Post #3 “Discernment and Artificial Intelligence”
Prologue “Don’t believe everything you think”
(Bumper sticker on a car in Berkeley, Calif.)
September 4, 2026
In order to sort out how to understand our world and then to decide what our personal responsibility should be, it is best to begin with a little humility. Here are some reminders to myself to help me try to be humble, judicious, and clear eyed about the current situation, getting ready for my own discernment about “artificial intelligence” (AI) and deciding how to react. The backdrop to my reflections is Pope Leo XIV Encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas.”
First, the bumper sticker: Certainty in our world today is problematic. We need to realize that we may not have all the relevant information or we may only receive information in our information bubble. Given this is likely the case, our personal insights may just be the product of false information or personal prejudices.
Second, from Edmund Burke: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good [people] to do nothing". For me this is a moral mandate. We have no choice; we have to do whatever we can within the confines of our resources, time, and a diligent search for information to guide our actions. We know we will make mistakes. Yet we still must act.
Third, again in the spirit of the bumper sticker, we have to be aware of a commonsense theory of knowledge, an “epistemology;” that is, how we know what we know? Not so simple in today’s world. This is not just about “information,” it is about acknowledging the social location from which we speak, and how our brain works to often short circuit our ‘free will,” thus, requiring time to reflect back on what we think we think and why, to gain our agency.
My “Standpoint”
Let me share what I do to keep myself informed and to check against my biases. This is how I try with humility to be as certain as possible about what I think I know. As I begin this second Post on AI, I realized that it would take more than just being “informed” on the issues related to AI, it would also take an understanding of who I am as I engage a subject with such profound consequences for humanity and our globe. Therefore, I begin with this Prologue about my “standpoint” in the world. “Standpoint,” is simply “a specific mental and emotional state or set of ideas that shapes how one sees the world.” Reflecting on my standpoint prepares me to be honest about my conclusions and to be open with you the reader about these conclusions and how I arrived at them, especially my choice of sources, topics and the people with whom I engage.
This openness and self-honesty are essential ingredients of a concept called “discernment” in many religious traditions. It is paramount in Pope Leo’s view of a disciplined process that is necessary to understand and confront the topic of artificial intelligence. It is a discipline that is well articulated in the life of the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola, and subsequent “spiritual practices.” It is a practice that takes seriously the disposition of the discerner. Quoting from the Office of Ignatian Spirituality, “It is the spiritual practice of noticing the movements within your heart and soul—your desires, thoughts, emotions—and identifying where they are coming from and where they are leading you.” It is a standard that does not appeal to all. More on this below.
However, at a minimum it is wise to at least be as open as possible for the sake of the reader and my own edification about where I am “coming from” in my choice of information sources, the topics I choose to highlight and elements of my standpoint as outlined in this Prologue.
First, there are the sources of information that I and many of us ingest. We get “news” or the opinion of others from different media: newspapers/opinion articles, magazines, social media, so-called “influencers” via various platforms like, X , (aka Twitter) Blue Sky, Substack or indirectly via Truth Social when the media hangs on every Post by the President. Then there are google or AI searches that sort and summarize most of what I have just mentioned. Did I mention books? AI is most apt to use books for a “deeper dive.” Of course, there are libraries filled with many highly researched books on every topic. Most of us are less inclined to take the time to visit vast research libraries or even public libraries. We most likely go to Amazon and download a book, or go to our favorite, though disappearing, local bookstore. However, even though more highly researched, often from primary sources, these are often books held captive by ideological perspectives or specific discipline biases, scientific or literary. Then there are “book groups” where the participants do read books, non-fiction, but largely fiction, and read mainly for entertainment and the pleasure of good writing.
So here is my bubble: I read The Guardian, AP and NYT online. I subscribe to print magazines: The Guardian Weekly, The New Yorker, Harvard Magazine, New York Review of Books, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Sojourners, Christianity Today, The Atlantic and Commonweal. I watch the “PBS News Hour” and “Democracy Now,” but only occasionally. I have my favorite Substack posts, such as: Bishop Budde, Robert Reich, Borowitz, Robert Traer, Ted Peters, Don Heinz Sorayasphere, and Heather Cox Richardson. I clip articles from the magazines and organize them by topics. Yes, I do go to the main research library on the UC Berkeley campus to check out books. Of course, over the years I have amassed my own library of over 1,000 volumes that I have organized by topics from science and religion to literature, philosophy and economics.
Second, it is also necessary is for me to be in conversation with friends, colleagues, family and my wife, Margot. They offer criticisms and new ideas. Being part of the “Robert Bellah Legacy Group” has expanded my conversation partners. A ten-year “salon” where we didn’t try to solve issues but rather endeavored to engage in focused conversation to see where it might lead has been a mitigating influence.
Third, I write. I write to clarify my own thoughts and challenge my own preconceived notions. If I think I have something that might be helpful for others, I will Post it. Or if I know I need more engagement from others with their wisdom, I share my preliminary thoughts and ask others to comment and engage. Am I certain that I have what I need to understand my world? No! But continue to question and search.
These standpoint observations lead to my Post #3 on “Discernment and Artificial intelligence.” It has become clear that this is a topic that demands humility and all the help I can get. This second Post on AI began with a hope that came from Pope Leo XIV’s Encyclical and Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, present at the Encyclical’s announcement. Both called for a wider process that was needed to include more than computer scientists. Olah suggested it should include people engaged in the various disciplines of the humanities and religion. Pope Leo had a longer list of who should be at the table and had more in mind with his concept of “discernment.” As mentioned above, it was for Leo a spiritual discipline.
I wanted to contribute both to Olah’s notion and in some way to the Pope’s view of discernment. Initially my goal was limited. I wanted to highlight what was being said from various perspectives. I was not yet ready to try to solve some of the big controversies. Though in my previous Post, I put my flag of approval down on safeguarding one important characteristic of what defines us as human: sustaining the reality and profoundness of our finiteness and limitations, death, heartbreaks and suffering.
Trying to implement this limited goal in this Post, however, was not so simple and the effort evolved into a larger project. Especially when I realized that what I needed to highlight would mean I would have to make decisions about which issues within this wider conversation were worthy of highlighting. Yes, I needed to learn more. Thus, I began with my own discernment process, which created the need for a multi-post effort on AI that will have to unfold with more Posts over time. The conversation about AI changes daily. I invite you along in my discernment process as you create what works for you.
So, this Post demanded I say something about discernment itself. Hopefully a brief overview of my discernment process as represented in this Post can be helpful to find your way through the multiple issues and voices weighing in on AI. Some definitions at the start could be helpful:
Definitions
In this Post individuals make distinctions among at least four types of AI:
AI as a commercial and practical tool, designed to do a job, e.g. drive a car or translate a language. This might be called “weak AI.”
“Generative AI,” a more complex “tool,” such as ChatGPT, often called LLM, “Large Language Model,” that creates information via “code based on patterns in data.”
“Artificial General Intelligence” AGI, a “hypothetical future machine that can learn and think like a human.”
“ASI” a “superintelligent” theoretical machine “that becomes smarter than the whole human race,” often referred to as “singularity,” when the human mind is duplicated on a machine, again theoretically at this time.
