Written by Kevin J. Jones
(OSV News) — A viral internet commercial sounded real. This is the voice of Cardinal Carlos Aguiar Letes, archbishop of Mexico City, who supports the miracle drug that cured diabetes.
But the commercial, like the treatment itself, was fake. As the archdiocese’s newspaper Des de la Fe reported in January, the scammers used sophisticated software, loosely classified as artificial intelligence (AI), to create a “deep I was creating a fake.
The criminal use of AI-generated content is one of the most alarming advances in digital technology. In June 2023, the FBI issued a warning about AI “deepfakes” that transform innocuous images of real victims into explicit “true” content, making them targets for harassment and sexual blackmail. Sometimes the victim is a minor. Victims can also be non-consenting adults, including popular figures such as singer-songwriter Taylor Swift.
Experts also point out that AI-driven technological developments can bring about major changes for the better, but stress that the application of Catholic ethics and social thought is urgently needed. The Vatican itself has made the topic a priority, with its Office for Culture and Education and the Center for Digital Culture taking a leading role, bringing together business leaders, philosophers, and Catholic thinkers to discuss the ethics of AI.
Katherine Moon, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Virginia’s Institute for Advanced Studies, told OSV News that the technology is double-edged.
“The analogy to fire is probably appropriate,” she said. “It can bring light and warmth, or it can bring destruction and darkness.”
Moon is a member of the AI Research Group, a North American group of theologians, philosophers, and ethicists who collaborate at the invitation of the Vatican’s Center for Digital Culture. She said that advances in technology have “already permeated every aspect and area of (our) lives.” Data analysis and natural language processing are already integrated into machine learning and algorithms, the technical name of the computer program that will shape life in the 21st century.
“It’s the news we watch on our phones, the media we’re encouraged to watch, the products we ‘should’ buy, the people we ‘should’ date, whether we’re considered at risk for a disease, whether we’re eligible for a loan, etc.” form. Or even a future threat to society,” President Moon said.
Accelerating AI revolution
Natural language processing technology can help people with certain disabilities communicate and can also translate difficult or little-studied human languages. Researchers at the University of Southern California have launched a project called Greek Room to automate labor-intensive parts of Bible translation, such as spelling and consistency checking, for languages that lack resources.
Self-driving cars without human backup could make taxi driving and truck driving obsolete. Computer programmers’ jobs are also being simplified by new AI systems. In many industries, AI will require fewer workers, resulting in more people being laid off.
“The idea is to make human labor more efficient,” said Brian Patrick Green, director of technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California. “The direct impact on people’s lives will be in the form of changes to their jobs.”
“Thanks to AI, scientific progress is happening much faster,” he told OSV News. “This allows people to find patterns they didn’t notice before. It allows them to model more complex behaviors. It allows them to analyze larger datasets. ”
AlphaFold, an AI project by Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind, has created highly accurate predictive models of the human body’s three-dimensional protein structure and nearly every cataloged protein known to science.
The project will rapidly accelerate more than 50 years of costly and time-consuming research aimed at informing new drugs and treatments, impacting sustainability, food insecurity, drug development and disease treatment. give.
Currently, AI refers to an algorithm or machine learning system designed for a specific task, but some researchers are considering a hypothetical general-purpose system, a system that reproduces human thinking abilities in a general way. We want to develop artificial intelligence.
“Basically everything that human intelligence can do will be automated,” Green said. “The question is how long it will take.”
“We shouldn’t think we can automate everything,” he added. While some philosophers believe that the uniqueness of humans lies in our ability to think and reason logically, Greene argues that the theological tradition suggests that people believe that “what makes us distinctively human is our ability to love.” He argued that it is useful for understanding that “it is a skill.”
Existing foundations of AI ethics
Any response to AI can be grounded in Catholic social teaching, famously highlighted in Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical on capital and labor, Rerum Novarum.
“The Catholic social teaching tradition started as a kind of reaction to the industrial revolution,” said Green, who like Moon is a member of the Vatican’s AI research group. “It’s not just a Catholic teaching on society. This is a Catholic teaching on society as a response to technology.”
Green said Catholics can understand Catholic social education as “education in response to and in the face of ever-changing technology.”
Mr. Moon agreed.
“Catholic tradition and Catholic social teaching have rich, relevant, and necessary resources to participate in both contemporary debates around AI and new technologies,” she said, noting that, among other things, He spoke of achieving “the common good and the prosperity of humanity.”
But she made it clear that there were serious concerns. AI could exacerbate wealth concentration. Biased AI could alienate vulnerable populations seeking social, healthcare, and banking services. This technology itself is resource-intensive and can have a negative impact on the environment. “Moral deskilling” may occur, where people become overly dependent on the authority of algorithms and reject their own judgment and choices. Important relationships could be mediated through AI and optimized purely for the acquisition of wealth or personal enjoyment.
Others working on a Catholic response to AI include Pope Francis himself. His message for the 57th World Day of Peace on January 1, 2024 praised human intelligence as a gift of God and welcomed the achievements of science and technology.
But he cautioned that algorithms and AI technologies are not morally neutral and have their own assumptions. They can reproduce “injustice and prejudice” in their society. He warned that AI-guided autonomous weapons are by no means “morally responsible subjects.” AI systems can be used to monitor individuals and classify them into large-scale social credit schemes, as well as set outcomes for mortgages, job applications, and asylum applications.
The Pope also praised AI-driven innovations in agriculture, education and culture that could mean “improvements in the standard of living for entire countries and peoples, and the development of human fraternity and social friendship.”
Pope Francis emphasized the importance of developing international institutions and new treaties to regulate AI technologies and establish best practices. He welcomed responsible behavior and respect for “fundamental human values such as ‘inclusivity, transparency, security, fairness, privacy and trustworthiness.'”
New questions and guidelines
These values were the focus of the 2020 Common Agreement on AI Ethics in Rome, signed by world leaders such as the presidents of IBM and Microsoft and the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life.
Bishop Paul Tye, secretary of the Vatican’s Culture Department and a key figure in Catholic new technology efforts, helped bring together members of the Center for Digital Culture’s AI research group, which began meeting in 2020. did.
The group has produced a book, Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations, which is the first in a series of planned publications on the challenges of AI and the protection of human values.
In his foreword to the book, Bishop Tye notes that several Vatican pontificates have focused on AI, and that “a rigorous theological and philosophical There is clear agreement on the necessity of ” He listed several questions on which existing discussions converge. What distinguishes humans from machines? What are the values and practices that promote society and human flourishing? ”
Jordan J. Wales, one of the book’s editors and a professor of theology at Hillsdale College in Michigan, called it “a rich analysis and application of the Catholic tradition to these issues.” He told OSV News that one of its operating themes is a favorite of Pope Francis: a culture of human encounters.
Wales said the best the Catholic Church currently appears to be doing is “pointing out some of the possibilities and dangers” and seeking to foster theological engagement with the evolving topic. “So that we are not blindly drawn into their claims,” he said. The effect will be more noticeable. ”
“If that process is not approached with sensitivity, insight, and a strong commitment to working with technology stakeholders and deeply understanding how technology works, we will not be able to respond to the current situation. You can’t do that.”
Mr Wales said it may be best to take a slow approach from the church in order to “deeply understand what the situation is”.
He urged patience, warned against the “illusion of hype” and argued that new technologies have fundamentally changed the world. A slower response can aid “accuracy and insight” in how the church applies long-held truths while avoiding impulsiveness.
“Our relationship with the world could change dramatically,” Wales said. “But the stakes of what it takes for a good human life haven’t really changed.”
Kevin J. Jones writes for OSV News from Denver.