Few topics in recent years have attracted more attention—or more investment capital—than “artificial intelligence.” And since the beginning of Leo XIV’s pontificate, a series of hints from Rome have suggested that the pope himself intends to wade into the hype cycle with a papal encyclical addressing the “ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence.” Leo himself has encouraged this expectation. In one of his first public speeches after his election, he evoked the efforts of his predecessor Leo XIII to develop a Catholic response to the changed social conditions of the Industrial Revolution, and explained his choice of regnal name in terms of a mission to apply the Church’s social teaching to “another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.”
While the Church and the world await the publication of Leo’s first encyclical letter, a recent publication of the Holy See’s International Theological Commission (ITC) may shed some light on how the pope and those around him are thinking about the implications of the “AI revolution.” The ITC is formally an advisory body, and the pope is free to reject its guidance. But its official publications, issued with the pope’s approval if not in his name, tend to be a reliable indicator of pending theological interventions from the throne of Peter.
On March 4, the ITC published a document titled Quo vadis, humanitas? (“Where are you going, humanity?”), on “Christian anthropology in the face of certain scenarios for the future of humanity.” While discussion of AI runs through the document, its focus is not on the technology itself but on the anthropological errors to which today’s technological developments and intellectual trends may render us susceptible. The ITC names these errors as transhumanism, the belief that humanity can be technologically perfected in a “quest for immanent immortality”; and posthumanism, a “radical devaluation of the human” that proposes to move beyond the human race in pursuit of superior forms of existence.
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In this focus on named errors (or heresies), there is an echo of earlier generations of Catholic authorities, who denounced—sometimes intemperately—the political horizons of liberalism or modernism or socialism as corruptions or counterfeits of the true salvation offered to us in Christ. Likewise, the “dreams and illusions” of transhumanism and posthumanism “stimulate the collective imagination with the claim of a greater theoretical rigor that would offer a realistic prediction of the future of humanity.” Whether one considers these promises of the technological perfection or transcendence of humanity to be rational extrapolations of present trends or implausible flights of fancy, their influence on the popular imagination and on the intellectual and moral outlook of our oligarchs is undeniable.
Perhaps the most compelling account of this intellectual world is found in Adam Becker’s More Everything Forever, a book that attempts to take seriously the ethical and ideological statements of the tech world’s intellectuals. The vision it conveys is very similar to the transhumanism and posthumanism the ITC condemns—it takes for granted that developments in artificial intelligence will augment or replace our ordinary humanity with capabilities almost beyond our present understanding, and that we can even reasonably hope that we humans (or computerized emulations thereof) will live forever in silico, under the beneficent care or inexorable tyranny of superintelligences that might as well be gods. Though one may be inclined to dismiss some of these claims and predictions as hyperbolic statements to attract the attention of investors, Becker argues convincingly that a critical mass of influential persons really do believe what they say, and intend to build technological tools, institutions, and political movements that further the realization of their dream. Nor is this just an idle concern of too-online dreamers—the founders and leaders of most major AI companies are deeply influenced by this thinking and have been able to command endless billions of dollars of capital in the service of their dream.
If anything, the Holy See’s theologians may be underestimating the eschatological character of these schools of thought. While Quo vadis, humanitas? claims that these ideologies take a “generally negative view of religious experience,” they have a distinctly religious character of their own. The visionaries of Silicon Valley anxiously await the advent of superintelligence; they may practice a kind of asceticism as they ruthlessly attempt to “optimize” the daily habits of their own lives; some of them even tremble in fear of a near omnipotent AI “basilisk” that will resurrect unto eternal punishment those instances of human consciousness that were inadequately zealous in working toward their digital eschaton. In their own way, these high-tech ideologies are as elaborate, as intently believed, and as psychologically compelling as the various gnostic doctrines of the late antique Mediterranean with which the Church Fathers did intellectual battle.
The danger is not that humanity might actually be replaced or surpassed by any developments in artificial intelligence, but rather that people might be persuaded that it can or ought to be replaced.
But the relevance of Quo vadis, humanitas? to a Catholic response to artificial intelligence does not depend on the details of these “heresies.” Nor does the document really refute them in detail—the ethical primacy of the human person is so fundamental to Catholic theology, and so closely tied to the doctrine of the Incarnation, that it almost goes without saying. Whereas much of the discourse about developments in artificial intelligence assumes that technology can or will replace or surpass the human race, and either celebrates or denounces that prospect, the ITC counsels us to reject the premise that what is important about humanity can be replicated by machines. In the ITC’s view, the imagined obsolescence of humanity is not a historical prospect to be welcomed or feared, but an intellectual error to be avoided. The danger is not that humanity might actually be replaced or surpassed by any developments in artificial intelligence, but rather that people might be persuaded that it can or ought to be replaced. And so in these texts of “official theology,” the Church’s theologians don’t dwell on the technical details of artificial intelligence or on the question of how to evaluate whether a computer’s behavior is genuinely equivalent to a human’s. They focus instead on the ethical questions of how new technologies might affect social relations among people and the pursuit of the common good.
