Human Wisdom and Artificial Intelligence
Pope Francis’ message for World Communications Day 2024
On Wednesday, Pope Francis released his message for the 58th World Communications Day, an annual day of reflection on communications, technology, and Catholic life. Francis’ approach to these messages have typically focused more on the underlying social issues that shape communication; for example, his last three messages have all been organized around his principles for the Synod on Synodality rather than any particular technology.1
This year’s message diverges from that pattern, though, and zeroes in on artificial intelligence, which seems to be the great discourse of our time. Moreover, in what I think is a first, the World Communications Day message has been coordinated with the World Day of Peace message, which was released about a month earlier on December 8, 2023.2
Some might wonder why the Pope would speak on artificial intelligence or what the Church has to contribute on the question. In an amusing moment in the communications message, Francis notes that he has himself been an object of deepfake images generated by AI. More broadly, though, the message gives a clear indication of how Catholic thought provides insights for the moral and human questions about AI, not the technical ones.
In the communications message, the core point Francis advances is a distinction between the wisdom of the human heart that is gifted by the Holy Spirit and the artificial intelligence of machines. The question about artificial intelligence in some sense begins with this difference, as Francis describes the heart as “the inward place of our encounter with God,” something that is not possible (so far as we know) with AI.
In distinguishing between human wisdom and artificial intelligence, Francis notes that
No doubt, machines possess a limitlessly greater capacity than human beings for storing and correlating data, but human beings alone are capable of making sense of that data.
This line made me think of pedagogical discussions I’m often involved in around AI, especially in terms of how AI should be incorporated into courses and what we need to do for our students regarding AI. A common point of comparison is the introduction of calculators to math classes and the fear that this would have on student learning. This comparison is usually about how to integrate new tools effectively into education (which we do need to do with AI in many contexts), but the comparison also reinforces Pope Francis’ point here: ChatGPT does not understand what it is generating any more than my TI-83 understood the quadratic equation. Students, and people more generally, need to understand both the results of the tools they work and the tools themselves (to some degree) in order to use them effectively.3
The task that Francis sees for us in our present moment is to better understand both the distinction between human wisdom and artificial intelligence and the relationship between humans and technology more broadly. Technology has always been an “extension” of the human person who recognizes their lack of “self-sufficiency,” but that drive for self-sufficiency can also become an idolatrous rejection of the fundamental human dependence on God. Francis summarizes this tension thus: “every technical extension of our humanity can be a means of loving service or of hostile domination.”
The technocratic paradigm, a concern of Francis’ throughout his pontificate, typically pushes humans more towards the “hostile domination” side of the spectrum. The tendency he sees in uncritical overreliance on AI and related technologies risks
turning everything into abstract calculations that reduce individuals to data, thinking to a mechanical process, experience to isolated cases, goodness to profit, and, above all, a denial of the uniqueness of each individual and his or her story. The concreteness of reality dissolves in a flurry of statistical data.
In his message for the World Day of Peace, he similarly writes “No matter how prodigious our calculating power may be, there will always be an inaccessible residue that evades any attempt at quantification.” There is more to being human than what can be measured.
Francis concludes his communications message by highlighting a number of questions that emerge from bringing principles of Catholic Social Teaching to bear on AI: how do we protect and uphold the dignity of workers? How do we manage the environmental impacts of AI? How do we take responsibility for our development and use of AI while also protecting the rights of others? His response to these and related questions are also answered by the general approach of Catholic Social Teaching: there is a clear role in this for government through laws and regulations, for businesses and industry, and most fundamentally for individual human persons.
Francis closes by reminding us that it is not inevitable that artificial intelligence become either “a means of loving service or of hostile domination.” Both remain real possibilities, and the arc towards one or the other depends on the human heart and its openness to “the wisdom that was present before all things.”
I will note that this year’s message and the previous two do have the thematic link of focusing on the heart, as you can see in the titles: 2022 - “Listening with the ear of the heart”; 2023 - “Speaking with the heart”; 2024 - “Artificial Intelligence and the Wisdom of the Heart”
The actual texts for these messages are almost always “dated” later than their release: the World Day of Peace message was released December 8, 2023, but the day itself was January 1, 2024; this message was released January 24, 2024, but the actual World Communications Day will be May 12, 2024.
There’s a good paper to be written by a better Lonerganian than me about the operations of consciousness and the operations of artificial intelligence. If any of my Lonergan pals know of one (or want to co-author one with me), let me know.