Overview
What follows includes some general comments about a wider process that is needed in our debate about AI. This is followed by a deeper dive into the Jesuit discipline of discernment and why I believe this kind of approach is essential. In order to fulfill the challenge to include a greater number of people “at the table,” I do a selective survey of voices, not all in agreement, but many motivated by the Pope’s Encyclical. I offer some opening comments and then give extensive excerpts from these contributions for you to judge for yourself about their relevance. I conclude with my observations and introduce the topic of my next Post on “Transhumanism.”
A Discernment Process
The Jesuit Concept of Discernment
The Expanded Discernment Voices
From the Vatican’s conversation with Silicon Valley
From the faith communities
From the field of Philosophy/Ethics
From main line journalism
From the field of education
From the wider civil society, “think tanks”
From the academic world of theology
Concluding Observations. What Next?
Discernment: An Introduction
In my last post I began discussing Pope Leo XIV ‘s Encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” Eventually I want to fully address his main concern as highlighted in the tile to the Encyclical: What does it mean to “safeguard the human person?” What is it that needs safeguarding? What is our view of the “human person?” Then if we agree, how are we going to provide this safeguard? Who will play a role in this important effort? These are substantive questions that will demand what the Pope called a “discernment “process.
The debate about our definition of the human ranges from what the Pope argues for to what transhumanists of various positions suggest: that humans will evolve in our “collaboration” with machines or even merge with ever more sophisticated machines. How to sort out the issues and develop the wisdom to address these profound issues demands an “all hands-on deck” approach.
Again, from the perspective of one of the founders of Anthropic, Chris Olah, it will require more than computer scientists. The task will need to involve humanities scholars, philosophers and theologians plus the general public. What does this process look like?
In this Post I will offer a wide spectrum of individuals and disciplines. This process includes those focused on the definition of our humanness, our understanding of “artificial intelligence” and who will control and be responsible for safeguarding what is agreed upon by our definitions.
Good news! I believe the discernment process has already begun and has been going on for many years without sufficient news coverage. There are positive signs that the more expansive discussion is happening. However, the wider process also could be truncated and undermined. It is my goal in this and future posts to highlight these conversations, especially among theologians, ethicists and the public efforts that go beyond that of private technology companies either in the United States or China. It is urgent to engage and be part of this conversation. Most often what we hear is either about the dangers and missteps of AI or the so called “advancements” and the potential usefulness. These accounts are largely descriptive without deep analysis, especially on the fundamental question of who will be in charge of “safeguarding our humanity,” and what will be the definition on which we can agree about what constitutes our humanness.
We have to be careful of what we embrace with every advanced notion of AI. For example, we need to reflect on what will be the meaning of “tradition” in the future of AI. Will we value anything of the past? What part of our tradition will we want to remember? Will nostalgia even be a relevant notion? We need an expanded conversation to make sure we are not “throwing out the baby with the bath water.” Not my favorite metaphor, but for what we are dealing with, it seems most apt.
It is not surprising that many in the Trump administration are trying to undercut this expanded process by leaving the future largely in the hands of the private sector, which means being in control by the technology giants poised to reap billions of dollars and capture undue power and influence in the world. A separate post just on this issue is needed. This would include a critique of Trump’s policies to forbid states to enact laws to regulate the tech companies and develop safeguards. It would also address the proposal for public sharing in the wealth that is generated, which amounts to placating the public so that most of the wealth still remains in the hands of just a few powerful companies. Already the tech allies are running adds to promote the building of the large data centers, realizing that a significant push back is occurring, perhaps spawning more public oversight, at least at the local level. Further the geopolitical implications complicate the picture possibly undermining the greed of the tech companies. China is already making available AI “tools” for free or at a reduced cost. The “arms race” is now an “intelligence and technology race.”
In my last post I suggested that an essential characteristic of what defines us as persons is our finiteness, our limitations. I used Steven Colbert’s sense of gratitude for all of life, even profound personal loss. I quoted passages from the Encyclical where the Pope made a similar point. If this has merit, then our limits rather than our greatest evolutionary achievements and capacities of our large brains and our evolving cultural awarenesses are defining. That is, being able to care for each person regardless of circumstance is the key to our humanness. Therefore, our achievements in science, art or ethics are less significant for defining our humanness than our limitations. For in these limitations, we become humble and find our empathetic and compassionate self. Only then can we learn how best to harness our advances, especially technology for the common good. Our finiteness, our so-called imperfections, and limitations are what need to be protected, according to the thesis of my first Post. Of course, this assessment is countered by various notions that suggest as humans we will evolve in ways to mitigate if not conquer our finiteness. This debate goes under the general title of “Transhumanism” or “Post humanism.” How do we sort out this debate will depend on who is at the table with a better understanding of what is at stake.
I want to suggest an inclusive process for this debate and highlight where and to what extent this debate is already underway. This process must be supported if we are to safeguard a version of our exiting view humanity or any evolving vision for the human person, worth safeguarding.
A Discernment Process: Pope Leo
Pope Leo deserves the first word, for it has been his Encyclical that has contributed to a wider discussion of the threats of AI in mainline media, supercharged in Substack Postings and specialized analyses in the scientific and religious communities. A good example is the opinion piece in the Guardian Weekly by Simon Tisdall, the Guardian’s Foreign Affairs Commentator: “As leaders suffer moral malaise, thank heavens for the Pope.” Tisdall juxtaposes the Pope’s moral vision with that of Trump, Putin and Netanyahu. It is important that the popular media is paying attention to the Pope’s vision and not just reporting on the actions of tech billionaires and autocrats.
In the Introduction to the Encyclical, Pope Leo calls for an “openness to dialogue” that seeks a “dignified life for all.” He is not just referring to Catholics or Christians. He means a process that includes every tradition, more than just the religiously inclined. He is clear where this impulse comes from for him, it “is an integral part of the Church’s vocation because, [it is] constituted in Christ as ‘a sacrament…of communion with God and the unity of the entire human race.” A rationale that is not “the cup of tea” for everyone. Yet he wants to be open about his tradition. A tradition that at its best that articulates universal standards, especially to value our limitations as we work for the common good. There are other spiritual and secular traditions that are in agreement with his goal, if not his motivation, as illustrated by some of the selections below.
The “common good” is not an abstract notion for the Pope. It is based on a “dialogue with men and women of our time,” who have a “desire for happiness that embraces all dimensions of life.” It therefore means “accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected.” It will take “shared responsibility and courage. “It is not the burden of one group….all are given their own section of the wall: scientists and researchers, entrepreneurs and workers, educators and legislators, civil society, popular movements and faith communities. This is the logic of subsidiarity.” Subsidiarity is a concept articulated in much of Catholic Social Teachings. It is similar to the concept of a “division of labor,” each pulling his or her own weight by contributing one’s special talents, expertise or perspective to the effort. It has its root in the Christian “New Testament” when St. Paul refers to the one body that is made of up distinct parts, all contributing to the whole. He makes this analogy to emphasize the “one body of Christ.” In talking about the economy, the Catholic tradition suggests that each of us have a specialized role in contributing to a moral economy, owners, workers and consumers.
The Pope’s discernment process for the sake of the common good has certain standards. He begins with the requirement to uphold the “dignity of the human person.” Then he proposes that the common good is served by “the universal destination of goods,” because all need to share in the wealth of the world. Next is the “the preferential option for the poor,” the bedrock of Catholic Social Teachings, based in the Biblical stories. He adds, “care for our common home and peace,” drawing our attention to the environment and a war-free world.
