Like many of you, I have been doing some homework trying to understand artificial intelligence (AI) and reflect on what it will mean for individuals, society, and the Church’s mission.
The technology is being rapidly deployed and aggressively developed by some of the world’s biggest corporations. Massive sums are being spent to accelerate AI’s advancement and to build the energy infrastructure needed to support it.
Our government has its own “action plan” to encourage AI innovation and achieve “global dominance,” which it says is necessary to grow the economy, create new jobs, and promote advances in science.
There is also growing concern about AI’s “dark side.”
Educators worry that most high school and college students are now using AI tools to write term papers, take tests, and do homework for them. AI-driven “companions” are the newest form of pornography. There are concerns about the military’s use of AI to produce high tech weapons. Angelus recently published an important report on the increasing reliance on “chatbots” in the home.
AI is also raising troubling spiritual and religious issues. Prominent tech leaders speak openly about trying to “build God” and usher in a “transhumanist” future, in which they achieve “singularity” — implanting artificial intelligence capacities within the human person.
“Humanity is at a crossroads, facing the immense potential generated by the digital revolution driven by artificial intelligence,” Pope Leo XIV said this summer in a message to an international conference on AI.
Leo chose his papal name to call attention to the AI revolution, which he compares to the industrial revolution that his predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, confronted in the 19th century.
And in these first months of his pontificate, he has spoken often of the challenges that AI presents for human dignity and the common good.
Already AI is changing the way we work and the way our economy and society operate. On a deeper level, AI is changing how we think about ourselves and our relationships, and even our sense of our human identity, our place in the world, and the meaning of our lives.
The consequences of AI are too great to leave decisions about its development solely to Silicon Valley engineers, global tech corporations, politicians, and investors. The Church must be involved in these conversations, the pope believes.
He sees the great potential that this technology holds for areas like medicine and health care, and the possibilities for increasing human connection and understanding and for spreading the Gospel.
But AI is a tool, he reminds us, and like every tool it can be used for good or for ill, and every technology “changes” us in some way as we use it.
“We currently interact with machines as if they were interlocutors, and thus become almost an extension of them,” he has said. “In this sense, we not only run the risk of losing sight of the faces of the people around us, but of forgetting how to recognize and cherish all that is truly human.”
Leo believes we need ethical standards and legal safeguards to protect children and teens who are “particularly vulnerable to manipulation through AI algorithms that can influence their decisions and preferences.”
He also worries that this technology can be used to confuse and control people and to manipulate their emotions and their perceptions of reality and what is true.
Addressing global journalists, the pope warned of a “post-truth” culture and expressed concern that AI-driven algorithms are changing how news is communicated. He questioned “who controls” these algorithms and “for what purposes.”
“We must be vigilant in order to ensure that technology does not replace human beings, and that the information and algorithms that govern it today are not in the hands of a few,” he said.
Leo rejects those who claim to be creating God or a God-like-consciousness through AI.
In a message to tech leaders, he reminded them that however powerful AI becomes in imitating human reasoning, it will never have a conscience or consciousness. AI will also never be able to make moral decisions guided by a sense of human responsibility and authentic human relationships.
The pope reminds all of us that having access to information does not make us intelligent.
“In the end,” he says, “authentic wisdom has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life, than with the availability of data.”
Leo is urging all of us to become more educated and reflective about these new technologies and their implications.
Our goal, he has said, should be “an AI that reflects the Creator’s design: intelligent, relational and guided by love.”
Pray for me and I will pray for you.
May holy Mary, Seat of Wisdom, guide us all to seek a future worthy of the sanctity and great dignity of the human person.
