BEYOND THE LEONINE

Insider’s Look at Leo’s First Encyclical

What does it mean for YOU?

Photo by Gianna B on Unsplash

Over the course of a decade, I was involved with the writing of five papal encyclicals, three by Pope Benedict XVI and two by Francis. Although I had met Fr. Prevost before he was elected pope, I never worked for him within the Apostolic Palace. But having worked there for his two predecessors, I can surmise how this first encyclical was written. That might be an interesting story, but it’s not the one I intend to tell here, because it’s not important.

The important story is what this encyclical has to do with you. What lessons from it can you apply to your daily life? What challenges does it present? What spiritual insights does it offer?

Unsurprisingly, the media reported it with the usual soundbites. Both the Wall Street Journal and New York Times jumped on the opening sentence: “Pope Leo Warns That A.I. Is a ‘New Tower of Babel’” and “Pope Leo Compares AI Threat to Biblical ‘Tower of Babel.’” “Pope Leo calls for ‘disarming’ of AI,” heralded CBS, echoing CNN’s “Pope Leo warns of AI fueling warfare.”

You’re missing a real feast if you try to satisfy your appetite with those. Most won’t bother to read the encyclical and see whether it has something to say to them. That’s because most readers — including Catholics — don’t consider themselves part of the intended audience.

Over the years, I have found encyclicals rich sources of inspiration. The pope puts a lot of work into them. Most of that work is prayer. A lot of prayer.

And he doesn’t pray alone. Everyone involved prays fervently at each phase of the preparation. Such prayer leads to disagreements, discussions, even arguments. Christians, who just celebrated Pentecost, know well that the ways of the Holy Spirit are always mysterious and never smooth. Tongues of fire rested upon the Apostles, not halos (cf. Acts 2:1–11).

I invite you to join me in taking a look at the encyclical “from the inside.” Read it for yourself and see if it has anything to say to you. To that end, I intend to publish a three-part series blandly entitled “Reflections on Magnifica Humanitas” starting later this week. You’re welcome to stop reading at any time, but I hope you’ll join me in reflecting on Pope Leo’s message with an open mind and an open heart. You’ll find out that it’s about much, much more than AI.

The encyclical, entitled *Magnifica Humanitas, is dedicated to “the care of the human person in the age of AI.” The official English version translates the Italian custodia *as “safeguarding” rather than “care.” That’s fine, but I think “care” is better, because the encyclical is not mainly about “safeguarding” or “protecting” the human race from artificial intelligence.

It rather explores the question of what it means to be human in an age marked by the development and implementation of artificial intelligence. Pope Leo wants to remind us that what it meant to be human before the advent of AI is still what it means to be human today. AI presents opportunities for us to realize our human potential, but it also presents serious risks.

To confront the risks, we must remind ourselves of the proper nature and proper end of the human person. The questions “What is man?” and “What is his end?” are perennial, but they are never answered once and for all. They must be recapitulated and reexamined every step of the way since what man creates serves as both a reflection and a foil of what he conceives himself to be.

Think about it for a moment. When you first used ChatGPT, were you not taken aback by its speed and efficiency? Did you not fear that it was better than you? Did you not have the impression that you were dealing with another person, someone who understood you, but also rivaled you? Did that not prompt you to reflect on who you are? Who you really are? Did it not make you stop and think that you might be made for more than just storing data and calculating outcomes?

That’s what the encyclical wants to get at. Pope Leo does not intend to give an exhaustive treatment of AI, and certainly not under the presumption that the Church is more qualified to speak about it than anyone else. He rather wants to reiterate the Church’s concern for you as a person created by God and for God. That includes your body and soul, reason and will, your desires, hopes, and fears.

If you read the encyclical primarily as an appeal to humanity on how to use AI, you will lose sight of the encyclical’s ability to help you understand who you are precisely by appealing to AI. The most distinctive thing about AI in comparison to other types of technology is that its developers don’t know what they’ve created until they test it. They are discovering how AI works by using it and observing what it does. That seems really bizarre since, until now, we have known what technology will do precisely because we’ve designed it to do what it does.

All of this is to say that the advent of AI and the progress that has been made in cultivating and growing it offers an unprecedented opportunity to revisit the question of who we are. In the age of AI, writes Pope Leo,

“ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human … we must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace” (15).

AI prompts a reexamination of what makes us truly human. The similarities between human agents and artificial agents allows us to see better the ways in which we, as humans, remain utterly unique no matter how much machines are able to mimic us.

If we fail to see that difference, we fail to pursue what is good, noble, and true, and take joy in aiming for those in a way AI will never be able to do, no matter how deep its “understanding” of the good, noble, and true may seem, no matter how much it may seem to be taking “joy” in pursuing them. “These systems,” writes Leo,

“merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity … yet this power remains entirely tied to data processing. So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean” (99).

So, perhaps by understanding AI better, we may come to a better understanding of the inestimable value of love, work, friendship, and responsibility, and thus cherish them even more.

All it takes is a moment’s reflection on whether engaging others solely through social media is really “love,” writing your term paper using generative AI is really “work,” using AI for the purpose of self-therapy is really “friendship,’’ or using it to provide therapy to your children or loved ones is really “responsibility.”

More importantly, our spiritual needs will be met only when we fully embrace love, work, friendship, and responsibility as values that can only be experienced by us as humans. We cannot delegate them to AI. If we tried to, we would quickly discover that one of the most distinctive things about experiencing love, work, friendship, and responsibility is that they remind us of our limits, and “our limitations leave openings for the good” (121).

In one of the most poignant passages, Leo writes that

“finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us to recognizing the face of God and others. Indeed, precisely because we experience limits — vulnerability, suffering and failure — we can recognize the inviolable dignity of every person, both our own and that of others” (122).

The pope’s point is that if we try with all our might to use the tools of technology to overcome the finitude that seems to hem us in, we fail to acknowledge that our finitude is the very horizon within which we can recognize infinitude.

Our cellphones are now a means not only of tapping into a fathomless source of information, but of processing that information to generate new insights, make new decisions, and even create new artworks.

Yet our devices will never give us access to the infinite, which can only be attained through the finite pleasures of taking a walk in the woods, seeing a baby smile for the first time, or just breathing for five minutes.

In short, we are in a position to confront the challenges of AI only when we recapture the magnificence of what it means to be human.

Thanks for reading! Please clap, comment, follow, and subscribe so that you don’t miss the forthcoming three-part series “Reflections on Magnifica Humanitas.”

Click here for Part 1 of the series.