Leo is not satisfied with pronouncements. He recognizes the need to “translate these standards into practices, such as responsible planning, the assessment of human and social impact, the inclusion of the most vulnerable, the promotion of digital literacy and guiding research and industry toward justice and peace.”
The Pope has set a very high bar for this discernment process. Where do we see signs of this process underway? Again, my goal is to illustrate some good news. The process has begun, even if, as I have noted, is less covered by the mainstream commercial media.
I believe the tradition of discernment within the Catholic tradition may help us prepare for the mental, emotional and I believe the spiritual state that is required to participate in this discernment process, helping us to judge the merits of what is being proposed by others, and our own conclusions.
Remember the bumper sticker, “Don’t believe everything you think,” be open and informed.
The Jesuit Concept of Discernment
Embarking on the discernment process that is needed, we do not have to begin from scratch. The Society of Jesus and many other spiritual traditions have developed practices of discernment. In fact, there are other approaches that can be used to guide our decision making and train our observations to be wise and judicious. Different fields and traditions have well developed standards of discernment. In science we have the scientific method. In social sciences we have “thick description.” In philosophy we have the Socratic method and rules of logic. In business we have “stakeholder” analyses and emerging standards for a “moral economy.”
The Jesuit approach I believe lends itself to a deeper discernment process that includes the formation and standpoint of the discerner. We need to be attentive to our inner state of mind and heart, with a discipline to be open to others and attuned to the standards of the common good suggested by the Pope. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, exemplified what has become a disciplined practice of discernment. The Pope essentially is asking for this ingredient in the discernment process his is advocating. The following quotes from Office of Ignatian Spirituality gives us a glimpse of “Ignatian discernment” or a “discernment of spirits.”
“It is the spiritual practice of noticing the movements within your heart and soul—your desires, thoughts, emotions—and identifying where they are coming from and where they are leading you.” This practice therefore focuses on two movements:
“Consolation. Do they inspire love, peace and joy? Do they lead you to greater love and desire to serve others?” The Jesuits would add: “Do they come from God?” For others this just might be what we know to be our “higher instincts” of compassion and empathy.
“Desolation. Do they come from a selfish place within? Do you find yourself drawn inward, focused on your own desires to the exclusion of the needs of other?” Again, the Jesuits would add, “Does God’s love feel absent?” I would suggest that this is when we feel alone and desperate to have our own way.
Those who practice Ignatian discernment suggest that it can be a very useful and effective tool for making all kinds of decisions,” especially those that seek to define us, such how shall we live a meaningful life?
There are critiques of the Ignatian discernment process, such as, how do we know the voices we hear in our “inward” examination are authentic? Well, I suggest we are never sure. And that uncertainty is a good thing, hence “discernment.” What I recommend is that we add this process to our usual rational processes. I would argue we have a sense when we know we are being honest with our selves. Therefore, I recommend we should spend some time in this self-reflective mode. However, the tradition does add some rational categories that can be useful such as:
Openness, approach the decision with an open mind and heart
Generosity, put no pe-conditions on what our openness brings
Courage, following through with where the openness and generosity take us
Interior freedom, ability to move beyond all talk and no action and not avoid the tough issue
A habit of prayerful and thoughtful reflection on one’s experience, paying attention, listening and then reflecting
Having one’s priorities straight, that is, serving the instincts of our best selves. For the Jesuits, it is a focus on doing God’s will. How do we know? Yes, how do we know? For me, it is a key. Am I certain? No. More discernment.
Not confusing ends with means, God works in mysterious ways but does not confuse the two. We know the truth of this category when we are treated as a mere function, or a “cog in the wheel.”
Each of these categories help keep us on track with our best instincts, challenging us to be more reflective. The Jesuits insert trying to do the “will of God.” I offer a story here. Probably the most rational philosopher I have met in my life was C. West Churchman, a systems analyst/philosopher who taught at the Haas Business School in Berkeley. One day in the parking lot of the Berkeley City Club I asked West what I thought was a profound question of discernment, something like: “How do we really know a truth and be certain?” He replied, “Know the will of the Lord.” A response that has left me pondering ever since.
I think the Ignatian discernment process might help us at least better know a more humane truth if not God’s will. At least for discussion let us define “The Lord,” as that inner voice of honesty, or “being true to oneself.”
This kind of discernment is an example of an enlightened human capacity and an evolved sense of self-awareness. Will Anthropic’s “Claude” ever reach this level of self-awareness? This question, reminds us that it is we humans who must discern our own future, using our human capacities and limitations. This begs several other questions: Can we create machines that do this? And do we really believe, if these are some of the capacities worth safeguarding, would we want machines to have these capacities? These questions were beyond the initial issues in my previous post, that is, can our machines protect our finiteness? Why would we want to find a way to create a “better” human being? For what purpose? A new human being is exactly what transhumanists are suggesting is needed. What kind of new human? Again, what kind of machine “enhancements” are desired for what end? More on this in my next Post.#4.
I feel that these questions are what require a well-developed discernment process. How well we organize and not undercut this process is for me crucial.
With the Ignatian discernment concept I am highlighting the mental, emotional and spiritual dimension of this process. As mentioned above I depend on other sources of information and individuals who are conversation partners. One such partner, Robert Traer, has a non-materialistic Substack called “Toward an Expanded Science.” Check it out. In a recent post he printed a quote by Albert Einstein to illustrate his view of science. I believe it also speaks to the kind of disposition one must have to discern the complexity of the various AI issues we must confront.
The most beautiful and profound emotion
we can experience
is the sensation of the mystical.
It is the sower of all true science.
Those to whom this emotion are a stranger,
who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe,
are as good as dead.
To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists,
manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty,
which our dull faculties can comprehend
only in their primitive forms -
this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religion.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Imagination is the language of the soul.
Pay attention to your imagination
and you will discover all you need to be fulfilled.
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
--Albert Einstein
For me, this is where process and content merge. Our capacity for Einstein’s mysticism also speaks to the definition of our humanness, another part of our humanness that needs to be safeguarded. I am getting ahead of my next Post, yet Einstein suggests that no artificial intelligence could duplicate this spiritual capacity. Not all agree. So, let’s do a brief excursion with other voices to help in our discernment process.
The Expanded Discernment Voices
I want to be responsive to Chris Olah’s challenge to make sure we add the voices he suggested beyond computer scientists: the humanities, philosophers, theologians and civil society. The Pope added more: researchers, entrepreneurs, workers, educators, legislators, popular movements and faith communities.
My goal in this Post is to promote this wider discernment process and give some good news; the process is underway and has been for many years. In early 2021, since I began paying more attention, I have collected over 200 articles on AI from the various periodicals to which I subscribe. The scope and size have increased exponentially since the release of Pope Leo’s Encyclical.
I offer a selection of various voices and their links. These are only illustrative of a full range of the conversation. I give a brief background on each selection and then organize the highlights of each article using direct quotes. Read them at your leisure, choosing those that most interest you and continue your own discernment process.
From the Vatican’s conversations with Silicon Valley
It is appropriate to begin with an article that gives information about the relationship between Anthropic and the Vatican, which indicates that conversations between the Vatican and tech companies have been going on for decades. This is an article that was written before the Encyclical was announced. Make up your own mind by reading the article to decide how serious Anthropic is in making ethical decisions to guide AI activities that are more than narrow self-interest. A paragraph from the article will give you a feel for the concern:
“Even as Anthropic has courted faith leaders, it has not avoided allegations of unethical behavior. Partnering with the U.S. intelligence and defense industries at all, for instance, has garnered criticism, and its technology was reportedly part of the larger technological apparatus employed during the recent strikes in Iran.”
