Religious Exemption from Using AI in Workplace Granted to Humanist (techcrunch.com) 55
"David Durman, a nontheistic humanist, recently secured a religious exemption from using AI in the workplace," reports TechCrunch.
Durman, a University of Kentucky administrator, told TechCrunch that humanism centers on "human well-being and flourishing, both individually and collectively ... and implores a person to try to improve both their well-being and their flourishing as well as the others around them."
He believes that using the technology runs counter to his beliefs. "The way we become moral actors for ourselves and for others is through the active application of our minds, and the diminishing of that [through AI use] is going to necessarily have a negative impact on our ability to do so," he said, reflecting on how overreliance on AI might affect critical thinking...."
[Humanism] tends to appeal to people who are skeptical of a god or other supernatural power yet still seek a scientific and moral framework to ground themselves in. [Alexandria Huiskens, staff attorney at the American Humanist Association, told TechCrunch] "Concern about AI and human dignity can run through several different faiths and traditions, whether that's Catholic teachings, or Universalism, or Humanism, and we want Humanists or nontheists to know that they fall into these categories — that they are also protected by the law at work...."
In Durman's administrative role, in which he supports researchers applying for grants, he has not been required to use AI at work. Like many workers across fields, some of his colleagues and leadership have recommended that employees try out these tools, so he sought to secure his exemption now, in case the suggestion becomes a mandate in the future. "I hope that if [others] have similar feelings, that they feel encouraged to pursue some kind of resolution," Durman said.
A University of Kentucky spokesperson told TechCrunch they "determined that an accommodation could be provided while allowing the employee to continue performing the essential functions of their position." (They added that "As technology and job responsibilities evolve, accommodations may be reviewed to ensure they remain reasonable and workable.")
[Humanism] tends to appeal to people who are skeptical of a god or other supernatural power yet still seek a scientific and moral framework to ground themselves in. [Alexandria Huiskens, staff attorney at the American Humanist Association, told TechCrunch] "Concern about AI and human dignity can run through several different faiths and traditions, whether that's Catholic teachings, or Universalism, or Humanism, and we want Humanists or nontheists to know that they fall into these categories — that they are also protected by the law at work...."
In Durman's administrative role, in which he supports researchers applying for grants, he has not been required to use AI at work. Like many workers across fields, some of his colleagues and leadership have recommended that employees try out these tools, so he sought to secure his exemption now, in case the suggestion becomes a mandate in the future. "I hope that if [others] have similar feelings, that they feel encouraged to pursue some kind of resolution," Durman said.
A University of Kentucky spokesperson told TechCrunch they "determined that an accommodation could be provided while allowing the employee to continue performing the essential functions of their position." (They added that "As technology and job responsibilities evolve, accommodations may be reviewed to ensure they remain reasonable and workable.")
We already have these people.. (Score:5, Funny)
They're called the Amish.
Re: (Score:2)
No. The Amish are sincere, loving, caring people. They may have beliefs that are off the beaten path, but they are *not* a cult.
Contrary to your opinion, Amish families are not poor. Their income ranges are similar to income levels in the population at large.
Your bigotry is showing.
Re: (Score:3)
I did Google it (though I didn't need to, as I have done quite a bit of study of the Anabaptists, which includes the Amish).
There is no "ruling class" in Amish society. Each congregation is self-governing, through consensus among its members. https://groups.etown.edu/amish... [etown.edu] Church leaders are not paid for their service, though occasionally church members do give them gifts of things like food.
There is no top in Amish society. The local community is a "high" as the leadership structure gets.
You picked on t
Re: (Score:2)
The Amish are a religious splinter group with specific beliefs, i.e. a cult.
The group sex alien suicide cults are a small minority.
Re: (Score:2)
There is a difference between a religious splinter group and a cult.
A cult is
a group (such as an organization or religious sect) with tenets and practices regarded as coercive, insular, or dangerous
https://www.merriam-webster.co... [merriam-webster.com]
The Amish are part of the Anabaptist Christian tradition, part of the Protestant Reformation. While their beliefs about technology do set them apart, their religious beliefs are quite squarely Protestant. Their communities are not run in a coercive manner, no one considers them dangerous, and they are welcoming of outsiders. They are not accurately described as a cult.
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Yeah, nothing insular about the Amish.
(Oh wait...)
Re: (Score:2)
The Amish are insular in the same way that members of nearly every other religion in the world, are insular. You're either a Muslim, or you're not, and if you don't subscribe to their teachings, you can't be part of the group. Same for Protestant Christians and Catholics. So yeah, the Amish are insular in the same way that every religion is insular. If every religion is a cult, then sure, the Amish are a cult.
Likewise, within every religion are smaller subgroups. The Muslims have Shiites and Sunnis, among o
Re: Not exactly (Score:2)
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I said nothing about my own goodness, but I did say that the Amish are good people.
Re: Not exactly (Score:3)
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I had not seen that. Pretty funny!
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It should also be noted that the "luddites" were not technophobes.
The luddites were highly technical artisans. They destroyed the machines that made human work a drudge, but they did not destroy all the machines (although they did destroy an entire factory once).
