“The risk of dehumanisation – of building a future that excludes God and reduces the other to a means – is an ancient and ever-new temptation that today takes on a technical guise,” Pope Leo wrote in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, which was published yesterday.
“In the era of artificial intelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanisation, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human. We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendour of which no machine can ever replace,” he said.
Pope Leo opens the first encyclical of his pontificate by saying that humanity today faces a pivotal choice – “either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together."
Using the Biblical Genesis narrative, the Pope warns against the 'Babel syndrome', namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, and the pretense that everything, 'including the mystery of the person,” can be translated into 'data and performance'.
“Calling for prudence, rigorous evaluation and even, at times, a slower pace in adopting AI does not mean opposing progress; instead, it is an exercise of responsible care for the human family,” Pope Leo wrote.
The lengthy papal document is divided into five chapters and touches on wide-ranging issues related to AI, including the prospect of massive unemployment, the future of education, the protection of human freedom, excessive screen time for young people, cryptocurrencies, economic disparities, transhumanism, cyberattacks and the application of Catholic social teaching principles.
In Magnifica Humanitas, Latin for “Magnificent Humanity”, the Pope calls on Christians not to be “passive spectators” or “mere commentators on what is crumbling" but to take a proactive role in building the future by cultivating community and in-person relationships, educating young people to love wisdom, spending time with the poor and the lonely, being a voice for justice, defending objective truth and treating the digital world as “a new continent to be evangelised”.
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