Technology Revealed in an Age of AI

Episode 2 of the AI Strategist Series

Summary

Understanding AI through a broader conception of technology—not merely as tools or instruments, but as human agency extended through artificial means—reveals why questions of AI policy and ethics cannot be separated from fundamental questions about human responsibility, social order, and the direction of technological development itself. AI is not simply another tool; it is a new mode of human endeavor that requires serious moral consideration.

Technology as Generally Understood

  We commonly think of technology as tools, instruments, machines, and systems that serve a wide range of human purposes. From this view, technology is "simply a means that humans are free to employ or not, as they see fit." (1) Technology has no intrinsic value or purpose. We use it to achieve goals in other areas—art, religion, politics, and so forth. As one scholar puts it, technology "merely opens a door, it does not compel one to enter." (2)

This is an accurate description, as far as it goes. Indeed, the concept of technology does encompass such things as plows, microscopes, computers, and space shuttles. The question is whether this instrumental view of technology reveals the essence of the phenomena we refer to as technology. If technology (in its essence) is simply a thing to be used, then technology has a very limited moral significance. In fact, the conclusion commonly drawn from this instrumental view is that technology is morally neutral. If this conclusion is correct, we should not concern ourselves about questions involving technology (as a general concept) and responsibility. After all, responsibility would make sense only in reference to the activities served by technology and not technology itself. In this view, we should deal only with problems related to how specific technologies are used in good or bad ways, or how specific technologies are, or can be, used to promote or thwart the achievement of the "good."

Technology Revealed as a Form of Human Agency

There is another perspective (3), however, that reveals something beyond the merely instrumental character of technology. (4) This broader, more nuanced view paints a very different picture of the moral significance of technology. According to this view, technology is fundamentally a way of human acting, not simply a collection of human-made objects. It is an expression of human agency. (5)  

Robert McGinn argues that technology encompasses a specific activity-the "expansion of the realm of the humanly possible." McGinn's definition of technology, however, is too broad. Ironically, it suffers because it lacks any reference to technology as a human artifact. Also, the notion of "expanding the humanly possible" is too vague. Embracing the spirit, if not the letter, of McGinn's definition, we can define the enhancement of human capacity or power by artificial means. 

In this definition, "human capacity" simply connotes the various mental and physical capabilities and potentialities that are native to or assumed by human beings. The phrase "by artificial means" suggests that not all activities of extension or enhancement of human capacities and power are technological.  For instance, mental techniques can be used to improve one's memory. Neither is the use of artifacts, nor the activity of making artifacts, sufficient for describing an activity as technological. For instance, though it is a human artifact, a decorative bowl made of clay and painted with natural dyes is art, but not technology.  In order to be technology, a phenomenon must be associated with some mode of activity in which human capacity or power is extended or enhanced, and this extension or enhancement must be brought about directly by the use of some artifact. The use of a potter's wheel to produce the bowl, or even the use of the bowl to mix ingredients, would be technology.

Therefore, what makes something "technological" is its relationship to human agency, specifically, to the extension or enhancement of human capacity or power through artificial means. However, while technology can be distinguished from other pursuits, it is not usually pursued for its own sake. Rather, technology serves other purposes, such as producing food, winning battles, and communicating with others. In fact, technology can potentially be used to accomplish any human purpose. For instance, agriculture is the activity of producing crops or raising animals for various human uses. Agriculture is not inherently technological; one doesn't need artificial means to engage in this activity. Removing a seed from fruit and planting it in the ground is agricultural, not technological. However, agricultural activities can be enhanced or extended technologically. That is, certain human capacities and power (such as the ability to dig holes or work rocky or dense soil) may be extended or enhanced through artifacts (such as the hoe or plow). Thus, we have agriculture and technology, working together.

Technology can become so woven into another form of activity that the activity is practically understood in its technologically extended or enhanced form. This is especially true for activities, like agriculture, that have been pursued technologically over long periods during which numerous technological innovations have come to represent the current state of practice. This is also true of activities, such as spaceflight, that were born and will always be practiced technologically. (6)

Technology as an Organizing Principle of Culture

When something is enhanced or extended, change happens. Therefore, technology involves change. This is true whether the person realizes or intends it or not. Yet, though the activities of extension or enhancement naturally involve movement and change, technology isn't necessarily connected only with practices marked by innovation. After the original innovation (which may happen many different times in separate incidents), the way of acting (now consisting of the original activity plus technology) may become a standard practice. In some ages and circumstances (most of human history, in fact), technological innovation is best understood in gradual, rather than dramatic terms.

Take agriculture again as an example. At the point of the original innovation (for example, when a hand-plow was first used to break up rocky soil), technology involved change, possibly dramatic change, in the primary practice (in this case, tilling). The culture, however, eventually adapted to this technological practice (tilling with a hand-drawn plow), which then continued for centuries before another technological innovation was introduced (the animal-drawn plow). To some degree, therefore, technology becomes part of the practice at a particular stage of development; it becomes part of the established way. Nevertheless, human capacities or power continue to be enhanced or extended, whether this is recognized or not. The activity remains technological even long after the innovation was first realized.

In an age of technology, technology is a primary mechanism of change, a source of sociocultural dynamism that shifts the boundaries of both possibility and limit. The degree of dynamism engendered by technology depends on the conditions within which the technology is employed, the amount of power utilized, the degree of innovation, and the length of time between the innovation and the sociocultural adaptation to it. In an age of technology, the evolutionary development of technology continues, but the revolutionary character of technological innovation and its effects on society and culture become the norm.

