With today’s front pages heavy with reaction to two of the biggest data leaks in UK history, it seems apposite that the Vatican has also announced this morning that artificial intelligence and emerging digital technologies are going to be the focus of Pope Francis’ 2024 annual peace message.

The World Day of Peace — instituted by St. Paul VI in 1968 — is celebrated each year on 1st January, the solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. The pope provides a message for the occasion, which is sent by the Vatican to foreign governments around the world.

Pope Francis’ 2024 message – which is due to be published in full in December – will focus on the need to ensure that emerging new digital technologies are used in a responsible way, at the service of humanity and contribute to the promotion of justice and peace in the world.

A statement from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development said that the remarkable advances made in the field of artificial intelligence are “having a rapidly increasing impact on human activity, personal and social life, politics and the economy”.

The Dicastery says that Pope Francis is calling for an open dialogue on the meaning of these new technologies, which he believes are “endowed with disruptive possibilities and ambivalent effects”.

Although recent innovations, and increasing concerns about reliance on AI, have led to renewed debate about the role of digital technologies in society, the Vatican has long been a leader in the conversation of artificial intelligence ethics.

Pope Francis has repeatedly called for making “the intrinsic dignity of every man and every woman the key criterion in evaluating emerging technologies.”

Just last month the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education put its moniker to a 140-page ethics handbook for the tech industry published by the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at California’s Santa Clara University.

Titled Ethics in the Age of Disruptive Technologies: An Operational Roadmap, the handbook is the result of many high-level discussions between IT and digital tech innovators and representatives from the Vatican.

In his introduction to the handbook, The Most Rev. Paul Tighe, Secretary of the Section of Culture of the Dicastery for Culture and Education, says that in his many meetings with senior representatives of Silicon Valley, he has “been impressed by their desire to maintain high ethical standards for themselves and for their industry”.

Bishop Tighe says he has also noted “an intrinsic commitment to doing good” and that the high ethical commitments of professionals working in the sector “has at times found expression in their refusal on grounds of conscience to work on projects that they see as damaging to human well-being”.

In calling for an ethical framework to be established for a new, unregulated industry sector, The Markkula document reflects the concerns that many have about society’s increasing reliance on digital technologies, and the impact that such systems can potentially have on the general good of humanity.

For many, the advances in this field are as disruptive as the Industrial Revolution – with advocates keen to point out the unimaginable benefits that the technology can bring us, whilst sceptics and critics warn of a society controlled, and even perhaps destroyed, by rogue robots.

For the digital theologian (yes, that’s already a recognised discipline!) the fundamental concern about AI is that it should never wield executive power because it lacks emotion, which is crucial for moral decision-making. Critics argue that power combined with the absence of emotion, empathy and a moral compass creates ‘the perfect psychopath’ – a system that is highly intelligent but lacks the essential human qualities to be able to measure (or show concern for) the consequences of its actions.

This decision-making capacity might some resolve some vexing questions – after all, the annihilation of the human species would certainly end the climate crisis – but the prospect of a discarnate machine finding its own highly logical solutions to human problems is not a technology we should be keen to create. However, a highly intelligent machine that can analyse huge amounts of global medical data to make accurate and life-saving decisions about human health, surgery and the distribution of medications would have immeasurable benefits to humanity. The challenge in letting this particular genie out of the bottle is to unleash the benefits whilst still being able to maintain ultimate control over a technology that is being encouraged to develop ideas of its own.

For those who seem less intimidated by the arrival of AI, the arguments are more esoteric, but no less valid. Indeed the ideological divide between threat and opportunity is being defined increasingly in terms of those who believe in a rational world, and those whose arguments have their basis in faith. It is often argued that machines do and will always lack a soul, though there is less certainty amongst experts about how this gives humans a clear advantage over the machines we have created.

Generally, when those involved in digital technologies talk about a computer having a soul, what they actually mean is self-awareness. But is consciousness the same thing has having a soul? Hardly, as we know from our own Catholic theology there are many creatures on this planet in possession of consciousness and creative intelligence, yet they do not possess a soul.

The soul is intrinsically indefinable – because of its nature it is both irrational (in the worldly sense) and is beyond human definition.

However complex and manipulative computer technology becomes, it remains a very binary entity that can only process and manipulate what has been input to it, and it can only draw rational conclusions and make rational decisions. One only has to look at the lives of our Catholic saints to understand that the rational decision in a particular situation is sometimes something far different from the ‘correct’ decision.

As it so happens today is the feast day of Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Saint Edith Stein), and her final days provide a graphic illustration of the contrast between ‘rational’ actions and the actions of the soul.

Edith was arrested by the SS on 2nd August 1942 and was imprisoned along with her sister Rosa at the concentration camps of Amersfoort and Westerbork before being deported to Auschwitz. A Dutch official at Westerbork was so impressed by her sense of faith and calm that he offered her an escape plan. Edith vehemently refused his assistance, stating: “If somebody intervened at this point and took away [her] chance to share in the fate of [her] brothers and sisters, that would be utter annihilation.”

It is hard to contemplate a scenario where AI would arrive at the same conclusion as St Edith. The human person is bound up in a biological nature that gives us sensations and emotions like hunger, desire and the need to love and be loved that a computer might attempt to assimilate but can never ‘experience’ for itself. If I tell a computer that I am devastated at the death of a close friend, the machine can respond with trained or even learned responses, but if it does not know me and the nature of my relationship with my friend, it can never empathise. Hence for me the machine will never have a soul.

At a simpler, but in some ways equally important level, machines are also unable to deal with randomness, the divine irrationality that is at the core of the human person.

When the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue was beating world chess champion Garri Kasparov at his own game in 1996 the event was heralded as the opening victory in AI over human intelligence. However, as many theologians and philosophers pointed out, chess is a unique proposition in that it has rational sequences and even the most random of moves has calculable responses and counter-moves. Contrast this with your average Saturday game of Premiership football, where within 90 minutes there are countless random and unpredictable actions, which no AI could possibly predict.

Earlier this year Pope Francis said he was convinced that the development of artificial intelligence and machine learning has the potential to contribute in a positive way to the future of humanity. “we cannot dismiss it,” he stated, but also warned: “at the same time, I am certain that this potential will be realised only if there is a constant and consistent commitment on the part of those developing these technologies to act ethically and responsibly.”

Clearly, emerging digital technologies have the capacity to do immense good, but equally could become utterly destructive. Whilst they may never pose an existential threat, it’s vital that we are having this ethical discussion now, and it’s comforting to see that the Vatican is taking a lead in this challenging new societal narrative.

Joseph Kelly is a Catholic publisher and theologian