Another concern worth considering is the nature of the impact that faith leaders might have in the conversations with Anthropic. If the goal is to make Anthopic’s “Claude” more “ethical” what does that mean? What is the nature of the “constitution” that is built to design Claude? And even if characteristics can be mimicked can a machine be on its own? How does this relate to “safeguarding” real humans and our humanity? Another quote gives us a sense of the issue:
“Anthropic staffers…became curious as to whether wisdom traditions such as Catholic ethics, Christian ethics or religious ethics more broadly might have some insights that could help them to think about how to develop their AI model Claude into acting better and maintaining its reliably ethical way of behavior.’”
Clearly there are unexamined assumptions that may lead to assuming more than what is possible for a machine.
II. From the faith communities
As suggested by Olah and Pope Leo, scholars in the field of religion and members of the various faith communities have a lot to say. I begin with Christian examples.
From Commonweal magazine, a liberal Catholic voice that provides a survey of Christian thinkers.
One article in the Commonweal survey, which I recommend is the article, “Flourishing Through Limits ‘Magnifica Humanitas exposes how AI can never be purely neutral” by Vincent J. Miller.
First, Miller makes clear the most important focus in discussing AI is not the “use of technology,” but “the vision that underlies it.”
This concern should be resonant with many other religious faiths and with individuals who profess none. It is a “’shared discernment’ with the entire human community.” In a quote that I believe speaks for itself, Miller highlights the theme of my first post on AI. It is what I refer to as the “Steven Colbert Insight.” Miller writes:
“Leo’s powerful discussion of dependence and vulnerability must be read from that perspective of dialogue and engagement. In some of the most sustained reflections on embodiment, disability, and mortality ever to appear in a papal document, Leo writes movingly of the threat we face: “Everything that appears as a ‘limit’—incapacity, illness, old age, suffering, vulnerability—tends to be seen primarily as a defect to be corrected, rather than as a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship” (118). In the face of this tendency, Leo insists that “humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them.” Weakness, illness, loss, and failure are sources of real suffering, but they are also occasions for some of the richest expressions of our humanity: compassion, generosity, and wisdom. Accepting our “vulnerability, suffering and failure” is the doorway to recognizing the “inviolable dignity of every person” (122). Contrary to the “Promethean dreams” that guide so much of our technology, we are liberated not by self-sufficiency, but by relationship, communion, and interdependence (128). “
To this I say Amen. Again, this theme was addressed in my previous Post.
Another important survey of theologians is provided by Christianity Today, a conservative Christian magazine.
Among the various contributions in this survey is the article by Russell Moore, “All Christians Should Listen to Pope Leo on AI.” Moore is Christianity Today’s former Director of the Public Theology Project and now Editor-at-Large after resigning as the Editor-in-Chief.
The opening paragraphs of Moore’s article give a sense of his agreement with the Pope from this anti-Trump wing of conservative Protestant Christianity.
“Sometimes the pope knows how to nail some theses to the door, too.
In his first encyclical, Pope Leo XIV articulated a message all human beings need to hear—a protest this Protestant can gladly join, against the tech-bro utopia on offer right now. On this matter, every Christian should listen to the pope—both in his warning and in his underlying hope. What’s at stake is the very meaning of the soul.
In Manifica Humanitas, Leo contends that the accelerating speed of artificial intelligence is not just a technological development or a foreseeable economic crisis but a spiritual and civilizational test that forces us to face what it means to be human. And the danger, the pope rightly warns, is not so much that artificial intelligence will become too humanlike but that human beings will become more like machines.
The encyclical argues modern society is increasingly shaped by a ‘technocratic paradigm’ that prizes efficiency, control, optimization, and power above human dignity, reducing people to functions and relationships to systems.”
This article, in another section, is a good test for our efforts at an open discernment process. For those of us with liberal to progressive views, will find some of the conservative values either out of touch with the modern world or too judgmental about personal ethics or lifestyles. Yet it is important to hear their perspective. It is an AI perspective that can reach many so-called evangelical Christians.
To further illustrate the extent of the conversation within religious circles. AI and Faith is a long-standing organization that explores the view of all the world religions. Choose the articles of most interest to you.
III. From the field of a philosopher/ethicist working in AI
Many illustrations could be listed here. But this article in the Guardian Weekly by Robert P. Baird, author of the widely acclaimed novel, The Nimbus, that Annie Dillard called a book “about faith, and the life of the mind,” caught my attention. Baird with an engineering degree from Stanford and a PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School introduces us to the work of a Philosophical Ethicist, Iason Gabriel, working at the London-based subsidiary of Google, DeepMind. This is where much of its AI research is located. It is a cautionary tale about anthropomorphizing AI and more.
This article, illustrates that the writer, Robert Baird, is a sensitive and reflective observer with strong discernment gifts. The article is a good overview of the fast pace of AI work, leading to an unknown future. Note my introductory headings in Italics that can guide you through this important article, which I quote at length.
A moral mystery? Iason Gabriel gives his view:
“I can take any technological artefact and ask: is it wise? Is it just? Is it caring? And the answer is no. But the depth of the question when it comes to AI – including what kind of ethics is appropriate to it – is hard to overstate. I sometimes feel like it’s very hard to look at AI directly. There’s this deep mystery there, which is: but what actually is this thing? We have a very literal answer, but the literal answer doesn’t seem to necessarily provide a moral answer.”
Robert Baird reports on Gabriel’s early efforts:
Gabriel’s first major research project at DeepMind was a 2020 paper that straddled the concerns of both camps. The paper took the alignment problem seriously, but it also insisted that alignment had ethical and political implications that went beyond the technical challenges. As difficult as it might be to get a machine to act in accordance with some set of values, Gabriel argued, it was much harder to choose those values in the first place. ‘Given that we live in a pluralistic world that is full of competing conceptions of value,” he asked, “how are we to decide which principles or objectives to encode in AI – and who has the right to make these decisions?’”
In his paper, Gabriel argued that such a neat division was untenable…he insisted that technology was not intrinsically value neutral. An AI trained with statistical optimisation methods, for example, might be particularly hospitable to moral systems that also relied on statistical optimisation, such as the utilitarianism popular among rationalists and effective altruists. The same AI, however, might have difficulty with ethical systems based on virtue or rights. Moreover, Gabriel argued, since what the philosopher John Rawls called “the fact of reasonable pluralism” was unavoidable, developers should not try to find a single set of values to inform an AI’s behaviour. Instead, they should build AI systems for a world in which people have “principled disagreement about how best to live”.
Baird suggest that in the new reality, the corporate race is on:
“Rohin Shah, who did a PhD at UC Berkeley and is now DeepMind’s director for AGI alignment and safety, told me that the general attitude in the Bay Area is that AI technology is developing faster than traditional institutions are set up to handle, and that therefore the responsible thing to do is to move faster, to innovate” on the theory that only a supercompetent AI will be able to manage the risks of supercompetent AIs. In London, by contrast, there is an effort to be “more grounded and scientifically rigorous.’”
