In this year’s, Message for the World Day of Social Communications, Pope Francis invoked the wisdom of Servant of God, Romano Guardini. A 20th Century German priest, theologian and philosopher, Guardini was also a realist. He urged us not to reject inevitable change in an attempt to save what is condemned to become obsolete.
In the 19th-century, people known as Luddites went around destroying modern machinery in an attempt to prevent technology from replacing human labor in textile factories. They were ultimately unsuccessful because no one can prevent progress. But we also should not suppose that progress always implies a positive advancement, or has no drawbacks. Change that emanates from human ingenuity will happen – it cannot be stopped. But at the same time, prudence demands that it always be managed by a civilized and moral society.
Pope Francis asserts that humankind is destined to advance in technology, societal development and communication. He says we must be bold in our efforts to use new learning to address human suffering, but not at the expense of our humanity. For those who fear change, the Holy Father provides an infusion of hope by inspiring us to “set aside catastrophic predictions and their numbing effects” that sometimes accompany the unknown.
The Pope points out that the introduction of social media was a quantum leap in technology that opened the door to what we are currently witnessing in the artificial intelligence space. Its recent excursion into our world has proven to have significant benefits to advancing communication between us, as well as being a tool for evil. Reflecting on this, our society has begun taking steps to control the hazardous effects of social media, especially on our youth. This cannot come too soon, as artificial intelligence software is moving into the mainstream with lightning speed. Hopefully, the dangers we have experienced and begun to address with social media has awakened us to the inevitable hazards AI will be introducing in our world.
Because computers “can be abused by the primordial temptation to become like God”, our spiritual father, Francis, warns that, uncontrolled, our world “risks becoming rich in technology and poor in humanity”. To curb that consequence, we must adopt “a spiritual way of viewing reality” so we can “confront the newness of our time and rediscover the path to a fully human communication”. He explains that a more accurate term than “artificial intelligence”, is “machine learning”, as the word “intelligence” can be misleading. This is because only human beings are capable of making sense of the data that these machines can store. “Information cannot be separated from living relationships.” Therefore, human beings must always be part of the equation, because our “wisdom is a gift of the Holy Spirit that enables us to look at things with God’s eyes. Such wisdom cannot be sought from machines”, the pope asserts.
One example of how economic means can be used to restrain the abuse of AI can be observed in the recent rollout of Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Gemini. Soon after launching the program, Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc., lost more than $70 billion in value. It seems Gemini was created with an inherent bias that reflected the personal views of its programmers more than objective truth – and consumers rejected it. This harkened back to what was learned in the earliest days of computing – “Garbage in, garbage out”, and the financial world responded quickly to bring it under control by punishing its investors.
I cannot help but see the correlation between AI and another phenomenon that exists in our world today – nuclear power. Both realities present immense potential for both good and evil. When first harnessed many decades ago, nuclear material was used on two occasions to cause unimaginable destruction. But since then, it has proven to be irreplaceable as a source of energy, in medicine, and in other aspects of our modern world.
Once the dangers of nuclear weapons became clear, nations around the world came together to adopt certain agreements that have prevented their future use. There are thousands of nuclear weapons in existence today, and so their risks remain. But we have learned to live with them and know that we must always be on our guard. Bad actors in the world that cannot be trusted with them have, up to now, been effectively contained.
I would argue that artificial intelligence is similar to nuclear weapons in its potential to cause massive destruction in our world. Yet, as the Holy Father declares, we can neither stop this technology from coming, nor should we fear it. If we trust in Divine Providence, if we are diligent, if we work together in the interest of human advancement, we will control and mitigate the negative effects of AI, as we have successfully done (so far) with the bomb.