Progressive Rationality of AI Adoption

In the AI Story

Conditionality is the first feature because it is the feature both the triumphalist and elegist traditions tend to abandon. The triumphalist adopts unconditionally — AI is progress, adopt it. The elegist rejects unconditionally — AI is loss, resist it. Laudan's framework demands more: specify the conditions under which adoption is progressive (which it is in some contexts) and the conditions under which it is degenerative (which it is in others), and evaluate which conditions obtain. The same tool, deployed in different institutional environments, produces different problem-shifts. The tool does not determine the outcome. The structures surrounding it do.

Acknowledgment of residual problems is the second feature because the aggregate arithmetic that excuses transitions does not discharge the specific obligations they incur. The framework knitters' displacement was real; the aggregate prosperity of the industrial age did not compensate them. The AI transition is accumulating debts of the same kind. Progressive rationality acknowledges these debts and builds the institutions — labor law, retraining, portable benefits, distributed ownership — that address them. Not reversal. Redirection.

Continuous evaluation is the third feature because the framework is a practice rather than a one-time assessment. The triumphalist certainty that gains will compound is not warranted by current evidence. The elegist certainty that losses are irreversible is equally unwarranted. Progressive rationality holds both conclusions open, specifies the evidence that would confirm or disconfirm each, and evaluates honestly as the evidence arrives. The specific questions — is the ascending friction thesis being confirmed? is the capacity for independent judgment being preserved? are the residual problems being addressed institutionally? — are all answerable, not immediately, but progressively.

Distributed epistemic responsibility is the fourth feature because Laudan was explicit that progress depends on the distribution of evaluation across many actors over time, not on the pronouncements of a central authority. Builders bear the responsibility of evaluating whether their tools produce progressive or degenerative shifts, and designing for the former. Policymakers bear the responsibility of building the demand-side institutions that redirect the transition. Educators bear the responsibility of redesigning assessment for a world where the old proxies are compromised. Parents bear the responsibility of modeling engaged uncertainty. Individuals bear the responsibility of maintaining the capacity for independent judgment.

The framework does not guarantee progress. It specifies the conditions under which progress is possible. Whether the conditions are met depends on choices that are still being made, in institutions that are still being built, by people whose attention is still available to the problem.

Key Ideas

Conditional, not categorical. Adoption is evaluated against specific conditions, not accepted or rejected wholesale.

Residual problems are debts. Progressive adoption builds institutions that discharge them.

Evaluation is continuous. The rationality is a practice, not a one-time verdict.

Responsibility is distributed. Progress depends on evaluation at every level, from individual to institutional.