Baid walks us through the evolution from LLM’s to the new focus on AGI:
Nevertheless, he [Gabriel] says, it was the linguistic competence of LLMs that “transformed my understanding of precisely how on track we were” to reach AGI. “When I first joined DeepMind, it was not at all clear how you were going to get AI you can talk to. We had nothing in that ballpark.” Now, by contrast, not even a decade later, most of us take it for granted that we can “speak to a highly anthropomorphic, fairly competent, artificial entity”.
When I asked Gabriel his take on the consciousness question, he said that he maintains a principled agnosticism on the grounds that it’s not clear what evidence would settle the question. He noted, too, that DeepMind treats the question as “something worth empirical and conceptual investigation”. Yet his skepticism was apparent. “I don’t have the anthropomorphic bias that some people have,” he said. “It may be because I, within bounds, know exactly what’s going on when I talk to a language model that I don’t fill in the gaps in this imaginative, empathetic way that some people do.”
If it’s easy enough, at least for some of us, to say that LLMs are not conscious, their essential strangeness still leaves many hard questions unresolved. “It’s amazing how deep and difficult the challenge is of finding an appropriate reference for what AI is,” Gabriel told me. “We know it isn’t human. That’s very clear. AI can clone itself. It probably doesn’t have a personal point of view. So, it’s partially human-like but it’s definitely not human. Then another mental model is that it’s something like a corporate intelligence – a state or a corporation or something like that. And from that we think: ‘Oh, well, maybe the right approach is to legislate for AI, so we’re going to write a constitution.’
Baird reports that with AGI’s focus on AI “assistants there became a greater focus for AI “bots” to act autonomously:
With his team, he began work on a comprehensive report on the ethics of AI assistants (also known as agents), of the sort that might be used, say, to help a user book a vacation or help a company run its payroll department. ...Unlike chatbots, agents have tools that give them the power to act autonomously on behalf of their users. A lot of people, he suggested, “were not pausing to think about how different it is to have an AI system taking actions in the world”.
Gabriel suggests a more inclusive approach to safeguard important human values:
Gabriel and his team put together a 267-page report; its key insight built on his earlier alignment work. Much as he had in his 2020 essay, Gabriel and his co-authors argued that alignment was not merely a matter of making sure that AI systems acted in accordance with some stable set of preferences, values or principles. Instead, they argued, alignment should be seen as a four-way relationship involving the AI system, the user, developers and society.
Another ethicist at Oxford concerned with what can go wrong, suggests the need to “prevent excessive concentrations of data ownership” for the sake of democracy.”
Framing the issue in this way made it possible to see all the ways in which a misaligned AI might go wrong. An AI trained to favour its developer might cause harm to its user, for example, by not reporting accurate information about the developer’s competitors. Or an AI trained to follow its user’s instructions too faithfully might cause harm to society, for instance, by helping the user hack into a bank. It was even possible, they argued, for AI systems to be misaligned in a way that harmed users or society without helping anyone.
Nor do you need to be an anticapitalist to worry about the concentration of so much power in the hands of so few corporations. Edward Harcourt, the director of the Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI, told me that while he’s convinced that “ethical AI” is not a contradiction in terms, he also thinks that this doesn’t only mean designing models to be moral. At least as important, he suggested, are political and economic considerations of the sort that motivate the movement for “decentralised AI”: “It’s not teaching AI to think this way or that, but it’s an infrastructural innovation that prevents excessive concentrations of data ownership. And that’s ethically really important in a democracy.”
Baird reports that things are going too fast and AGI is now seen as inevitable, “not if but when”:
Nor is it reassuring to discover that the feeling that things are going too fast is …lamented [by] the “ferocious commercial-pressure race that everyone’s sort of locked into”. What’s happening now…is not how…the development of AI would go, “where we would be contemplating this philosophically and carefully considering each next step. We’re not in that world.”
Baird emphasizes there are new concerns that are being “paid to the broader social effects of an AI-augmented world.” Such as the climate crisis and “human relations” in general:
And while it’s not far-fetched to expect AI to enable breakthroughs that would justify the extreme amounts of energy it requires – better batteries, more efficient transmission grids, cures for serious diseases – “hope for the best” is [not] a reasonable answer to people concerned about the climate crisis.
The conviction that the relevant question about AGI is no longer if but when has spurred a concomitant shift in the way frontier labs such as DeepMind are thinking and talking publicly about the consequences of advanced AI. Whereas previous work tended to focus on the ethical aspects of discrete products, such as models, chatbots and agents, today much more attention is being paid to the broader social effects of an AI-augmented world.
Gabriel’s recent work at DeepMind is a useful indicator of the shift to a wide-angle perspective. Two years ago, he and his colleagues were working out the ethics of AI assistants. Now, however, he leads a team of philosophers and social scientists investigating “how AGI will impact the economy, how it will impact the political sphere, how it will impact human relationships and how it will interact with science and technology”.
We return to the Pope’s concern about “what it means to be a human being” by ethicist Gabriel:
At one point in our conversations, Gabriel described himself to me as “a card-carrying humanist”: he is not the sort of person who looks forward to a day when superintelligent machines render humanity obsolete. Still, he recognises that as computers encroach on activities and capabilities that we have long held to be the special province of Homo sapiens – language, creativity, humour, taste – we find ourselves thrown back on some of the oldest and most difficult philosophical questions of all. Just as discoveries in physics, biology and astronomy led past generations to revise their understanding of what makes our species distinctive, he suggested, so, too, might AI prompt us to reconsider what it means to be a human being.
There does not seem to be any holding back on producing AGI. This means that the safeguards and regulations will have to be developed to protect a moral vision and our humanity. A wide spread discernment process is essential.
IV. From main line journalism
The civil society represented by our “free press” have had to react to and offer insights to the changes that are occurring and will occur as AI continues to change the way we live our lives and with efforts to create AGI. Some individuals have expressed legitimate outrange and others have been more moderate in their response.
1.Robert Reich, the omnipresent public intellectual, UC Berkeley Professor and former Secretary of Labor weighs in about his concerns for AI on his Substack site, often about the perils of creating human-like machines that have a potential independent capability.
However, in the post below, Reich, with his use of facts and accessible cartoons, he treats the problem of data centers and the protests against these centers, especially in one’s community. The arguments Reich marshals should lead to a ban of the data centers everywhere. Yet, these data centers are not just the product of corporate disregard for the environment and their own profit. They are being built because we are becoming hooked on the excitement of the Large Language Models, LLM. We seem to “need” faster and quicker information in our everyday use. According to Reich, “a simple 100-word email takes about a bottle of water to process. We are all complicit in the runaway AI world, according to Reich.
2. The Atlantic’s contributor and former New York Times columnist, David Brooks, offers advice on living with AI in his article, “The People Who Will Thrive in the AI Age.”
Brooks is a commentator with whom I often have serious disagreements. I entered the reading of his article with ambivalence. But I decided to try to employ “openness” and a chance to learn. This article also illustrates that most journalists are now offering opinions for people to consider. I was surprised on several accounts.
First, given that he is correct that AI at least in the form LLM offerings, is not going away, he offers ideas on how to better understand AI’s impact and how to manage it. Second, he addresses the question of how we humans are different than what “artificial intelligence” can produce. Third, he suggests changes in our educational system to focus more on “the hero’s journey.” Fourth, he concludes with the focus on preserving our dignity.
It is worth the time and effort to read the whole article as part of one’s own discernment process. The following exerts will give you an idea of his thoughtful article that will prompt refection.
