Before you make a judgement of this document I recommend you read it. What is it? Just published, it is The Encyclical Letter Magnifica Humanitas ENCYCLICAL LETTER of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV On Safeguarding The Human Person In The Time of Artificial Intelligence.
I’ve talked with quite a few people about AI and all the agents that can come into play in just about every business of any kind. When it comes to agriculture it seems like just all the releases sent to me include the new AI built into their products. In fact, that’s basically the purpose of the release. Some have strange names and I don’t know how they work or if they are working well. When it comes to journalism, including ag journalism, we know that it can make writing a story simple and fast. But what is this doing to people who hold jobs and are now no longer necessary?
The first sentence of the introduction of the Encyclical is “Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.”
What do you think about AI and humanity of today? You might already understand this or perhaps you haven’t spent any time with it. However, I think it’s worth thinking about what all this means, either for work or for family.
Here are some excerpts in the encyclical I picked out.
- Therefore, the primary choice is not between a “yes” or “no” to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.
- I limit myself to recalling a few essential elements for a moral and social discernment that safeguards the primacy of the human person, in order to ensure that it will always be human intelligence, with its conscience and freedom, that guides technical innovations and responsibly determines their use and limits.
- The speed and simplicity with which information, complex analyses, media content and practical assistance can be accessed undoubtedly makes life easier. Yet they can also encourage excessive reliance and the search for ready-made answers, and weaken personal creativity and judgment.
- Here, the danger is not so much that a person may believe they are communicating with another person, but rather that they may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections.
- Indeed, entrusting an algorithm in practice with the power to select who is worthy or not, without anyone bearing responsibility for that judgment, is to hand over the task of redefining the boundaries of human possibilities.
- Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of “armed” competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity.
- Disinformation did not begin with AI, yet today it finds a powerful amplifier in AI. The ability to manipulate content, images and videos exposes people to biased or misleading perspectives.
- Online phenomena such as grooming, blackmail and the sexual exploitation of minors are not uncommon, and are made more insidious by the use of fake profiles, algorithms that facilitate dangerous contact, and AI tools capable of manipulating images and videos. Having a personal mobile device at too early an age and using it without adult supervision can exacerbate young people’s vulnerabilities, foster addiction and expose them to isolation, bullying and cyberbullying, as well as to pressures to share intimate images or sensitive information.
