In his message for the 58th World Day of Communications, which falls this coming Sunday, May 12th, Pope Francis has expressed his concern about the increasing influence of artificial intelligence (AI) in society.

AI is “radically affecting the world of information and communication, and through it, certain foundations of life in society,” says Francis, adding that “these changes affect everyone.”

In the light of this apparently fundamental shift in human interactions, the Pope asks: “how can we remain fully human and guide this cultural transformation to serve a good purpose?”

The notion of trying to ensure that new things serve the common good has been a consistent motif of Catholic teaching for decades now, as we’ve moved from a principally inward-looking and multi-insular society to one where modern communications technologies have made almost every aspect of life and human experience deeply interconnected and intensely interactive.

Given this new state of global homogeneity, it’s understandable that we’ve all become somewhat apprehensive about the power and possibly negative potential of artificial intelligence.

For Pope Francis, AI – like every new innovation – presents both an opportunity and a threat. “Human beings alone” are capable of making sense of information says Francis, and in the wrong hands AI becomes “perverse when it distorts our relationship with others and with reality” and even has the potential to create “disturbing scenarios.”

Others go much further than our pontiff, warning that AI has a perfectly feasible ability to wreak havoc with humanity, and even bring about its annihilation.

The idea of robots, automatons and microchips taking over the world has long been a popular paranoia, especially to a generation that grew up with Daleks, Cybermen, Captain Scarlet and James T. Kirk. In such minds the arrival of artificial intelligence is just the next natural step in a journey where humanity hands over its analogue world to discarnate digital entities over which it can have no subsequent control or influence.

Given that humans have survived everything on earth for some five million years, and the written records of us go back no more than 5,000, we naturally have a fundamentally primitive and limited understanding of both the mental and spiritual robustness – and ingenuity – of the human person. In such a vast landscape of development it’s a bit easier to rationalise AI as more likely an incredibly minor phenomenon that will cause a few sleepless nights, but will be negated rapidly by the most robust of human behaviours – our divine irrationally.

This is actually something of a contradiction in terms, as we all ought to know that the ‘divine’ is the most rational phenomenon in human existence. In old-fashioned terms, when we follow the ways of the world we lose ourselves; when we follow the ways of God we find ourselves. If God has really created this planet that we live on and everything contained within it, the blueprints are his and – try as we might – we can never change that fundamental construct. Indeed, the more we try to disrupt and corrupt God’s design, the more likely we are to run into trouble. It’s like trying to swim against an impossible current.

When it comes to AI, much the same applies. It’s advocates claim it will change the world and transform society, and we in turn fret and worry that it will control and ultimately consume us. But Pope Francis is right, artificial intelligence can do exactly what it says on the tin – it can mimic human behaviours and decisions, it might even eventually be able to impersonate individuals effectively and control our industrial systems, and even start learning for itself, but it will never be able to outwit the most profound and ancient of human behaviours, the simple human trait of divine irrationally.

Someone who understands this new interface between Divinity and artificial intelligence extremely well is Pope Francis’ adviser on these matters – the Italian Franciscan friar Paolo Benanti (main picture), a theologian who also has the ear of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and a number of other influential global leaders.

For Fr Benanti the problem isn’t so much about how AI controls us, but rather the dangers for the survival of humanity if we start voluntarily delegating our thinking and decision-making to these electronic entities.

Benanti has been very much the driving force behind the Vatican’s efforts to lay down moral strategies for the development of AI technologies. In February 2020 The Pontifical Academy for Life managed secured the backing of tech giants Microsoft, IBM, the United Nations’ Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Italian Ministry of Innovation (part of the Italian Government), to sign the Rome Call for an AI Ethics, a document developed to support an ethical approach to Artificial Intelligence and promote a sense of responsibility among organisations, governments, institutions and the private sector with the aim to create a future in which digital innovation and technological progress serve human genius and creativity and not their gradual replacement.

Conventionally the Vatican is an organisation that tends to observe, listen and discern for some considerable period of time before commenting on societal issues, so the Rome paper is radical in that it’s a highly-tuned attempt to open an ethical debate even before the problems have emerged.

The initiative has also made Fr Benanti a household name within the tech sector – Microsoft President Brad Smith hosted him on his podcast last year; his phrase “algor-ethics” has become common currency in AI circles and he even accompanied the Italian PM last month at a meeting with Microsoft founder Bill Gates.

Born in Rome, Benanti still lives in a city-centre monastery and teaches at the Vatican-backed Pontifical Gregorian University. What makes his theological position interesting is that he sees AI not so much as existential threat to human intelligence or survival, but as a threat to the general common good, especially if we pursue the inclination to allow AI to make decisions for us.

As the Vatican’s chief adviser on AI, his views have resonated deeply with Pope Francis, who has his own concerns about the negative potential of this new technology to disrupt the common good, and become a multiplier of injustice and equality.

This is far more likely than any Kubrick-style oddessy, as the existence of artificial intelligence will always be dependent on the mechanisms and resources that humans make available to it. And of course irrational – or divine interventions – such as global environmental changes or subconscious shifts in human herd behaviours will also have the capacity to debilitate and reduce our dependence on AI technologies.

Most fundamentally, all AI is dependent upon our dependence on the microchip, and that itself may well be a transient fascination. Speak to many young people today and there’s a significant and increasing drift away from the gadgets and technologies that defined and were so beloved of the age of their parents. As such Fr Benanti is probably right to focus our concerns on the impact that AI might have on institutional and governmental systems that will impact and interact with us regardless of whether or not we continue to be technology obsessives.

In his 2016 book Homo Faber: The Techno-Human Condition, Benanti drew an interesting distinction between tools and signs, which in many respects is the fulcrum of the AI debate, as AI can manipulate tools (physical things), but cannot read signs (spiritual things), which are a fundamental aspect of humankind’s direct, faintly-remembered primeval connection to God.

In this respect the profoundest challenge presented by AI is that it will ultimately present us with a fairly simple choice – do we succumb to its influence and determinations, or do we still value our irrational, divine capacity to control our own destinies? If we have no believe in a God nor in a divine purpose, than handing over to AI is as much a relief as a concern, but if we hold to the hope and belief that there is something out there far more profound than we can ever imagine, then it’s probably best to pin our hopes of salvation on that, and not some fairly predictable piece of electronic technology that we recently created, and may soon reject anyway.

Joseph Kelly is a Catholic writer and theologian

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Message of Pope Francis for 58th World Day of Communications

Rome Call for an AI Ethics