I organize the quotes on the four major areas that I found to be helpful.
How to manage AI:
Ask for hints, not answers: People who ask AI to directly answer their questions suffer severe declines in motivation and ability. But people who ask AI for background thinking or clarifications do not.
Start with a blank page: Before you go to the bot, start with a blank piece of paper and write up your own analysis and conclusions. Then ask AI to challenge your thinking, not produce it.
Rotate tasks: Every time you do a task with AI, follow it with a task that doesn’t involve AI. That will keep your creative-effort muscles alive.
Redesign the bots: General chatbot use undermines learning. But as the writer Alberto Romero notes, AI tutors actually improve learning and motivation. That’s because although chatbots mostly answer questions, tutors lead students on structured learning journeys. It should be possible to redesign the normal bots so that they function less like encyclopedias and more like personal trainers whose jobs are designed to build mental muscles, rather than replace them.
Make a sharp distinction between rote work and creative work: Let AI write functional emails. Don’t let it write your essays or your memos. Shame people who do.
Ask for thinkers, not thinking: My favorite trick when using Claude is to never ask it to think through a problem for me. I ask it to summarize the thinkers who have already addressed a given problem. If I’m trying to understand child development, I ask it to imagine a debate between Jean Piaget and Erik Erikson. What would these two great psychologists say to each other about the problem I’m wrestling with? Then I ask it what books by these thinkers I should read if I want to understand their work. I get much better results from AI when I treat it as a brilliant librarian rather than as an oracle.
How humans differ from AI:
“My core belief about this whole age is that artificial intelligence will reveal what it means to be human by disclosing what AI can’t do. Before AI, many people believed that reason and intelligence were the qualities that define humanity. They are what make us different from the animals. But soon there will be entities that are much smarter than us; so that can’t be what defines humanity.
What AI can’t do is hunger for things. Yes, a few reward-like mechanisms are in the thin layer of the models built through reinforcement learning, but the models are overwhelmingly about predicting, not desiring. AI can’t hunger, in the first place, because it doesn’t have biological needs—the needs that push living things to grow and explore. More important, AI doesn’t have a self. A bot doesn’t have a past person that it used to be or a future person that it wishes to become. A bot does not have a structure of cares and an order of loves, as a person does. A bot doesn’t have a personal history, a particular set of wounds, joys, and exhilarations experienced in regions deeper than rational calculation, and it doesn’t have a succession of dreams and hopes, which emerge from those regions as well.”
A new goal for education:
“The crucial task before us is to cultivate people’s desire to seek out cognitive complexity. Not to go all Joseph Campbell on you, but the essential challenge is: How do we train people to see their life as a hero’s journey in which they take on difficult missions that they may fail at and that will certainly involve pain and suffering? How do we form people, so they have an explorer’s heart, a willingness to endure, an ability to struggle on, even when their body and mind are telling them to give up, to reach new destinations and figure stuff out?”
Preserving our dignity:
“If we can help people learn to want more, hunger more, they’ll be willing to undertake the mental effort to do hard things, and we’ll avoid the cognitive polarization that is staring us in the face. If we can educate people to be clear and wholehearted about what they truly love, then AI will do the calculating and the synthesizing, but humans will still define what matters, what is worth exploring, what missions we go on, and where we end up. That would produce a bot-filled society in which human dignity is preserved, and perhaps even enhanced.”
I predict a future article by Brooks on “Transhumanism.” What will he say?
V. From the field of education
The Chronicle of Higher Education is the “go to” source for the conversation taking place in higher education. There is a plethora of articles about how to navigate the pluses and minus of AI. Again, here we are talking largely about the large language models LLM offered by ChatGPT. The article below, “The Student Brain on AI: A panic over ‘brain rot’ obscures a more complex—and surprising—reality” by Beth McMurtrie, offers a deeper analysis of AI impacts. McMurtrie is a senior writer for The Chronicle of Higher Education.
McMurtrie, covers a wide range of studies on the impact of AI on student learning and teaching. Some are contradictory and most are inclusive that beg other questions. My concern with the article is that the educational model that is used to determine how beneficial or detrimental LLM is needs to be better addressed. For example, is David Brooks’ notion of education, the hero’s journey, being used as a standard? It is not clear. Yet some common themes are emerging across all studies lead to concern, such as the conformity that arises from students’ reliance on AI. She also treats what is necessary for any beneficial outcome when joining “AI tutors” with classroom teaching. There are studies that focus on the impact on brain and some on behavior. In the final analysis, there is a need for a caring person to be in the loop, whether you are using AI tools or not.
A concern: convergence of thought and behavior shaped by AI:
“The people using ChatGPT showed more convergence in their thinking, suggesting that the AI was shaping their thoughts and beliefs. In the assigned topic of “happiness,” for example, people who used ChatGPT disproportionately related happiness to career success. Yet they also reported that what they wrote reflected their thoughts. “But clearly…they had been biased to think of happiness as success in a career, which may then continue to affect their beliefs and even their behavior going forward.”
Inconclusive studies, but with promise, if properly managed:
“One often-cited study, a large-scale experiment with nearly 1,000 high-school students, measured how well students in three groups solved math problems: students who used no technology while solving them, those who could use an AI chatbot that functioned like regular ChatGPT, and those who could use an AI chatbot built with detailed instructions to act like a tutor, such as by giving students hints rather than answers to the problem. They found that students who used the standard AI chatbot performed better during practice sessions than students who had not used AI, but the standard-AI users performed worse when tested unassisted. Students who used the AI that functioned like a tutor performed the best during practice sessions and performed about the same on tests as students who did not use any AI.”
Developing a “personal relationship” with an AI bot is concerning:
“AI use has also become increasingly personal. Students call ChatGPT “Chat” and have one-on-one conversations with it alone at night in their dorm rooms. Sometimes it’s a support system, but sometimes, students say, they feel like it is messing with their brains. “It’s not like every student is having some existential crisis,” says Vee. “But I do think their personal relationship with the AI is largely unexamined.”
The bottom line, the need for regulation and controls:
“Some studies have shown that “if you have a human being in the loop who’s caring and actually interested in how people are using a tool, whether that’s AI or anything else, you can make it effective,” Watkins says. But right now, “everyone has access to AI, and they can use it any way they want, to any degree they want, for hours on end.” If that doesn’t change, he says, “we’re going to be in trouble.”
VI. More from the wider world of civil society; “think tanks”
Especially since the Pope’s Encyclical a more focused attention to AI is happening across many professions.
1.The Brookings Institute, a centrist/moderate often bi-partisan think tank, organized a podcast on reactions to Magnifica Humanitas, “Understanding Pope Leo’s AI encyclical.” What merits this option is that it is from a political policy institution that has taken the Encyclical with great seriousness.
Below is the link to the 22minute podcast along with the transcript.
Participants:
Elham Tabassi
Director, Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative
Senior Fellow, Global Economy and Development
The Brookings Institution
Nicol Turner Lee
Director, Center for Technology Innovation
Senior Fellow, Governance Studies
The Brookings Institution
Valerie Wirtschafter
Fellow, Foreign Policy, Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative
The Brookings Institution
Here are some highlights from the conversation:
Solid praise for the Encyclical:
“I think the response from the tech community; there has been a lot of
silence, so we can talk about this. But, just like Nicole, I’m not Catholic, but I think
these are important conversations and important documents for all of us to look at as
they set sort of a north star.
