Pope reflects on artificial intelligenceThe audience with the Pope was held within the framework of the general meeting of the Academy, which is being held in Rome from February 12 to 14 at the Augustinianum Conference Center on the theme "Human. Meanings and Challenges".
At the beginning of his address to the members of the Pontifical Academy for Life, the Pope thanked them for their "commitment in the field of research, health and care of the life sciences; a commitment that the Pontifical Academy for Life has been carrying out for thirty years".
Human being
Francis then referred to the general assembly that the Academy is beginning today in Rome: "The question that you are addressing in this general assembly is of the greatest importance: that of how we can understand what qualifies the human being. It is an ancient and ever new question, which the astounding resources made possible by the new technologies are presenting themselves in an even more complex way."
Along these lines, the Holy Father pointed out that "the contribution of scholars has always told us that it is not possible to be a priori 'for' or 'against' machines and technologies, because this alternative, referring to human experience, makes no sense. And even today it is implausible to resort solely to the distinction between natural and artificial processes, considering the former as authentically human and the latter as alien or even contrary to what is human. Rather, it is a matter of placing scientific and technological knowledge within a broader horizon of meaning, thus avoiding technocratic hegemony (cf. Lett. enc. Laudato si', 108)."
The Tower of Babel
Furthermore, the Pope stressed that it is not possible to "reproduce the human being with the means and logic of technology. Such an approach implies the reduction of the human being to an aggregate of reproducible performances based on a digital language, which pretends to express all kinds of information by means of numerical codes. The close consonance with the biblical account of the Tower of Babel shows that the desire to give oneself a single language is inscribed in human history; and God's intervention, which is too hastily understood only as a destructive punishment, contains instead a purposeful blessing. In fact, it manifests the attempt to correct the drift towards a 'single thought' through the multiplicity of languages. Human beings are thus confronted with limitation and vulnerability and called to respect otherness and reciprocal care".
The temptation of believing oneself to be God
Francis also pointed out that "the growing capacities of science and technology lead human beings to feel that they are the protagonists of a creative act similar to the divine one, which produces the image and likeness of human life, including the capacity for language, with which 'talking machines' seem to be endowed. Would it then be in the hands of man to infuse spirit into inanimate matter? The temptation is insidious. We are asked, then, to discern how to exercise responsibly the creativity that man has entrusted to himself."
Demanding research
The Pope has indicated two ways in which the Pontifical Academy for Life approaches this problem: interdisciplinary exchange and synodality. "It is a demanding style of research, because it implies attention and freedom of spirit, openness to venture into unexplored and unknown paths, freeing oneself from all sterile 'indietrism.' For those who are committed to a serious and evangelical renewal of thought, it is indispensable to question even acquired opinions and assumptions that have not been critically examined."
"In this line, Christianity has always offered important contributions," Francis adds, "taking from every culture in which it has inserted itself the traditions of meaning that it found inscribed there: reinterpreting them in the light of the relationship with the Lord, which is revealed in the Gospel, and making use of the linguistic and conceptual resources present in the individual contexts." "It is a long path of elaboration, always to be taken up again, which requires a thinking capable of spanning several generations: like that of one who plants trees, whose fruit his children will eat, or like that of one who builds cathedrals, which his grandchildren will complete," the Pope concludes his reflection.