It's only history that rebranded them as idiots and technophobes.
AI is Slack, praise Bob (Score:2)
The SubGenius Gospel of Artificial Intelligence [youtube.com]
Hold on to that job (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Your stance will soon be unemployable.
Probably true, but disappointing. Using AI, relying on it, and being required to use it are different things and I fear we're moving toward the latter two. Having to get an religious exemption to be allowed to avoid being forced to use AI at work seems like a bad thing.
It's worth remembering that AIs are largely trained using data/information generated by people; it we become, to put it simply, idiots ... well, GIGO.
Re: Hold on to that job (Score:2)
Forget "moral" (Score:4, Insightful)
"The way we become moral actors for ourselves and for others is through the active application of our minds, and the diminishing of that [through AI use] is going to necessarily have a negative impact on our ability to do so,"
It may turn us from "actors" into "offloaders" or "delegators." [mit.edu]
More thorough reason (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:More thorough reason (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Before I get into why you have blown the analysis completely I have to point out, as an aside, that the human body does in fact work "by hydraulics." We call it the cardiovascular system. In fact, an essential component of the human reproduction system is powered by a hydraulic device called the penis.
Now, here is why
My religion also requires I be paid for nothing (Score:2)
So pony up, racist!
Mind you folks, there are whole established communities of people who believe the use of technology is counter to the objective of living a moral life.
Hint: they tend to not work white collar jobs like university administrator.
Re: (Score:3)
Only benefit I've seen so far is helping with powerpoint slides. It takes longer to prompt and verify data set analysis than it would take me to do it manually.
Re: (Score:3)
Why not here? Because for starters, humanism isn't a religion (and I say that as a humanist). It's a philosophical stance within atheism. And atheism is the absence of religion** (it's literally right there in the name), not a religion. You can't claim "religious" exemptions as an atheist. What this person actually wants is a philosophical exemption, akin to, say, a vegetarian wanting an exemption from having to cook meat at a restaurant or whatnot.
** - Well, except for those atheists who worship Athe.
Re: (Score:2)
Why not here? Because for starters, humanism isn't a religion (and I say that as a humanist). It's a philosophical stance within atheism.
Religion is a philosophical stance that you should believe unproven ideas because someone in power said so, and they make you feel better about eventually dying. There's no reason why it should give someone rights over not being religious. If it's valid to say you need to be able to wear a funny hat at work because you have positive beliefs about religion, it's exactly equally valid for me to say I cannot be in the presence of funny hats because I have negative beliefs about it.
Re: (Score:2)
I find it interesting that neither the article nor the summary use the work atheist. Is it still too scary.
I don't see why atheists shouldn't claim the same rights as others if there is supposed to be religious freedom.
Re: My religion also requires I be paid for nothin (Score:2)
Re: My religion also requires I be paid for nothi (Score:2)
A small percentage of a few billion people is a big problem.
Moreso when influential elements of our society instinctively sympathize with that small percentage.
The great collectivist sin is painting every individual with the same broad brush. So while it is incorrect to say every muslim everywhere is a problem, it is also incorrect to instinctively reject the idea that any particular muslim anywhere could possibly be a problem.
Especially so when he's making excuses for the 72 virgins crowd.
Observation: stup
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, regardless of whether their name is Muhammed or Breivik.
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A small percentage of a few billion people is a big problem.
Moreso when influential elements of our society instinctively sympathize with that small percentage.
The great collectivist sin is painting every individual with the same broad brush. So while it is incorrect to say every muslim everywhere is a problem, it is also incorrect to instinctively reject the idea that any particular muslim anywhere could possibly be a problem.
Especially so when he's making excuses for the 72 virgins crowd.
Observation: stupid and evil wears the suicide vest. Smart and evil sets him on his way and eulogizes after the fact.
That can be said about literally every religion out there.
Re: (Score:2)
Ah, so you're a proponent of the Prosperity Gospel! Where one's morality is determined by how much money you have, no matter how you came about to acquire it.
I suspect you don't have a problem when someone gets money for nothing if they're the "correct" person.
Re: (Score:2)
He's being a dick (Score:2)
There aren't any good options available for researching availability, prerequisites, and ranking options when dealing with things like grants that aren't AI at least on the back end.
He's essentially saying he's going to be really, really inefficient at his job or he's lying about not using AI.
So, his religion is Orange Catholic? (Score:2)
Thou shalt not disfigure the soul.
Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.
Like all good science fiction, one day it's no longer fiction.
Re: So, his religion is Orange Catholic? (Score:1)
Maybe he thinks he can bend spacetime after his "lunch break."
Typical humanities types.
End religious privilege (Score:3)
"Life of Brian" could not be made today. A Muslim version would be completely out of the question. That's the position that religion has in our lives these days.
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BS (Score:2)
Re: BS (Score:3)
Would you rather have the less intelligent individuals anong us believe in a supreme being and inherit their faith's moral code, or have them go to the streets, rob, rape and murder?