But most importantly, that this has served as a guide, I think some
guidance for people who are following this area to really consider what does it look
like to have a technology that really embraces the spiritual component in a way that
values humanity and human civilization
I love the use of the word “colonization” and the way in which he constructs this
power conglomerate that is essentially taking over humanity. And I think these are
real concerns. I mean, I think people have to realize that AI is a very extractive
technology. It’s one in which, you know, it takes your data. It looks at, areas that
that data is combined and conjoined with other attributes that you have in the digital
space. And it uses that in a way that I think people do not have agency.
And when I read this document, it sort of seconded for me a common analogy
that I use when I speak to audiences, which is something John Lewis actually
coined: “When you’re not in the kitchen, you’re on the menu.”
The need for safeguards:
“Yeah, I think, yes, intent matters and how we actually go and develop
technology that reaches those goals and how do we put the safeguard, but also test
them and make sure that they are doing what they’re supposed to do. One point that
I want to make is here that nowhere in the, at least my readout of this, is that pope is
not saying that AI is the enemy. I think he uses the words such as AI is neither “a
force antagonistic to humanity” nor “inherently evil,” and then immediately also talk
about that it’s also “never neutral.” And I think that tension of if we know that it’s not
neutral, we know that, you know, at least, you know, from a technologist
linguistic zero error, zero risk technology doesn’t exist.
But at the same time, how to achieve those promising beneficial use of AI to uplift
the society as it’s changing the society. And that is, I think, something that a lot of
people from the civil society to tech area are working on”.
Bringing the community together:
“Yeah, that’s a very good question and something that I have been
working on it for several years. The community has been working on this for several
years. I think it’s important to keep reminding ourselves and knowing that AI is
all about context of use. It’s not just a technology in isolations. And AI is
sociotechnical. It’s not just data, compute, and algorithm. It’s a complex interactions
of data, compute, and algorithm with the environment that it is operating within, the
human that operates it, the human that gets impacted by that.
So, in a way the solutions are not just technical and technological. AI is not just a
technology problem, the problems that you’re talking about, making sure that it’s
serving the whole humanities. It’s not a technology problem with a governance
footnote. It’s really a governance problem that’s very much entangled with
technology and technical problems.
So, the way to do this is that we need to bring communities together, the people that
build the technology, the sociologists that look at the how the technology can actually
serve humanity and serve the society. And if you really want the AI to serve the
society, we should include the whole society in in development and advancement of
the technology.”
Is “security by design” safeguards sufficient to preserve humanity given the influence of tech companies:
“You know, you have heard the word secure by design,
privacy by design. But we should think about how to build a technology that’s
trustworthy by design. And I think there is a lot of room for improvement, research, and creativity in how to build technologies that by design are secure or private or fair. And, you know, we have learned a lot about the things that we should not do.
And if I can answer that, I mean, I think it’s also interesting the
setting in which this was actually delivered. You know, there was Anthropic sitting
next to the pope as he read that, who’s actually about to go onto the private equity
market. You know, I think they’re IPO now, about to be worth trillions of dollars.
I mean, my point is, like, it it’s one of those things, and I think this is very much part
of the biblical experience, where, you know, the Bible is written for those, again, who
require or need some type of a transformative experience, redemptive experience,
but yet we’re delivering this with a company that may not have the same goals.
And the Vatican itself is not necessarily poorly resourced when it comes to pushing
an agenda, which I think is appropriate, again, for the delivery of this document. But
it also suggests that they could also make a stand in terms of deplatforming some of
these companies that do not stand up to some of the ethical concerns that they
have.
So, you know, I think as Elham has said, the aspiration of the document is real. I
mean, I personally think that this pope is the real deal. Right? I think, you know, he
has really come out with some real solid apologies. Like I said, it’s been a long time
since there’s been apology to Black Americans about slavery. And to be able to say
that publicly, I still find is very powerful sentiment from the Vatican itself.
But I also think, as Elham said, aspiration is one thing, but actual action is another.
And we do have to begin to think about, you know, the preservation of humanity
when left to a handful of companies that feel that they can actually create and design
a world in which they want to live and not everybody else.”
Again, it is noteworthy that the concern for “preserving humanity” is now being highlighted. The Pope deserves some credit for this.
2. The American Enterprise Institute, a politically and religiously conservative think tank has also weighed in on the Pope’s Encyclical. In an article by James Pethokoukis, Senior Fellow at the Institute, he lays out the disagreement with the Pope’s critique of capitalism. However, he is totally in line with the Pope’s critique of transhumanism. Pethokoukis’ article is a way to ease into the topic of transhumanism, which will be the topic of my next post, #4. A short article, worth getting this perspective or at least understanding that these perspectives do exist. The debate continues, especially given added attention by the Pope.
A Preview of the discussion of Transhumanism in Post #4
In the academic world of religious scholarship, the debate heats up, not always in line with the Pope. Two examples: One From Ted Peters, a Protestant public theologian based at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley California; The other is From Ilia Delio, a Catholic Theologian, in dialogue with Peters. Check out their Substack sites for many Postings on the debate about Posthumanism, which is the major concern of theologians, as it is for the Pope.
I offer an expanded overview of these academics as a prelude to my next post #4. This debate also illustrates the extent and seriousness of the conversation that is going on in the Christian community, not just as cheerleaders of the Pope, but engaging with the Pope on fundamental issues. I do not do justice to each author with my limited quotes, but a preview is a starting point. I invite you to jump into the middle of their conversation.
Ted Peters:
“Let’s have a debate. Let’s ask knowledgeable public theologians to speak for or against a proposition. Here it is.
Our global society should support the advancement of AI technology for enhancing humanity and even generating a posthuman species.
Why are we debating this proposition? Because Pope Leo XIV set our agenda.
Why do we formulate the debate proposition this way? Because Pope Leo XIV formulated it almost this way in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (2026). His Holiness is worried about advancing AI technology. He fears AI will dehumanize us individually and collectively. So he constructs a public theology and public morality centered on the concept of human dignity. And this warrants “disarming” technoscience. To pursue continued public discussion, the Holy See has established an Inter-Decastrial Commission on Artificial Intelligence overseen by Sister Alessandra Smerilli, F.M.A., prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
Now, watch what happens in the argument. Leo XIV applies individual dignity to the human species as a whole. In doing so, he risks committing the fallacy of composition. The quality of dignity applied to each individual now becomes a quality applied to Homo sapiens as a species. If the human species as a whole has dignity, contends the pope, then these warrants disarming transhumanism in order to protect the future of humanity from post humanity. This warrants strict guidelines and guardrails for the advance of technoscience.
Is this a persuasive argument? Not if you’re Ilia Delio. She will take the affirmative position. Why? Because Leo XIV needs to update his anthropology.”
Ilia Delio
Ted Peters introduces his conversation partner, Ilia Delio
Ilia Delio belongs squarely within the Roman Catholic discourse. Those in the AI and Faith Coordinating Catholic Connections affinity group have been monitoring the Vatican contribution to public discussion on AI since the pontificate of Francis. No doubt they are tracking the worldwide conversation over Magnifica Humanitas as we are at Substack. What Leo XIV and Ilia Delio have to say establishes the debate line on one important issue: should Homo sapiens sacrifice their dignity on the altar of a superintelligent post-humanity?
