This is the second installment of Meghan Sullivan’s series about DELTA, Notre Dame’s faith-based framework for a world of powerful AI.
Ready for your first mini seminar on the DELTA framework? Let’s talk about dignity, the “D” in DELTA, and how that relates to the concept of work.
Every day, we’re bombarded with new headlines about the evolving job market. In mid-October, Amazon announced the elimination of 14,000 administrative and management jobs; the previous month, Salesforce cut 4,000 of its customer service positions. Goldman Sachs, Meta and Microsoft have all made similar reductions recently.
AI is revolutionizing the workplace at a scale and speed that can only be compared to the Industrial Revolution over a century ago.
As students, you may be asking yourselves, nervously, “Will I be able to find a meaningful job after graduation?”
Frankly, it may not be easy. We’re in the beginning stages of a historic transition from our current economy to one that’s driven by powerful artificial intelligence. Jobs will change, jobs will be eliminated and new jobs will be created — jobs that we couldn’t have even imagined three years ago.
In this changing environment, institutions like Notre Dame that educate people and prepare them for work will have to think through a full slate of challenging questions. But first we need to decide what vision of a good society we’re going to use to navigate this.
One option is the optimization paradigm, which focuses on maximizing the benefits for the economy as a whole. From this perspective, if some people are losers in the AI economy, it’s fine. As long as more people are winners, more value is created. Plenty of people in industry and even plenty of ethicists advocate that this is the best approach.
But DELTA, which is informed by the rich tradition of Christian ethical thought, provides a different option. Inherent in the DELTA framework is the belief that every single person has dignity because they are created in the image of God.
This means that people are not dispensable or replaceable. As Pope Leo XIV said in a June address, “[T]he person is not a system of algorithms: He or she is a creature, relationship, mystery.” We owe something to workers who are burdened by this new economy or displaced by it. Their interests need to shape our expectations of the companies that employ them and drive the kinds of regulations that our government implements.
One of the key concepts of Christian social tradition that animates the DELTA framework is that meaningful work is an essential part of the good life. The Bible is full of references to work and its value. The opening pages of Genesis talk about God putting Adam and Eve on earth to till the land. Jesus was a carpenter. We all have a need to contribute to projects that are bigger than ourselves — to make things, to change and improve society.
Some techno-optimists think that we’re headed for a post-work economy where AI does the work for us, and we do something else. It might sound attractive, but it would be a terrible, dangerous thing to transition to a society where people have no access to meaningful work. We have to find creative, substantive ways to satisfy this deep human need.
Technology is reshaping work, and it’s hard to predict what the job market will look like in the next few months or years. The “D” in DELTA requires us to keep the dignity of each person at the forefront of our approach to designing and using AI, particularly when considering its impact on human work.
Meghan Sullivan
Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy and director of University-wide Ethics Initiative and the Institute for Ethics and the Common Good
Nov. 3