I don't believe in any deity myself but I do think that religions generally benefit the world by helping keep potentially dangerous people in check by providing a basic set of values to individuals who would otherwise have none, and by trying to enforce them without question under the guise of "because god says so".
Easy! If he brings his own software (Score:2)
The uni must be sure to have him bring his own fully-compatible software stack (including OS) that hasn't been modified or developed with the assistance of any AI tools, in order to "not use ai at work". It needs to run on hardware that was not designed with the assistance of AI tools too (he can bring his own to ensure this). There's no other way to sufficiently honor this religious exemption.
huh? (Score:2)
"Humanism] tends to appeal to people who are skeptical of a god or other supernatural power yet still seek a scientific and moral framework to ground themselves in. "
St Athanasius, St Augustine, & Erasmus would all be somewhat surprised to hear that they were skeptical of God.
Lol at the atheists conveniently forgetting that the entire basis of Western Humanism came from the Catholic Church and ultimately Protestantism.
Re: (Score:2)
> Western Humanism came from the Catholic Church and ultimately Protestantism
Mostly agree though a synthesis of Catholicism, Protestantism, and Hermeticism seems to have been needed to form the American system. Ideas migrated from Scotland to America then back to Europe.
Double Determinism is incompatible with Jury Systems, for instance - that developed under Catholicism in England.
None of these New Atheists would ever go a day without the concepts of Natural Rights, Presumption of Innocence, Blackstone'
It looks like you're outsourcing your humanity :o (Score:3)
Can I be an antihumanist? (Score:2)
The rationale for objecting to LLMs/genAI (Score:4, Interesting)
Much of the present-day debate regarding the use of LLMs and generative AI centers around topics such as necessity, accuracy, intellectual property rights, utility, efficiency, economics, worker protections, environmental impact, and future developments. But very little, it seems, is focused on what I think is really at stake, which is the centralization of authoritative truth.
If we regard such models and algorithms as "tools," then yes, there are advantages as well as disadvantages. We can discuss the benefits in productivity/efficiency/knowledge synthesis/discovery as much as we can discuss its impact on the labor market. We could also add in the context of where the training data came from, and whether the originators of such data possess rights to its use in this manner. We could talk at length about how data centers impact the environment in which they are built as well as the energy demands they make. We could endlessly speculate on various predictions for this technology as it might impact the human civilization long-term.
But what I would like to do is make a simpler statement, which is that at its core, these models--and in particular, the way they are being commodified and therefore utilized--represents a fundamental regression of the democratization of human knowledge. Some may say that, by assembling such vast quantities of information in this manner and then making it accessible to the world through the internet, we are improving access. After all, people who are not artists are using it to generate "art"; people who are not programmers are using it to "vibe code" computer applications; and in general, people who are not previously taught in a domain of knowledge through traditional means are using it to appear to attain a certain degree of competency. This is a seriously flawed argument; one that does not become more persuasive if the LLMs become more accurate, more knowledgable, or more capable.
What I mean by "democratization" is not simply about access to knowledge. It is about who controls that access, who curates it, who says it is the truth, who is accountable for the consequences of its use, and who teaches the critical thinking skills that facilitate its interpretation. In all these respects, the entities who have created and commodified these models are failing miserably, and if we look at their behavior, all of the evidence very clearly points to sinister motivations--that is, the failure is intentional. These people do not want you to think and reason and learn for yourselves, because that threatens their ability to sell that capability to you, and more importantly, to be the ultimate arbiter of truth.
It's a red herring to argue that individual humans are more fallible in their judgment, less objective, less knowledgeable in scope; thus are more prone to believing lies. The accuracy argument is misdirection. The point is, if we don't have the capability to interrogate and question, if we leave that to the machine, who is pulling the levers on that machine? And in a rather frighteningly perverse way, it may actually be preferable to have a human in control of that, as megalomanical, authoritarian, and evil as they may be, than having the machine in control. But this is my point--we shouldn't be letting this kind of centralization of power to occur in the first place. I don't want a dictatorship of knowledge, whether or not an oligarch trillionaire or the machine itself is in command of it.
So yes, I object to this technology, in as much as I object to, say, making nuclear weapons. People can point to "positive" examples of the technology--we've heard the arguments that these weapons keep us safe through a policy of mutually assured destruction; or that the underlying physics have given us nuclear energy, therapeutic radiation for treating cancer, and all kinds of other knowledge about the universe we live in. But will any of that matter if those weapons are used? Now ask yourself who has the power to use them, and what their motivations might be. When faced with the evidence, should we not be similarly skeptical of LLMs/genAI?
Well, AI kind of is like a religion! (Score:2)
There's a whole lot of evangelical fervor, both for and against. There's a lot of irrational enthusiasm, dogmas, and even those who believe AI is some kind of god that can answer prayers.
Jews taking the same position (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
A logical absurdity! (Score:2)
"I want an exemption based on beliefs I do not hold", can only have the one response - no.
Translation (Score:1)
"As technology and job responsibilities evolve, accommodations may be reviewed to ensure they remain reasonable and workable."
Translation: We'll grand the accommodation for now while our lawyers figure out a way around it.