For a column like this one, which discusses the theology of recent Magisterial pronouncements, dates don’t get much better than the release dates of Papal Encyclicals. Unless it’s the release date of a Pope’s first encyclical, of course, because first encyclicals usually set the tone for an entire pontificate.
Today’s promulgation of Magnifica Humanitas is just that, on both counts.
Amidst all the noise about the document that will no doubt be filling your feeds this Bank Holiday Monday morning, let’s get stuck into looking at five of the document’s most important theological elements.
1. Human intelligence is immeasurably superior to artificial intelligence.
Taking the vanity out of a lot of bluster about AI, Pope Leo argues that human intelligence is profoundly different in kind from any artificial form of intelligence currently in use, or that might be in use in the future.
This is the core of the encyclical. Human creatureliness is magnificent and exhibits a God-given grandeur which we forget because grandiose claims about the machine easily bewitch us.
There are two dimensions to this. The first is that AI “merely imitates” some aspects of human intelligence centred on “data processing” (§99). However sophisticated that imitation might be, it is fundamentally different in kind from the multifaceted, meaningful nature of human intelligence. As the Holy Father writes,
“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, and responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences” (§99).
Embodiment, interpersonal understanding, emotional profundity, and acquired wisdom are magnificent things, and we are endowed with them so that we might share our creaturely lives with God. This is a distinctively (yes, you guessed it) Augustinian approach to being created in the image of God (Gen 1.26-7). Mind, intelligence, and will mirror God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, said St Augustine, and we can be formed into God’s likeness by entering into communion with the Trinity (§50).
2. The Church must challenge the technocratic paradigm
It might seem the encyclical is anti-technology, which it certainly isn’t. I’ll revisit this point shortly. Still, it’s important to first highlight that Magnifica Humanitas warns us about a deeply anti-Christian, anti-Catholic, and “anti-human” (§112) mentality that influences today’s culture, and is a consequence of technological grandiosity.
Technology “becomes the standard by which everything is judged”, so everything is treated as if it were a mere machine. Even human beings are then evaluated according to “the logic of efficiency, control and profit” (§92). It is a subtle but pervasive mentality in which education is reduced to data processing and IQ, not to things like wisdom and living a good life. We increasingly feel we need to be programmed like machines too:
“The fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty, and exerting total control. When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion”.
Put provocatively, technocratic forces don’t want you to acknowledge that the purpose of your life is relationship and communion, because technocratic forces cannot commoditise and manipulate genuine relationship and communion without destroying what makes them so special.
3. We are called to build a civilisation of love
Anyone on the Catholic scene of recent decades will know Pope St John-Paul II’s “culture of death/culture of life” framework. Well, Pope Leo has rebooted it for the 21st century. Welcome to the age caught between the “culture of power” and the “civilisation of love”.
The culture of power is the globalised technocratic paradigm, an arms race for ever more grandiose forms of AI, the descent into multipolar geopolitics, resurgent armed conflicts, identitarianism, and so on. It is a world where sheer force holds sway, strength wins, and power comes without responsibility. It is a world where any new technology is immediately put to use by shadowy actors seeking to reap the material or political benefits it brings.
The civilisation of love is a society centred on the grandeur of being a human creature, which means apportioning relationship and communion the supreme place. That, in turn, means valuing each person as made in the image of God and applying the principles of Catholic Social Doctrine to technological developments. These principles are equal dignity, human rights, a commitment to the common good, the universal destination of resources, subsidiarity and solidarity.
The source and summit of the civilisation of love is the Eucharist, the sacrament of unity. Through the Eucharist, Pope Leo writes, we enter into communion with Christ and with each other. While “new economic and technological networks can generate exclusion, isolation, and dependencies”, the Eucharist shows forth a “different paradigm” that “preserves human connections, gives voice to the invisible and ensures that processes are aimed at respecting people’s dignity” (§235).
4. Our use of technology should be a principled use
Much of Magnifica Humanitas discusses the macro-level of economics and governance, but here I want to focus on what this all means for private use, assuming few Tech CEOs are avid readers of The Oracle.
At both levels, the same approach pertains, anyway. Use, explore, develop, reap the benefits of technology and so on, by all means. God has endowed us with ingenious creativity, and simply refusing technological progress per se is not part of this document.
We are encouraged, therefore, to “integrate the possibilities offered by technology within a framework marked by wisdom” (§237), a “spiritual, ethical, and political framework” (§93). In other words, you and I are required to exercise “vigilance” (§100).
This might seem an obvious point, but I think Pope Leo offers some interesting angles here. We have been led to believe that AI and automation are irresistible and that their takeover of human life is inevitable; we are made to feel powerless in the face of the machine.
Magnifica Humanitas points out that we should use our discernment to make reasoned choices and judgements, both individually and collectively, and for Catholics, do so prayerfully. We do this with other aspects of life, after all. Few people eat everything that comes their way simply because it becomes available, for example, but with technology, this is often the attitude. Technology should no longer get this free pass, says Leo. At all levels, people should ask whether it will perpetuate grandeur or grandiosity.
The document highlights three principles for personal use of AI. Firstly, if you’re using AI to get ready-made answers to things, ask yourself if this is genuinely beneficial or likely to weaken your own (magnificent!) faculties of judgement and creativity by lazily delegating them to the machine. Secondly, treat any AI-provided answer with due suspicion and never assume it is objective. Again, we know to do this with other sources of information, but many seem to have forgotten that AI also has built-in human biases. Thirdly, never let the faux-human style of AI communication let you forget that it is not human. It can never share in the grandeur of human creatureliness – and having such a cheap imitation pull you away from genuine human relationships would be both absurd and catastrophic.
5. Look to Jesus
It might seem strange that we should look to a humble carpenter to guide our attitude to digital technologies. Hopefully, some of the foregoing make it clear why it makes good theological sense. If our magnificence and grandeur reach their truest and fullest summit in the perfect human being – he is like us in all respects, except sin (Heb. 2:17) – then his life lived in perfect relationship and communion should be the heart of the civilisation of love.
The key Scriptural lens of the encyclical is the contrast between the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-9) and Nehemiah’s rebuilding of Jerusalem (Neh 2-6). Babel displays the grandiosity of seeking to surpass all limits. Nehemiah displays the grandeur of working within and through creaturely limits – patience, fraternity, cooperation, and wisdom, etc. Jesus shows us how to mirror Nehemiah, and how not to re-enact Babel. In giving himself to us in the Eucharist, moreover, we glimpse the Heavenly Jerusalem (Rev 21), which is the model and exemplar of Nehemiah’s city.
Ways of thinking which grandiosely seek to transcend human limits invariably end up destructive of human dignity – hence, the technocratic paradigm. What the life of Christ shows us is that true grandeur is intrinsically linked to embracing limits as opportunities for an ever-deeper communion with God. “Finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us up to recognising the face of God and others” (§122).
The life of Jesus shows us that our natural limits are often precious things for precisely this reason – and we should therefore guard and protect those limits, for they are the ground of our relationship with God.
Again, AI is hardly comparable. Jesus’ “humanity is completely free, open to others, capable of building healthy and beautiful relationships and committed to the total gift of self”. Looking to Jesus is thus to forsake “equality with God”, as did he, whose “humanity in its grandeur becomes the Way, the Truth and the Life” and thereby “opening the path for each of us to grow toward fullness” (§1).
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Did you use Claude to summarize the Encyclical? ;)
Excellent breakdown, though, thank you!
I wonder if they were actually phoning. Many people nowadays - including myself - have on their phones their prayers, and also follow the mass using the excellent Universitas app. Just a thought.