The ethics of effort: reclaiming effort and resisting AI

Abstract

In the debate between those who embrace and those who resist artificial intelligence (AI), resistance is frequently attributed to fear or misunderstanding; an aberration to be fixed or overcome. However, we argue that what may seem like “irrational” resistance instead reflects a pervasive form of rationality that has largely escaped analytical attention. We use disparate examples of AI resistance and theoretical lenses to render explicit an underlying logic which connects varied forms of resistance, grounded in the ethical value(s) that effort can manifest. We examine three types of normative value that effort can yield: effort’s relationship to human excellences, as understood in virtue ethics; the epistemic value of effort for communicating interpersonal regard; and assumptions about the moral value of effort embedded in powerful, society-wide work ethics, and relate these to the use of AI. This allows us to surface a hitherto implicit foundation shared by different types of resistance to AI, and a tension at the heart of debates between AI embracers and AI resisters between the goods of efficiency and the goods of effort. Through this articulation, we give analytic footing to everyday, individual forms of resistance and reframe one side of the debate between embracers and resisters.