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Tag: ethics

AI’s Humility Problem (fPET 2026)

Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Citation

2026. Graeff, E. “AI’s Humility Problem: Threats to the Practice of Design.” Presented at the 2026 Forum on Philosophy, Engineering, and Technology (fPET 2026), University of Maryland, College Park, MD, Jun 11.

Presentation Slides

Abstract

This paper will examine the relationship between artificial intelligence and humility, arguing that humility—especially epistemic humility—is a crucial civic virtue that contemporary AI systems place at risk. Generative AI technologies allow us to use knowledge that is beyond us without helping us appreciate the boundaries of our understanding. While AI could help reveal our limitations in ways that augment humility, more common uses threaten to erode humility, the social practices that sustain it, and our civil society that relies on it.

I am approaching this concern through exploratory engagement with multidisciplinary scholarship on humility, ethics, computing, and AI, alongside reflection on my formative experiences in computing and my current work in engineering education. Drawing on my graduate education within the innovation culture of the MIT Media Lab, I will consider, from this situated vantage point, how many computing environments have rewarded anti-humble performances of speed, certainty, and mastery. Generative AI intensifies these tendencies by giving users the illusion that they need not be limited by their own experiences and education—that one can access collective knowledge on demand, even though this is far from the totality of human knowledge. I will use these experiences to ask how everyday encounters with AI may reshape dispositions toward doubt, listening, and deference to others.

A guiding premise is that humility is not merely a private moral trait but a foundation for democratic and collaborative life via openness to plural forms of knowledge and deliberative capacity. Humility ensures that we value the creation of new knowledge, that we are awed when others do things we cannot or did not think to do, and that we embrace curiosity and deep listening. Awareness of our limitations enables us to be more open and tolerant, to collaborate with people from different backgrounds, and to become well-rounded humans. If generative AI obscures our lack of knowledge and ability, I fear we will diminish a key part of our humanity and civic capacity.

I am exploring these questions through a review of literature on intellectual humility, AI and engineering ethics, engineering and computer science education, and critical approaches to human-computer interaction, with strong influence from Shannon Vallor’s account of “technomoral humility” and her arguments in The AI Mirror. Rather than claiming a settled literature, the paper will map concerns about how AI mediates experiences of competence and ignorance. It will also consider the responsibility of developers and educators to account for what happens when humility is undermined and these effects operate at scale.

Ultimately, I contend that AI strengthens the need to cultivate technomoral humility. Particular attention will be given to implications for undergraduate engineering and computer science programs. We need engineers and technologists who see humility as a virtue in their work. The paper will argue for an AI ethics more centrally concerned with humility and for pedagogical directions that normalize admitting uncertainty, foreground the social origins of knowledge, reward engagement with unfamiliar perspectives, and connect humility to civic-mindedness and democracy.

The AI Bargain

Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Citation

Graeff, E. 2026. “The AI Bargain.” In Anderson, Janna, and Lee Rainie, eds. Chapter 9: Epistemic Vigilance: Discerning Truth, Illusion and Misinformation. Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the Age of AI. Imagining the Digital Future Center. https://imaginingthedigitalfuture.org/reports-and-publications/human-resilience-in-the-age-of-ai/.

Link

Epistemic Vigilance: Discerning Truth, Illusion and Misinformation

Essay: The AI Bargain

The AI bargain: AI will be ‘just good enough that we won’t give it up.’ Human resilience requires epistemic humility, cultivating practical reason and investing in humans’ special moral capacities

Artificial intelligence will play a far more significant role in shaping our decisions, work and daily lives over the next decade, not because most people will demand such a transformation, but because AI will be subtly integrated into nearly every digital system we rely on. Even if many of us feel uneasy, resistance will struggle to compete with the promise of efficiency, personalization and productivity. Powerful forces of capital and the lure of perceived convenience may end up deciding for us.

At the moment, there is little appetite for the kind of regulation that might slow this integration. Generative chat assistants are celebrated as helpful companions for writing, coding and learning. Evidence is emerging, contested but concerning, that these tools can undermine attention, learning and even mental health, but the positive press is loud enough to muddy any call for restraint. Protecting children and human resilience more broadly would require moral courage from educators, technologists and policymakers.

