental health conditions.” Sullivan states, “PGC objects to such uses because its goal is to improve the lives of people with mental illness, not stop them from being born…. Any use for commercial testing or for testing of unborn individuals violates the terms by which PGC & our collaborators’ data are made available.”

They want to help people with mental conditions, not stop them from being born. Seems reasonable. Aren’t we glad this technology wasn’t around when we were all just embryos?

Our technological advances are outpacing our ability to adapt to them, both intellectually and morally. As AI advances, it will only exacerbate this problem. That well-worn quote from Jeff Goldblum’s rock-n-roll scientist character in Jurassic Park keeps coming to mind: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.” And he just had to deal with dinosaurs. If only things were that simple.