In its continuation of the tradition of Catholic social teaching, Quo vadis, humanitas? exhibits a concern not only for justice and the common good, but specifically for how power is distributed in society. Its treatment of the social risks created by increased reliance on artificial intelligence repeatedly cite the CDF’s note Antiqua et nova: Note on the Relationship Between Human Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence, published in the last weeks of Francis’s pontificate. While Antiqua et nova discusses some particular uses and abuses of artificial intelligence (such as falsified images or mass surveillance), it returns often to the risk of the “concentration of power over mainstream AI applications in the hands of a few powerful companies.” Both of these Vatican documents abound with language about “decisions,” “control” “accountability,” and return to the fear that ever more efficient and powerful systems of digital influence and control will cause the human race to lose control over its development and destiny.
In light of this danger, Quo vadis, humanitas? calls for “ongoing critical discernment…from the perspective of the responsibility assumed by various international organizations, as well as by the Church with her social doctrine, in order to clarify the question of who is qualified to decide on the common good and the destiny of all.” This Vaticanese is far from a concrete political program, but it is in clear continuity with an ongoing trend of papal teaching over the past two centuries. Rerum novarum—the encyclical that inaugurated the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching—called for a laissez-faire approach to industrial development, with the Church’s moral suasion expected to serve as a bridle on the greed or antisocial ambitions of capitalists. But since then, the Holy See seems to have embraced the idea that the hazards of careless technological development cannot be managed without deliberate political action.
A related concern that also comes to the fore in Quo vadis, humanitas? is the fundamentally individualistic notion of “intelligence” in most discussions of artificial intelligence, which risks bleeding over into our understanding of the human person as well. In the posthuman promise of ever superior forms of intelligence and power, the ITC sees a “dream of individualistic and elitist perfectionism,” in which the worth of both machines and human beings is measured by their capabilities and attainments. Against this, the Church asserts the infinite and unconditional dignity of persons, which precedes any functional assessment of their capabilities. The ITC relies here on the logic of the 2024 declaration Dignitas infinita, which, like many texts of Francis’s papacy, seems to have radical implications that go far beyond what most Catholic authorities have been willing to say. If the dignity of every person is truly inherent and their claim on our moral concern absolute, then the eagerness of AI’s boosters to replace the society of humans with functionally equivalent algorithms is not just a business decision to be criticized for its economic effects on those declared to be superfluous, but a profound philosophical error in how we relate to our neighbors—almost a blasphemy. Leo XIV may well choose to take a more moderate approach in the coming encyclical, but the moral themes touched on here have implications for a criticism of our way of life that goes well beyond the role of any particular technology.
The not-always-glorious history of the Church’s engagement with new social and technological developments may lead some to dismiss whatever Rome has to say about AI.
Leo’s encyclical may not be the first time the Church has addressed such issues, and anxiety about them goes back a long way in Church history. According to some late-medieval accounts, no less a figure than Albert the Great was responsible for the creation of an artificial man. With his mastery of the cutting-edge astrological science of his time, he is said to have identified the optimal conjunctures of the stars for the crafting of each part and for their assembly into a whole, so that he succeeded in creating a figure that could move, speak, and answer questions—the word “android” was coined to refer to it. But even in those days, the advance of technology was not without controversy among Catholics: the same apocryphal tale gives us the example of another saint, Albert’s student Thomas, who tried to destroy the android—not because he suspected his master of using forbidden magic, nor because he believed the artificial man was animated by demons, but because its endless chattering disrupted his meditations. Perhaps on the basis of this legend, we might invoke St. Thomas Aquinas as patron against “AI slop.”
Apart from medieval legends, the not-always-glorious history of the Church’s engagement with new social and technological developments may lead some to dismiss whatever Rome has to say about AI. Paul V’s geocentrism, Gregory XVI’s opposition to railroads, Pius IX’s hatred of secular democracy—will the “human chauvinism” of Leo XIV join this list of Church-historical embarrassments in a future built for digital agents? The authors of Quo vadis, humanitas? do not pretend to have a map of future technological developments or to have understood all of their social ramifications. But their identification of an antihuman current in certain ways of thinking about technology should give us pause. And even if the scenarios they fear should turn out to be inevitable, a Church that has adapted, however reluctantly, to new philosophical schools, social arrangements, and political systems may still need to draw the line at the defense of humanity itself.
Reproduced with permission by Commonweal.