We may see pockets of refusal. Elite families already limit screens and social media for their children, while the rest of society is nudged toward greater dependence. But opting out will not be realistic for most people. Technology companies, eager to justify their massive investments in AI infrastructure, are embedding it into learning management systems, workplace software, financial services and everyday tools like email and word processors. Software has long been engineered to be feature-rich rather than fail-safe; AI will amplify that tendency. There will be lawsuits over errors and harms, but large firms will shield themselves behind terms of service and the sheer complexity of their systems. The technology will be just good enough that we won’t give it up.

The AI bargain is no bargain

“This AI bargain comes at a potentially staggering price. In her book ‘The AI Mirror,’ philosopher Shannon Vallor cautions that we are trading something essential when we rely on AI: the ‘space of moral reasons.’

“Democracy depends on our ability to explain and contest decisions, to ask why a loan was denied, a student was flagged or a medical treatment recommended. Yet the deep-learning models powering today’s AI are intrinsically opaque. Vallor, echoing Frank Pasquale’s vision of a ‘black box society,’ reminds us that when reasons disappear behind algorithms, accountability follows.

“The danger to human resilience is not only technical or procedural; it is fundamentally moral. If we cannot meaningfully discuss automated decisions, we will more often than not accept them and grow reliant on them. Vallor warns us about ‘moral deskilling.’ Just as GPS has eroded our ability to navigate with a map, AI may erode our capacity to deliberate, to imagine alternatives and to take responsibility for collective choices.

“If we aren’t cultivating our moral skills in schools, workplaces and civic life, we will erode the practical wisdom that undergirds our human adaptability and resilience. Overreliance on machines risks shrinking our moral imagination precisely when we need it most.

How, then, should we respond?

First, we must cultivate epistemic humility. AI systems speak with unwarranted confidence and humans are tempted to mirror it. Resilience requires the opposite habit: awareness of what we do not know, curiosity about others’ experiences and respect for forms of knowledge that cannot be reduced to data. Schools and workplaces should reward slow reasoning, explanation and disagreement, not just correct answers produced fastest.

Second, we need to maintain social practices that keep the space of moral reasons alive. We should be designing AI systems that show their work. We must create and advocate for more face-to-face human forums in addition to today’s classrooms, juries and community meetings. Automated recommendations should be treated as starting points rather than verdicts. And AI can also be designed and used to reinforce human deliberation. Recent experiments in participatory city visioning in Bowling Green, Kentucky, as well as the large-scale, online deliberations run by Audrey Tang and Taiwan using pol.is, show that AI can widen participation rather than replace it when the design goal is collective reasoning instead of automation.

Third, we should invest in capacities that machines cannot replace: empathy, moral imagination, collective problem-solving and the patience to sit with uncertainty. These are not soft add-ons to technical skill; they are the infrastructure of democratic resilience. If we teach students to use AI and to code AI, we must also teach them when not to automate.

I hope my worries prove overstated. I also fear the kind of cataclysmic failure of an AI-based technology that may shake us out of our complacency. Absent such a unifying event, our adaptability as a species will do what it always does.

Technology, when embraced, always transforms human decision-making, work and daily life in some way. We risk degrading the moral skills and practical wisdom required for decision-making, creativity, self-care and social life until these capacities begin to feel impossible without AI assistance. The AI bargain is not settled. Let us defend the fragile, human space where reasons matter and design technologies that serve that space rather than replace it.

Cultivating Civic Virtue in Engineering Education

Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Citation

Graeff, E. 2025. “Cultivating Civic Virtue in Engineering Education.” Presented at the 15th Symposium on Engineering and Liberal Education, Union College, Schenectady, NY, Sep 13.

Presentation Recording

Slides

Abstract

Many undergraduate engineers begin their education with a desire to make a positive impact on the world. Yet their moral ambition and belief in the relationship between public welfare and professional responsibility often diminish over time—a phenomenon sociologist Erin Cech attributes to a “culture of disengagement” in engineering education. While recent attention to technology ethics has spurred new research, curricula, and professional codes, there remains a pressing need to more holistically support the ethical commitments and civic engagement that our complex world demands of engineers.

