On May 12th, the World Communications Day is celebrated, an opportunity to recall Pope Francis’s message about the challenges that artificial intelligence entails for the human person.
Dear brothers and sisters:
The evolution of the systems of the so-called “artificial intelligence,” which I already reflected upon in my recent Message for World Peace Day, is also radically transforming information and communication and, through them, some of the foundations of civil coexistence. It is a change that affects everyone, not only professionals.
The accelerated dissemination of astonishing inventions, whose functioning and potential are indecipherable to most of us, arouses a wonder that oscillates between enthusiasm and disorientation and inevitably raises fundamental questions: what is man then? what is his specificity and what will be the future of this our species called homo sapiens, in the era of artificial intelligences? how can we remain fully human and guide the ongoing cultural change towards good?
Starting from the heart
First of all, it is advisable to clear the ground of catastrophic readings and their paralytic effects. A century ago, Romano Guardini, reflecting on technology and man, urged not to become rigid before the “new,” trying to “preserve a world of infinite beauty that is about to disappear.”
However, at the same time, he prophetically warned: “Our place is in the future. Everyone must seek positions there where it corresponds to each one […], we can achieve this goal if we nobly cooperate in this enterprise; and at the same time, remaining, deep in our uncorrupted hearts, sensitive to the pain caused by destruction and inhumane conduct contained in this new world.”
And he concluded: “It is true that these are technical, scientific, and political problems; but it is necessary to solve them by approaching them from a human perspective. A new humanity of profound spirituality, of new freedom and inner life, must emerge.”
In this era, which risks being rich in technology and poor in humanity, our reflection can only start from the human heart. Only by equipping ourselves with a spiritual gaze, only by recovering a wisdom of the heart, can we read and interpret the novelty of our time and rediscover the path of a truly human communication.
The heart, biblically understood as the seat of freedom and of the most important decisions of life, is a symbol of integrity, of unity, while also evoking affections, desires, dreams, and above all, it is the interior place of encounter with God. The wisdom of the heart is, therefore, that virtue that allows us to intertwine the whole and the parts, decisions and their consequences, capacities and fragilities, the past and the future, the I and the we.
It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, which allows us to see things with God’s eyes, understand the bonds, situations, events, and discover their meaning. Without this wisdom, existence becomes bland, because it is precisely wisdom — whose Latin root sapere is related to taste — that makes life enjoyable.
This wisdom of the heart is found by those who seek it and is revealed to those who love it; it anticipates those who desire it and seeks out those who are worthy of it (cf. Sir 6,12-16). It is with those who allow themselves to be advised (cf. Prov 13,10), with those who have a gentle heart and listen (cf. 1 Kings 3,9). It is a gift of the Holy Spirit, which allows us to see things with God’s eyes, understand the bonds, situations, events, and discover their meaning. Without this wisdom, existence becomes bland, because it is precisely wisdom — whose Latin root sapere is related to taste — that makes life enjoyable.
Opportunity and danger
We cannot expect this wisdom from machines. Although the term artificial intelligence has replaced the more correct one used in scientific literature, machine learning, the very use of the word “intelligence” is misleading. Undoubtedly, machines possess an immeasurably greater capacity than humans to store data and correlate them, but it is up to man, and only him, to decipher its meaning.
It is not, then, about demanding that machines appear human; but rather about awakening man from the hypnosis into which he has fallen due to his delusion of omnipotence, believing himself a totally autonomous and self-referential subject, separated from all social bonds and alien to his creaturality.
Indeed, man has always experienced that he cannot suffice himself and tries to overcome his vulnerability using any means. Starting with the first prehistoric artifacts, used as an extension of the arms, passing through communication media used as an extension of speech, we have arrived today at the most sophisticated machines that act as aids to thought.
However, each of these realities can be contaminated by the original temptation to become like God without God (cf. Gn 3), that is, to want to conquer by one’s own strength what, instead, should be received as a gift from God and lived in relationship with others.
According to the orientation of the heart, everything in man’s hands becomes an opportunity or a danger. His own body, created to be a place of communication and communion, can become a means of aggression. Likewise, every technical extension of man can be an instrument of loving service or hostile domination.
Artificial intelligence systems can contribute to the process of liberation from ignorance and facilitate the exchange of information between different peoples and generations. They can, for example, make accessible and understandable a vast wealth of knowledge written in past eras or enable people to communicate in languages they do not know.
Just think of the problem of disinformation we have faced for years in the form of fake news and that today uses deepfakes, that is, the creation and dissemination of images that seem perfectly plausible but are false (I have also been a victim of this), or audio messages that use a person’s voice to say things they never said.
