AI Age Vices

Thirty-nine dispositions to distinguish

Truth and judgment

1. 01

   Credulity

   Accepting plausible outputs, fabricated citations or apparent consensus without the scrutiny their consequences reasonably warrant.

2. 02

   Uncritical Deference

   Treating a system, expert or institution as entitled to settle a question merely by answering it.

3. 03

   Truth Indifference

   Sharing or deploying factual claims because they attract attention or serve a goal while treating their truth as dispensable.

4. 04

   Self-Deception

   Protecting a flattering account of one's competence, independence or system's reliability against reasons one could acknowledge.

5. 05

   Willful Blindness

   Avoiding available evidence about provenance, failure or affected people because discovering it would be unwelcome.

6. 06

   Stubbornness

   Refusing relevant correction of an AI-assisted judgment or an established view about AI.

7. 07

   Style Worship

   Letting fluent prose, polished images or elegant explanations override warranted judgments of truth or acceptability.

8. 08

   Novelty Worship

   Treating a new model or automated method as superior merely because it is new.

9. 09

   Contrarianism

   Taking opposition to AI enthusiasm or to AI criticism as evidence of insight in itself.

10. 10

    Cynicism

    Dismissing earnest work or ethical concern as necessarily fake, self-promoting or AI-generated despite reasons for a fairer judgment.

Effort and answerability

1. 11

   Laziness

   Using automation to avoid worthwhile understanding or effort one reasonably has the capacity and responsibility to undertake.

2. 12

   Impatience

   Rejecting the time needed for verification, learning, consultation or a meaningful appeal.

3. 13

   Negligence

   Habitually giving insufficient care to data handling, verification, supervision, maintenance or correction of AI-assisted work.

4. 14

   Responsibility Evasion

   Using an algorithm, vendor, policy or chain of delegation to disclaim one's reasonably answerable contribution to a decision.

5. 15

   Complacency

   Taking past performance, fluent output or a safety reputation as assurance that further attention is unnecessary.

6. 16

   Fickleness

   Repeatedly abandoning considered learning or stewardship commitments when a fashionable tool or fresh project beckons.

7. 17

   Cowardice

   Abandoning a defensible correction, objection or purpose through fear when a fitting response is reasonably available.

Purpose and limits

1. 18

   Metric Worship

   Treating engagement, benchmark position, productivity or a personal score as more authoritative than the worthwhile purpose it should serve.

2. 19

   Capability Worship

   Treating the ability to automate, infer, imitate or intervene as sufficient permission to do so.

3. 20

   Recklessness

   Generating, deploying or granting agents autonomy while discounting foreseeable significant consequences for others.

4. 21

   Defeatism

   Foreclosing worthwhile human learning, contribution or collective action on an inadequately examined conviction that action is futile.

5. 22

   Fanaticism

   Treating acceleration, resistance or another AI-related cause as license to override defensible moral limits.

Self-presentation and integrity

1. 23

   Dishonesty

   Misrepresenting authorship, competence, provenance, uncertainty or the human involvement behind a system.

2. 24

   Vanity

   Making admiration for an AI-enhanced persona, apparent expertise or visible technical sophistication the overriding concern.

3. 25

   Arrogance

   Treating technical fluency or privileged access as authority beyond its grounds and discounting correction or others' standing.

4. 26

   Hypocrisy

   Demanding disclosure, care or respect for human work while making unjustified exceptions for one's own uses.

5. 27

   Servility

   Surrendering considered judgment to please an influential sponsor, audience or AI fashion.

6. 28

   Venality

   Trading a considered commitment or entrusted responsibility for payment, access, prestige or another personal reward.

People, power and fair regard

1. 29

   Domination

   Using personalization, surveillance or automated gatekeeping to override other people's reasonable agency.

2. 30

   Selfishness

   Taking convenient automation while disregarding other people's legitimate claims to privacy, credit or fair treatment.

3. 31

   Callousness

   Treating distress, exclusion or a need for meaningful recourse as irrelevant inconvenience.

4. 32

   Cruelty

   Seeking humiliation or suffering through impersonation, targeted synthetic media or automated harassment.

5. 33

   Contempt

   Treating people as beneath basic respect because their work is less efficient, less technical or replaceable.

6. 34

   Favoritism

   Unjustifiably favoring certain people's claims, evidence or opportunities in AI-assisted selection and review.

7. 35

   Envy

   Resenting others' AI-enabled or unaided achievements and wanting to diminish their advantage.

8. 36

   Ingratitude

   Refusing fitting appreciation of acknowledged human teaching, collaboration or freely given help behind one's AI-assisted achievements.

Gain and resources

1. 37

   Greed

   Pursuing excessive data, market advantage, output or credit at the expense of fair claims or defensible limits.

2. 38

   Wastefulness

   Habitually consuming entrusted money, computation or other resources without fitting regard for their proper use.

3. 39

   Stinginess

   Refusing fitting provision for review, maintenance, compensation or recourse despite resources available for their proper use.

The work worth doing

AI can help someone begin a difficult explanation, translate an unfamiliar passage, explore a design or remove repetitive labor. Those uses matter through the human purposes they make possible: understanding, expression, access, cooperation and useful work. The achievement need not be solitary to be real.

Thoughtful use assigns assistance a fitting part in a larger undertaking. A learner can ask for an example and still work to understand it. A maker can use generated material while making an accurate claim about the contribution. A team can delegate execution while retaining clear reasons, care and a usable route to correction.

These readings concern the choices of builders, deployers, users and audiences. People affected by automated decisions also have claims that cannot be inferred from the convenience of those making them. The subject includes privacy, fair consideration, human contribution and resources alongside personal judgment.

Similar appearances, different choices

Credulity accepts inadequate grounds. Uncritical Deference grants excessive authority. Truth Indifference treats factual truth as dispensable. The same repeated claim can arise through different orientations, and an honest error may establish none of them.

Laziness avoids fitting effort; Negligence disregards fitting care; Recklessness discounts foreseeable significant consequences; Responsibility Evasion refuses fitting answerability. A useful response needs the distinction: more supervision alone will not repair a refusal to own a carefully made choice.

Metric Worship makes the score sovereign. Capability Worship treats ability as permission. Neither measurement nor power is itself the defect. A worthwhile purpose needs appropriate evidence, limits and regard for people beyond the person operating the tool.

Other perspectives

Read without diagnosing

Begin with a situation that interests you. Compare the legitimate neighboring response before applying a label. Capacity, access, uncertainty, coercion and system design belong in the account; they cannot be replaced by a character verdict.

Assistance, rest, synthetic companionship and changing a vocation are not intrinsically vicious. Being deceived is not evidence of credulity. Nobody owes endless scrutiny or competition with machines. The aim is a clearer understanding of choices reasonably available, not a demand to prove worth through difficulty.

The scenarios, poems and illustrations are invented perspectives. Historical excerpts illuminate specific distinctions; they are not predictions about modern AI or endorsements of everything their authors believed. This collection has no vice enrollment, character scoring or Workbook.

Explore AI Age Virtues