When I was a child, as I grew up knowing dairy farmers, the initials ‘AI’ meant something very different. Artificial Insemination was and is an important technology that has led to better cattle breeding, greater milk production and lower prices.
However, artificial intelligence, the new AI, is of more fundamental importance and will affect all our lives individually as well as society at large. As an experiment, I have asked ChatGPT to write this article in my style and will add it at the end of this piece.
Pope Leo XIV issued a Papal Encyclical on the 15th May entitled Magnifica Humanitas. This is more than just a discussion of AI. It is a wide-ranging text deliberately placing itself in the pantheon of Catholic social teaching. It celebrates the 135th anniversary of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, in which Pope Leo XIII “gave impetus to the reflexion on society, the economy and politics, which is now known as the ‘social doctrine of the Church’”. The current Pope uses a careful discussion of the evolution of the Church’s social doctrine to justify his role in commentating on “the technocratic paradigm and digital power”.
The Pope’s concerns are of “humanity becoming a victim of its own achievements”, risking a new Tower of Babel. He worries that control is with corporations, not states, and that “criteria for judgment and discernment in the new situation… the inalienable, inalienable dignity of the human person, the common good, the universal doctrine of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity and social justice, may be at risk”.
The Holy Father cautiously notes that any statement on AI risks being quickly outdated, and that even those who design them possess only a limited understanding of their actual functioning. His main point is the fairly uncontroversial one that AI can be a valuable tool, but it calls for a measured and vigilant approach.
His conclusion is that AI needs a human touch as it will affect human lives, and this must be done with a moral compass. A machine, however clever it appears to be, cannot have such a conscience. This is especially true, he argues, in relation to AI used for military purposes, when potential targets must be considered in the light of morality. The ability to go to war without risking the lives of your soldiers should not be a reason to do so.