Sr. Ilia takes the affirmative to our debate question: Our global society should support the advancement of AI technology for enhancing humanity and even generating a posthuman species. Even though Delio welcomes technoscience’s most extravagant futures, she does not give blank permission to techies or tyrants. She has a criterion to evaluate innovation. A theological and ethical criterion. That criterion is love.
Ilia Delio’s argument: Humanity Unfolding: Where I Differ with Pope Leo XIV on the Human Person and AI:
“Here I push back—not against the caution, which is wise, but against the metaphysics beneath it. The encyclical fears that AI diminishes human distinction; it reads machine intelligence as a threat to a boundary that must be defended. I read it differently. Technology is not an intruder upon human nature but one of its oldest expressions. From fire and flint to language and writing, we have never been a creature apart from our tools; we are the animal that extends itself, externalizing memory and cognition. AI is not the negation of the human story but its next chapter. Human personhood is not a fixed essence to be walled off from a rising tide; it is dynamic and emergent—a life still becoming. Teilhard de Chardin, a son of the same Church, saw evolution converging toward greater complexity and consciousness, a “noosphere” thickening around the planet. On that reading a global network of intelligence continues the human vocation rather than betraying it: the noosphere growing interconnected and self-aware.”
Peters and Delio
Ted’s Rebuttal to Ilia on Dignity in Light of the Posthuman:
“Ted Peters writes. It would be an overstatement to simply place Pope Leo XIV and Ilia Delio on opposite sides of the debate line. What’s between the lines on each side requires careful discernment. Neither wishes to sacrifice human dignity.
…my problem with Delio’s proposal is that her change in ontology risks losing the previously developed ground for human dignity based on inviolable worth (Peters, 2005). Being, esse, personhood, intrinsic value, and dignity have come together in a single package both in church and in secular democracy. Disassembling this package is risky. Without replacing the essentialism we are discarding with a convincing anthropology that reaffirms dignity, I fear the social consequences.”
Delio Responds:
“Ted Peters’ reluctance to embrace my position is right on one matter: something must anchor dignity. But Pope Leo XIV is wrong about what that anchor is, however. Dignity was never thought to be a static substance walled off from the world. Dignity is the direction of the movement — what Teilhard called Omega, and named, without embarrassment, love. A becoming person is not a person without dignity; its dignity lies in what it is becoming toward. This is the hinge that allows us to surrender the fortress without losing the human, and it turns a blunt yes-or-no into a test.”
Concluding Observations, What Next?
Singularity, Transhumanism and Artificial General Intelligence
If you have gotten this far in your reading you have accomplished what David Brooks suggests is a key to living in an AI world.
“I’d say that a guiding principle of the emerging AI age is this: When intelligence is plentiful, volition is valuable. The people who are going to make a difference are not the ones who seek relaxation and passively use AI to work less. They are the ones who will seek improvement and actively wrestle with AI to develop their own mental capabilities and accomplish more.”
Yes, I can attest that it is hard work to slog through so much that is now written on AI, negotiate every new “time saving” enhancement , and the added anxiety about the future of humanity with AGI. Therefore, it is crucial to stay focused on the most important issues and concerns, especially when a fifth type of AI is so prevalent, that is, “marketing AI.” According to an AI Post itself: “Everyday software features are rebranded as ‘AI’ by companies to boost sales without using advanced machine learning.”
In my own reading and struggling with uninvited AI enhancements my discernment process continues to be worth the effort. I have learned from each of the articles, links and books I have read. When reviewing the voices I have provided in this Post I have gained valuable insights, not just to “improve myself” but to get clearer about my own position on so many issues, especially “what it means to be human and what is important to “safeguard” about our humanity.
I am also clearer about the kind of disposition necessary to remain humble and check my own propensity for hubris, or premature judgements. I am more convinced that elements of the Ignatian discernment process are essential to arrive at moral considerations that often get lost in the noise and posturing around AI. A focus on the way the Pope has defined the standards of a common good approach also ring true to me. Trusting in a wide-open process that reflects the pluralism of our world will help ensure that we are sensitive to all human beings and the planet itself. If all are not “in the kitchen, some will be on the menu.” In the AI world “too many cooks in the kitchen” will not spoil food. I am with Einstein’s brand of mysticism that “only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
Also, I am thankful for what I learned from each of the voices I have included. I have gratitude for:
The Pope’s Encyclical to focus the concern on safeguarding our humanness
The religious voices that have set aside some of their narrow parochial issues to join in the conversation with the Pope
The effort that some tech companies are at least listening to ethicists and considering regulations to counter tech’s narrow financial self-interest and potential damage to our humanity
The outrage of Robert Reich that we need to help motivate our action
The moderation of David Brooks giving some hope that thoughtful people are paying attention in good faith
The measured tones from the academic world that is self-critical of its own pronouncements and studies, staying focused on potential risks
The well-intentioned efforts to join the Pope’s agenda with policy from “think tanks”
And the thoughtful intellectual efforts from the world of theology, keeping our focus on safeguarding our humanity.
More can be said, but, what next?
The next Post #4 will jump into the thorny thicket of Transhumanism. I begin with the those who were forecasting “singularity,” where the human brain would be replicated in a machine.
As a preview I have provided a link to a website where scientists seem to have concluded that singularity may not be possible. A little humility? Perhaps. Judge for yourself. Maybe they are just suggesting another technological fantasy or another “advance” fraught with even more consequences and the diminishment of our humanness.
Watch a video on “Merging Humans and AI: The Rise of Biological Computers,” and continue your discernment.
Much is at stake with how we define “what it means to be human.” Join me for my next Post. This continues what I consider to be our “Bonhoeffer moment,” engaging in the profound issues of our time. No action implies consent.
Stay tuned and see you sometime later in September. Also let me know what you are thinking, reading, watching and doing.
Harlan
Thank you, Harlan, for sharing your research and reflections on AI. I especially found your list from Brooks on "How to manage AI"
Ask for hints, not answers: People who ask AI to directly answer their questions suffer severe declines in motivation and ability. But people who ask AI for background thinking or clarifications do not.
Start with a blank page: Before you go to the bot, start with a blank piece of paper and write up your own analysis and conclusions. Then ask AI to challenge your thinking, not produce it.
Rotate tasks: Every time you do a task with AI, follow it with a task that doesn’t involve AI. That will keep your creative-effort muscles alive.
Redesign the bots: General chatbot use undermines…
We’re talking about “Artificial Intelligence.” Shouldn’t we first ask what “intelligence” is?
Harlan, I much appreciate your exposition of discernment. My understanding of discernment is informed by the American liberal Protestant theologian James Gustafson (1925-2021) who, in turn, was influenced by the Catholic tradition.
As I understand, discernment involves four basic things. First, expanding the points to be considered (assuming the luxury of time). It helps to be mindful that determining what points are the relevant is significantly influenced by our moral and ethical views concerning what we owe each other and what a worthwhile or good life is. Likewise, the weight we give various points to consider depends on what we think is of fundamental value and…
I would think Ted Peters is much more favorable than most theologians. He’s been somewhat critical of The Pope. I’m intrigued by his free use of words like superhuman. And his Substack discussions of Being are open ended and invigorating.
Well done Harlan.
Encyclopedic in scope, Harlan. Thanks. Yes, the wider public can gain much from what Pope Leo XIV says. I would commend to the wider public the careful discernment you proffer, but the media too often treats such matters as adversarial. Press forward, Harlan!
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