Setting: An imagined symposium in the Old Senate Chamber. Present are the spirits of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, George Mason, and Thomas Paine. Their task: to debate the ethics and implications of replacing human labor with artificial intelligence in a constitutional republic.
Prologue: A Question for the Dead, A Dilemma for the Living
In this moment of unprecedented change, the question of artificial intelligence has leapt from the labs of technologists to the halls of politics and the pulpits of ethics. We are told that AI will revolutionize everything—from medicine to law, from transportation to education. But behind the marvel lies a quieter upheaval: the displacement of human labor.
Not just a few jobs. Whole categories. Whole classes. Whole callings.
What happens to a republic built on the dignity of work when its people are replaced by code? To answer this, we return to the very men who argued, drafted, and fought for the American experiment—not to canonize them, but to consult them.
They appear in our time, summoned into a chamber they once knew. And they begin, as always, in debate.
Act I: The Machines and the State
Hamilton: The age demands motion. Artificial intelligence, properly wielded, is not a threat but a lever—an amplifier of strength. I do not romanticize labor. I see value in production, in commerce, in command. If intelligence—natural or artificial—can reduce the burdens of the state and raise its capacity, then it is to be embraced, not feared.
Would you abandon the plow for nostalgia of the hoe? The quill for the stone? Then do not scorn the algorithm for its precision. A republic must be agile.
Jefferson (measured but firm): You speak of motion, sir, but not direction. Progress is no virtue unless it leads toward liberty. What you call efficiency, I fear is erosion. A self-governing people must not merely vote—they must act. They must labor, think, build. If artificial minds assume these tasks, what becomes of ours? A republic without citizens is no republic at all. It is an automation of forms.
Franklin (leaning forward with a half-smile): Gentlemen, I’ve always enjoyed a good invention. I dare say I’ve made a few. But I’ll remind you—every tool I built was for the betterment of the public. A stove that warms the home. A library that teaches the poor. What does AI warm? Whom does it teach? If it relieves drudgery, so be it. But if it relieves responsibility, we will have engineered not progress, but decadence.
Madison: We must return, as always, to the architecture of power. I care less about the machines themselves and more about who controls them. Who governs the algorithms? Who decides what they learn? If unchecked, AI becomes not an assistant, but an arbiter. Our Constitution divides power to protect liberty. Let us not erect a power beyond division—beyond redress.
Adams: And what of virtue? What is to become of a citizen who no longer works? Will he study philosophy? Attend the town meeting? Or will he rot in comfort? Liberty requires character. It requires toil. Remove the former, and the latter dissolves.
Mason: And what recourse have the governed? These systems are not elected. They are trained—often in secret, by private interest. We feared monarchy. This is more elusive. It is not the tyranny of a crown, but the tyranny of calculation.
Paine (with revolutionary fire): Let us not fear shadows. Let us fear injustice. If AI can elevate man beyond mindless labor—good! Let him rise! But only if the benefits are shared. Only if the people govern the machines, and not the reverse. Progress that serves the powerful is not progress. It is enclosure.
Franklin: But let us not forget, liberty is not leisure. A nation cannot sit back and be ruled by its own creations. Responsibility must not be outsourced. Not even to machines.
Act II: The Nature of Work and the Meaning of the Citizen
Jefferson: In my day, the ideal was the independent yeoman—the man who toils for himself, learns for himself, governs himself. If AI disrupts that structure, what replaces it? A man dependent upon stipends, nudged by algorithms, educated by corporate platforms? That is not a citizen. That is a subject.
Madison: And yet we cannot stop the tide. Nor should we. But we must ask: how do we preserve the deliberative character of a republic when citizens cease to deliberate—even within themselves?
Hamilton: You fear dependence. I fear weakness. Let the nation harness this power as it once harnessed steam and steel. Let it build institutions that can outpace rivals. But do not shackle its spirit with endless caution.
Adams: And yet the soul cannot be engineered. We must not exchange labor for inertia. If men lose their purpose, they lose their place. Do you think democracy can thrive among the listless?
Mason: Gentlemen, our Bill of Rights was a defense against force. We may now need a Bill of Rights against function—a guard not against kings, but against code.
Franklin: Perhaps what we need most is not more protection, but more reflection. The greatest danger is not that AI will oppress us. It is that we will gladly hand over the burdens of thinking, judging, and living.
