As with many technological developments in American history, such as the internet itself, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being introduced with little occasion for the populace to be informed as to its potential impact or any opportunity for them to weigh in with their concerns. Such is life in the Republic of Technology, aka The Machine. Rather, the entire debate is carried on behind closed doors with deals being made and money changing hands while there is little regard for the overall outcome. There is no real opportunity for informed consent by the public at large, other than haphazard reports intruding into the public space from various sources, to be digested by that public with no apparent recourse on their part.
So we hear, as reported by the AP, that on December 11, “Trump sign[ed an] executive order to block state AI regulations”. The executive order itself can be read here. I addressed this issue previously on this site (here) in regard to Trump’s AI action plan which he delivered to the AI Summit on July 23 of this year. Trump’s address at that time followed a debate over whether there should be a moratorium on state AI regulation in favor of regulation only at the federal level. The debate took the form of whether an amendment prohibiting state regulation should be included in the Budget Reconciliation Bill, aka the “Big Beautiful Bill” (BBB), which was then up for consideration. On July 1 the Senate voted 99-1, after intense pressure from the public against the amendment, to strike that amendment from the bill. The BBB ultimately passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law. It is hard to imagine that there could be a stronger statement that restricting the states in this regard was not desired by the public. But, in the face of this clear public preference, Trump has decided to take executive action to prohibit the states from regulating AI in any capacity. This is not merely an action taken proactively against a theoretical possibility. Many states have already moved to regulate this new technology.
Related to AI, a book was published quite recently that I would recommend to any reader on this site. The book is Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth. By way of background, Kingsnorth is a British writer of fiction and nonfiction. In an attempt to escape the said Machine, he moved with his family to rural Ireland. Moreover, in another aspect of his realizations concerning the Machine, Kingsnorth’s account of his conversion to Christianity can be read here. Kingsnorth’s book is a more complete development of ideas he introduces in that article.
Apparently unaware of the Southern tradition, Kingsnorth has articulated the very thing that our
Confederate ancestors, then the Nashville Agrarians with I’ll Take My Stand, and later stalwarts of the Southern tradition such as Richard Weaver and M. E. Bradford, were opposing. Kingsnorth names it the Machine. Anyone familiar with the Southern tradition reading Kingsnorth’s book should see the connection. For example, Kingsnorth inveighs frequently against the idea of “Progress” which was an explicit target of the Agrarians in their book. In particular, Kingsnorth, who edited a book of selections from the work of Wendell Berry, quotes Berry, writing twenty years ago, “It is easy for me to imagine that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines.” While Berry may not write explicitly in the Southern tradition, he is certainly an agrarian and close kin to those southern agrarians who preceded him. Whatever Berry had in mind when he wrote those words, twenty years later his statement can be taken as more than a metaphor.
Many people are familiar with the iconic film, The Matrix (1999). The film depicts human beings as cells of a vast network in which their illusory world is constituted by the Matrix (i.e., the Machine). Perhaps the film at the time was suggesting that this was actually the state of humanity. Perhaps it was intended as a dystopian fantasy. Perhaps it was prophesying the future. Whatever was the case then, that situation becomes more a reality every day with the continuing introduction of AI into cyberspace taking it to unprecedented levels. The internet lures vast numbers of people into the Matrix where they know that they are surveilled and manipulated, but willfully submit because of the illusions that it feeds them. There is nothing really new from the Machine: radio, film, television and other technologies were precursors to the internet, all delivered up by the Machine. Richard Weaver referred to it in 1949 in Ideas Have Consequences as the “Great Stereopticon”. Up to now people have had some amount of independent control and freedom of movement within the Machine. However, when AI is completely embedded in the internet (even more than it is now) this will end. We will have no idea what is going on behind the curtain that is shown to us and no way to find out. The Matrix Machine will be complete. Marshall McLuhan was famous for pointing out that “the medium is the message”. We need to grasp this profound insight. While we may be dazzled by what we experience on the surface, the machinery that governs those appearances is the ultimate concern.
Let me turn to a different but related matter. Some months ago this site published an article of mine (here) featuring a conversation between Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene (commonly known as MTG). The piece was not critical of MTG but I used the conversation to make a point about the vacuum in the mind of present day Southerners regarding their own history. MTG is the congressional representative for a district in northwestern Georgia, an area through which Sherman went on his way to Atlanta. MTG recently announced that she would be resigning her congressional seat in January after Donald Trump very publicly attacked her, calling her Marjorie “Traitor” Greene. Trump made other extremely derogatory and personally insulting comments about MTG. I will leave it to the reader to investigate those if he is not already aware of them. MTG had been for years one of Trump’s most visible and active supporters on behalf of the MAGA movement. She was MAGA all the way. But there is a previous issue where MTG opposed Trump and which may have precipitated the acrimony between them.