Moreover, technology shapes how human life is organized. In fact, in our technological age, this technological ordering becomes a primary force and form of organization. Examining these two aspects—technology as a way of acting and technology as a form of organization—reveals crucial ways that technology affects responsibility, and even suggests we need to rethink the nature of responsibility itself. 

Technology and Artificial Intelligence: A Contemporary Application

The definition of technology as the extension or enhancement of human capacity and power through artificial means finds perhaps its most profound contemporary expression in artificial intelligence. AI represents a distinctive technological moment because it extends not just our physical capabilities—as hammers extend our strength or telescopes extend our sight—but our cognitive capabilities as well.

Consider how AI enhances human mental abilities. Machine learning algorithms process vast datasets beyond human comprehension, extending our capacity for pattern recognition and analysis. Natural language processing systems enhance our ability to translate between languages, summarize complex texts, and generate written content. Computer vision technologies extend our perceptual abilities, allowing us to identify objects, faces, and anomalies with superhuman precision and speed.

Yet AI also exemplifies how technology becomes woven into human activity until the activity itself is practically understood in its technologically enhanced form. Modern scientific research, financial trading, medical diagnosis, and creative work increasingly assume AI assistance. Just as agriculture became technologically intertwined with plows and irrigation, these fields are becoming technologically intertwined with AI systems. The original human activities persist, but they are now extended and enhanced through artificial means in ways that reshape their fundamental character.

This technological integration reveals the deeper truth about technology as a form of organization and order. AI doesn't merely serve as a neutral tool; it actively shapes how we structure knowledge work, decision-making processes, and even creative expression. The algorithms that extend our cognitive capacities also influence what questions we ask, what patterns we seek, and what solutions we consider viable.

The responsibility implications are profound. If technology is merely instrumental, then AI would be morally neutral—a tool whose ethical significance depends entirely on how humans choose to use it. But if technology functions as a mode of human agency and a form of social organization, then AI carries inherent moral weight. The ways AI systems extend human cognitive capacity inevitably influence the boundaries of possibility and limitation in human affairs.

Furthermore, AI demonstrates technology's role as a primary mechanism of change in our technological age. The pace of AI development and its revolutionary effects on society and culture exemplify how technological innovation has become the norm rather than the exception. Unlike the gradual, evolutionary technological changes that characterized most of human history, AI represents the kind of dramatic, revolutionary innovation that defines our current era.

Understanding AI through this broader conception of technology—as human agency extended through artificial means—reveals why questions of AI ethics cannot be separated from fundamental questions about human responsibility, social order, and the direction of technological development itself. AI is not simply another tool; it is a new mode of human endeavor that requires serious moral consideration.

Notes

1. Melvin Kranzberg. "Technology and History: 'Kranzberg's Laws,'" Technology and Culture 27/3 (July 1986): 545.

2. From Lynn White, Jr., Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford 1962) 28, as quoted in Melvin Kranzberg, "Technology and History: 'Kranzberg's Laws,'" 545. Kranzberg uses White to exemplify the "neutral" attitude toward technology, although White's position is much more nuanced than the "myth" of neutrality I am using White's language to characterize.

3. In philosophical and sociological circles this is known as a "phenomenological" interpretation.

4. For discussions of broad-based definitions of technology see: Carl Mitcham, "Types of Technology," Research in Philosophy and Technology 1 (1978), 229-294; Friedrich Rapp, "Philosophy of technology," in Contemporary Philosophy: A New Survey, volume 2, ed. G. Floistad (Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982), 361-412; and Nicholas Berdyaev, "Man and Machine," in Philosophy and Technology: Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Technology, ed. Carl Mitcham and Robert Mackey (New York: The Free Press, 1983 (1934)), 203-213. For a discussion of alternative approaches to a philosophy of technology as well as a more detailed account of this particular phenomenological approach, see chapters 1-3 of Russell E. Willis, "Toward a Theological Ethics of Technology: An Analysis in Dialogue with Jacques Ellul, James Gustafson, and Philosophy of Technology," an unpublished dissertation, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, 1990. This phenomenological approach also identifies a third dimension of technology—technology as the material products of the technological mode of activity. This is the aspect of technology that represents the common instrumental view of technology (technology understood as tools, instruments, etc.). This dimension, and its ethical significance, are discussed elsewhere (Willis, 35-48).

5. Up until this essay, I have defined technology as a mode of human activity. However, to help focus attention on the economic, political and ethical issues related to technology, I have changed to the language of agency, which implies consideration of accountability for one’s actions.

6. Barring an unimaginable evolution of human physiology, space flight is impossible without some extension or enhancement of human capacity and power by artificial means. Therefore, it is necessarily "technological."

© 2025 Russell E. Willis

Please browse my blog series Being Responsible in the Age of Social Media, Cryptocurrency, and Smart Weapons/Cars/Phones  (2018) for an overview of my philosophy and ethics of technology. "Artificial Intelligence: the Quintessential Ambivalent Technology" was the first in a series to apply AI to the model. My foray into these topics was my dissertation: Toward a Theological Ethics of Technology: An Analysis in Dialogue with Jacques Ellul, James Gustafson, and Philosophy of Technology. Ann Arbor, Michigan; University Microfilms International. 1990.   I revisited the model for "Complex Responsibility in an Age of Technology," in Living Responsibly in Community, ed. Fredrick E.  Glennon, et al. (University Press of America, 1997).  

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