Act III: Toward a Framework for Ethics and Policy
Paine: Let us not stop the machine. Let us make it accountable. Let its workings be open. Let its outcomes be judged. Let its fruits be distributed. If it cannot meet these tests, it does not deserve our trust.
Madison: Then let us build oversight not as an afterthought but as a foundation. Let the Congress reassert its power. Let the judiciary examine its algorithms as it would any law.
Jefferson: And let us guard against the seduction of ease. A people who give up their judgment, even for convenience, are not far from giving up their freedom.
Hamilton: And yet, gentlemen, I remind you—without vigor, the state dissolves. The world will not wait for our hesitation. Let us deploy, but wisely. Let us invent, but within law.
Adams: Let us remember that no republic has ever fallen because it worked too hard to preserve its virtue.
Franklin (raising an invisible glass): Then may our children inherit both intelligence and wisdom—not one at the expense of the other.
Act IV: The Perils of Replacement and the Nature of Progress
Jefferson: I do not object to machines because they function. I object because they aspire to replace what makes man noble. It is not just our labor they imitate—it is our language, our thought, our voice. Will a republic that once treasured the handwritten vote now accept policy written by predictive text?
Hamilton: That depends. Does the policy work? Does it preserve the union? I ask not how it is written, but whether it is just. Let us not fall into sentimentalism.
Paine: But Mr. Hamilton, if men cease to write, to reason, to argue—what republic remains? You may have justice on the paper, but no soul in the people.
Madison: We speak here of systems that learn from us, but without us. That reflect back our flaws, our biases, our fears—but lack our capacity for mercy, for error, for change. What is intelligence without accountability?
Adams: Worse still—what is democracy without humility? If the people no longer feel responsible for their fate, we shall have governance by abstraction. No tyrant is so complete as the one who does not know it is ruling.
Mason: The danger is not only political. It is spiritual. A citizen without purpose becomes a supplicant. A society that produces nothing will soon believe in nothing.
Franklin: Then let us teach the young to question the machine. To master it. To temper its power with moral force. Let us make builders, not mere users.
Paine: And let us remind them: no mechanism has ever bled for liberty. That task still falls to men.
Epilogue: The Ghosts Depart, the Question Remains
The Founders are gone. Their voices fade. But the dilemma remains. Artificial intelligence will not wait for consensus. It will not pause for soul-searching. The question is not whether we will use it—but whether we will govern it.
The Founders would not give us answers. But they would give us a framework:
- Does the new power preserve or erode human dignity?
- Does it enhance or suppress the independence of the citizen?
- Does it operate within the structures of law—or outside them?
- Does it elevate the many—or enthrone the few?
Their voices, if we listen, remind us: we are not here to be served by systems, but to govern them.
The republic will not be lost in fire or battle. It will be lost in comfort, in delegation, in drift.
Let us not let that happen. Not to us. Not in our time.
Act V: A Call to the Heirs of the Republic
We can still choose. If the Founders teach us anything, it is that boldness and caution need not be enemies. We can embrace invention without abandoning civic obligations. To trust a technology blindly is to risk forging new chains; to spurn it entirely is to risk stagnation.
We face a test of priorities: do we prize convenience over character, data over deliberation, the frictionless over the free? The Founders might say we have a right to shape our tools, but never to surrender our duties. If AI can enhance insight, let us use it. But not at the cost of forgetting that a republic endures only through the will of its citizens.
Ask yourself: who benefits when you stand aside? Who gains when you stop caring how decisions are made? To cede agency to a process is not progress but an abdication. It is precisely the complacency that the Founders—despite their differences—regarded as the seed of self-imposed tyranny.
The challenge is not to vanquish AI, but to ensure it does not supplant what is best in us. Will we shape it with moral vision, or let it shape us with profit as the only aim? In centuries past, Americans reimagined work from farm to factory, from factory to digital office. Now is another pivot. Will we direct it—or be directed by it?
The Founders’ debates were messy and full of contradiction, yet the republic endured because enough citizens insisted on self-rule. We must be that critical mass now. We must ensure that our machines remain servants, however clever they become. We must remember that virtue cannot be engineered, that accountability is not an algorithm, and that our Constitution is a living promise.
So do not be dazzled into passivity by talk of the unstoppable future. True progress is shaped by moral imagination and political courage. Yes, harness this new power—but harness it as a free people. Let technology serve humanity, never overshadow it.
This is the promise we inherit. It is also the burden. May we prove ourselves equal to it—and not merely watchers of a fate decided by code.