But at the same time, they can be instruments of “cognitive contamination,” of altering reality through narratives that are partially or entirely false, which are believed—and shared—as if they were true. Just think of the problem of disinformation we have faced for years in the form of fake news and that today uses deepfakes, that is, the creation and dissemination of images that seem perfectly plausible but are false (I have also been a victim of this), or audio messages that use a person’s voice to say things they never said. The simulation, which underpins these programs, can be useful in specific fields, but becomes perverse when it distorts the relationship with others and reality.
From the first wave of artificial intelligence, that of social media, we understood its ambivalence, realizing both its potentials and its risks and pathologies. The second level of generative artificial intelligence marks an indisputable qualitative leap. Therefore, it is important to have the capacity to understand, comprehend, and regulate tools that, in the wrong hands, could open adverse scenarios.
For this reason, preventive action is necessary, proposing models of ethical regulation to curb harmful and discriminatory implications, socially unjust, of artificial intelligence systems and counteracting their use in reducing pluralism, polarizing public opinion, or constructing a single way of thinking. Thus, I renew my call urging “the community of nations to work together to adopt a binding international treaty that regulates the development and use of artificial intelligence in its various forms.” However, as in any human domain, regulation alone is not enough.
Growing in humanity
We are called to grow together, in humanity and as humanity. The challenge before us is to make a qualitative leap to be up to the complexity of a society that is multi-ethnic, pluralistic, multi-religious, and multicultural. It is our responsibility to question the theoretical development and practical use of these new tools of communication and knowledge. Great possibilities for good accompany the risk that everything turns into an abstract calculation, reducing people to mere data, thought to a scheme, experience to a case, good to a benefit, and above all, that we end up denying the uniqueness of each person and their history, dissolving the concreteness of reality into a series of statistics.
The digital revolution can make us freer, but certainly not if we allow ourselves to be caught up in phenomena known today as echo chambers. In such cases, instead of increasing pluralism of information, we risk getting lost in an unknown swamp, at the service of market or power interests. It is unacceptable that the use of artificial intelligence leads to anonymous thinking, to an assembly of uncertified data, to collective negligence of editorial responsibility. The representation of reality in big data, no matter how functional it is for machine management, actually involves a substantial loss of the truth of things, which hampers interpersonal communication and threatens to damage our own humanity. Information cannot be separated from existential relationship: it involves the body, being in reality; it requires relating not only data but also experiences; it demands the face, the gaze, and compassion more than exchange.
I think of war reports and the “parallel war” waged through disinformation campaigns. And I think of how many reporters are injured or die on the ground to allow us to see what their eyes have seen. Because only by touching the suffering of children, women, and men can we understand the absurdity of wars.
The use of artificial intelligence can positively contribute to the field of communication if it does not annul the role of on-the-ground journalism but, on the contrary, supports it; if it increases the professionalism of communication, making each communicator responsible; if it restores to each human being the role of subject, with critical capacity, regarding the very communication.
Questions for today and tomorrow
Thus, some questions naturally arise: how to protect the professionalism and dignity of workers in the field of communication and information, along with that of users worldwide? How to guarantee the interoperability of platforms? How to ensure that companies developing digital platforms assume responsibility for what they disseminate and profit from, just like traditional media publishers? How to make the criteria on which indexing and deindexing algorithms and search engines are based more transparent, capable of exalting or canceling persons, opinions, stories, and cultures? How to guarantee transparency in information processes? How to make authorship of writings evident and sources traceable, avoiding the shroud of anonymity? How to reveal if an image or video depicts an event or merely simulates it? How to prevent sources from reducing to a single, algorithmically crafted way of thinking? And how to foster, instead, an environment that preserves pluralism and represents the complexity of reality? How to make this powerful, costly, and energy-intensive tool sustainable? How to make it accessible also to developing countries?
From the answers to these and other questions, we will understand whether artificial intelligence will end up building new castes based on information control, generating new forms of exploitation and inequality; or whether, on the contrary, it will bring more equality, promoting correct information and greater awareness of the epochal change we are experiencing, fostering listening to the multiple needs of people and nations, within an articulated and pluralistic information system. On one hand, the specter of a new slavery looms; on the other, a conquest of freedom; on one side, the possibility that a few influence everyone’s thinking; on the other, the possibility that everyone participates in shaping thought.
The answer is not written; it depends on us. It is up to man to decide whether he becomes food for algorithms or, instead, feeds his heart with freedom, that heart without which we would not grow in wisdom. This wisdom matures by making good use of time and understanding weaknesses.
It grows in the alliance between generations, between those who have memory of the past and those who have vision of the future. Only together can the capacity to discern, to watch, to see things from their fulfillment, grow. To not lose our humanity, let us seek the Wisdom that is prior to all things (cf. Sir 1,4), the one that, passing through pure hearts, makes prophets friends of God (cf. Wis 7,27). It will also help us to guide artificial intelligence systems toward truly human communication.
Rome, at Saint John Lateran, January 24, 2024.
Francisco