This presentation argues for emphasizing civic virtue as a framework for reorienting engineering education toward civic-mindedness and public welfare. In her book Technology and the Virtues, philosopher Shannon Vallor proposes a framework of “technomoral” virtues to help individuals navigate the ethical challenges of an increasingly interconnected and uncertain world. For engineers, these virtues offer a richer and more integrated ethical foundation than traditional models of professional conduct or risk mitigation—and they align with the long-standing goals of liberal education. I focus on four technomoral virtues in particular—humility, care, courage, and civility—which I argue are essential to preparing engineers for responsible civic participation and ethical practice.

Crucially, this work should not require a wholesale reinvention of engineering education. Many pedagogical practices already used at the intersection of liberal and engineering education are well-suited to cultivating civic virtue. Critical reflection, democratic pedagogy, community engagement, and experiential learning provide meaningful opportunities for students to wrestle with ethical complexity, practice empathy, and connect their technical work to broader social and political contexts. What’s needed is more intentional and sustained use of such practices in and across courses to support students in developing durable ethical dispositions.

I will share insights from my own teaching and advising, including examples from capstone design courses and community-engaged design projects that have prompted students to critically examine the real-world consequences of their work and rethink their roles as engineers. I will also propose specific strategies for embedding technomoral virtues into existing curricula, drawing on best practices in virtue and character education.

At a time when engineering faces urgent questions about its public purpose and societal impact, we must embrace the full ethical and civic potential of undergraduate engineering education. Cultivating civic virtue can help students sustain their hope of doing good through engineering—and equip them to do so more responsibly, thoughtfully, and justly.

Tech Agnostic book review

Erhardt GraeffLeave a comment

Tech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World's Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a ReformationTech Agnostic: How Technology Became the World’s Most Powerful Religion, and Why It Desperately Needs a Reformation by Greg Epstein
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Before reading this book, I knew of the author Greg Epstein primarily by his work as a humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT during times I was affiliated with those institutions. I was unaware of his work as a tech journalist. This book smashes together those two facets of the author in the hope of offering a profound contribution to the “techlash” literature. I think it succeeds at offering a novel way to interpret the ways Big Tech culture has infiltrated all culture and warped the beliefs and values of several recent generations. For those like me, who have been consistently and critically following technology, internet culture, and its tendrils into philosophy, policy, etc., the book is mostly a rehashing of many things you already knew and already felt ambivalent about, except now its being analyzed like a religion.

I did enjoy the lessons on what religion is, how you might spot one and compare it to others you already know, and the key differences and advantages of agnosticism versus atheism. If this gets a bunch of technology navel-gazers to think deeply about the history of religion and why aspects of religion and faith are important to study even if you aren’t religious, then that will be a win. I agree with Epstein about the need for this.

A religious lens turns out to be a useful tool for analyzing the rhetoric around tech. Talking about technology as sociotechnical systems or culture, as many social science and humanities scholars—like me—do, still often misses the importance of belief and faith. When folks have irrational desires or views of the world, its not just that they are being deceived by hucksters. There are complex values systems that live and evolve beyond their progenitors or any isolated trend.

I was also convinced by Epstein’s argument in the conclusion for reclaiming “agnostic” as a noble posture. In the company of fellow readers, I would identify as a tech agnostic. The ambivalence of my feelings about tech is definitely a choice rather than a cop out. It is hard earned by riding the roller coasters of optimism and pessimism across several waves of tech.

I think the book’s main argument—tech (the whole social, political, economic project, not just the creation of widgets or apps) is a religion, we should be skeptical of its claims, and approach it like a religious scholar would—could have landed in an essay rather than a book. But I’ll admit it was fun to hear Epstein’s and his interviewees’ version of events from the past couple decades in tech. I was close to some of the examples and friends with specific interviewees, which added to the value for me. I just didn’t learn anything new about tech’s ethical pitfalls by the end.

If you are already studying technology as culture or just curious, add Tech Agnostic and religious analysis to your quiver.

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