MTG weighed in heavily against inclusion in the BBB of the moratorium on state regulation of AI. She voted for the BBB in the House but strongly stated that if the Senate version came back with the moratorium in it she would vote against the bill (here). This position from a die hard Trump supporter certainly contributed to the groundswell in public opinion that led to the massive vote against the moratorium in the Senate.
If MTG is not explicitly outspoken about the Southern tradition, or even aware of it, she belongs to the remnant of southern culture that still influences those who inherit that culture, such as the citizens of northwestern Georgia, and which should determine at least some of her beliefs. In a recent 60 Minutes interview with CBS, MTG emphasized that she was “America First” but declined to endorse “MAGA” (here). The dissent of such a “true believer” speaks volumes. Moreover, the fact that Trump would directly contravene the verdict of an almost unanimous vote in the Senate must certainly raise some concerns.
I mention these concerns for two reasons. The first is to question the compatibility of MAGA (and the direction that Trump is taking it) and the Southern tradition. This blog published another article of mine in January of this year (here) where I posed this very question. I suggested that there might be a breach at some point. I was hoping that the breach would be later rather than sooner. But the AI issue may be the breaking point if it continues in the direction it seems to be going. I have also written strongly in favor of state sovereignty in the current political context (here and here). This is where these two issues intersect. The Southern tradition is invested heavily in favor of state sovereignty and opposed to incorporation into the Matrix/Machine. The second reason concerns the technology itself. We simply need to use every means possible to make sure that we understand the meaning of this technology to insure that the impacts of using it are as benign as possible.
For example, a recent article (here) discussing the perilous state of relations between the sexes in the United States points out that this unfortunate situation owes much to technology penetrating so deeply into the fabric of life. AI is very likely to make this even worse. The authors write,
Intimacy, once grounded in interpersonal contact, now becomes filtered through technology and ideology. Attraction becomes negotiation. Trust becomes liability. And cooperation begins to feel like surrender.
All this could soon get worse, notes the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, with the rise of AI. Mark Zuckerberg might herald the era of “AI friends” to replace the lost ones, but Haidt notes that ChatGPT admits that the way to weaken future generations would be “through slow, invisible corrosions of the human spirit, rather than obvious attacks.” This is already what was happening with the Internet, but digital power will be enhanced by new technologies like AI and the much-discussed metaverse, essentially an artificial experiential universe. The development of AI companions and even sex robots could further reduce the need for human concourse.
The Southern tradition is about much more than politics. These developments should be of deep concern to everyone. The family is the basis of any society so the potential of these technologies disrupting even more the basic relation of man and woman is very disturbing.
The states therefore absolutely need to have the authority to determine the allowed uses of AI technology. We need to insist that they do have this authority. AI is potentially too powerful and too unknown a technology to be allowed to proceed without a very careful and guarded introduction and oversight. The investment in the data centers to house AI technology and to create the massive power generation needed to operate it have already been disruptive of the lives of many ordinary people. As AI systems come further online, threatening to disrupt employment, educational practice, even intimate personal relationships as noted above, there needs to be a safeguard that is less susceptible to the influence that the billions of dollars of AI supporters will leverage in support of their cause.
Concentrating AI regulation in the federal government will make it more subject to that influence. This is evident from what has already occurred with Big Pharma, Big Finance, Big Ag, and every other area of regulation of the Machine. Big Tech has already had its way in this regard. Regulation only from the top needs to be closed with regard to AI. At a minimum let us hope there are legal challenges to Trump´s executive order. Leaving the arena of state regulation open is essential.
Is the Machine/Matrix the direction that MAGA would take us? Life in the Machine/Matrix is not the life envisioned in the Southern tradition. Suppose someone enamored of the Southern mystique were offered, as an enticement to enter the Matrix, the experience of a virtual reality consisting of conversations with Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, or a living reenactment of antebellum life on a southern plantation, or any other fantasy of antebellum southern life that his imagination can conceive. Would experiencing that fantasy be worth the cost of living an illusion when the real Southern tradition calls us to take a stand for specific values in the real world, costly as that might be? Would that be a choice between being a creature or a machine, as Berry supposed?
This choice appears to be upon us. AI is likely the last nail in the coffin that is the Matrix/Machine, unless it is the genetic engineering of human beings, a technology with which it is closely allied. Probably the latter is not possible without the former, in any case. I am not asserting that there are no uses of AI that would be of benefit to humanity and might still be within the purview of adherents to the Southern tradition. But these need to be carefully examined.
I am currently working on a book that will investigate the connections between the Southern tradition and its opposition to the Machine that have been alleged in this short article. I hope the book will be available soon. Meanwhile I hope those devoted to the Southern tradition will use any resources they have available (short of violence of course) to help steer our use of these technologies in a direction that is of service to our humanity and not to our degradation. The Southern tradition is a necessary lens through which to view our options on the perilous way forward.
The views expressed at AbbevilleInstitute.org are not necessarily those of the Abbeville Institute.
