Reflection

Part of the message for the 58th World Day of Social Communications, of Pope Francis

“What is man, what is his specificity and what will be the future of this species of ours called homo sapiens in the age of artificial intelligence? How can we remain fully human and direct the ongoing cultural change towards the good?”.

Starting with the heart

Quoting the Italian theologian and writer Romano Guardini, who in the “Letters from Lake Como” states, “It is true that these are problems of a technical, scientific, and political nature; but they can only be solved by man,” the Pope indicates the perspective of approach to reflection, which  “cannot but start from the human heart,” as “Only by endowing 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 way to a fully human communication.”

In continuity with the themes of the previous Days, “listening with the ear of the heart” and “speaking with the heart,” he then reaffirms the biblical meaning of the heart as a “place of freedom and the most important decisions of life”, “symbol of integrity, unity,” and “above all interior place of the encounter with God” and therefore of the wisdom of the heart. “Wisdom of the heart, then, is the virtue that enables us to integrate the whole and its parts, our decisions and their consequences, our nobility and our vulnerability, our past and our future, our individuality and our membership within a larger community”.

Opportunity and danger

In bringing the concept of wisdom back to the technological world, he clearly affirms: “We cannot demand this wisdom from machines” and, while acknowledging that “No doubt, machines possess a limitlessly greater capacity than human beings for storing and correlating data, but human beings alone are capable of making sense of that data,” he observes that the word “intelligence” is misleading and that, rather than requiring machines that look human, it is necessary to “awaken humanity from the slumber induced by the illusion of omnipotence, based on the belief that we are completely autonomous and self-referential subjects, detached from all social bonds and forgetful of our status as creatures”.

It is the heart, therefore, to make a difference in technology and systems: “Depending on the inclination of the heart, everything within our reach becomes either an opportunity or a threat. Our very bodies, created for communication and communion, can become a means of aggression. So too, every technical extension of our humanity can be a means of loving service or of hostile domination”.

He also recalls the problems related to misinformation – from fake news, to deep-fake, to the creation and dissemination of false images that seem perfectly plausible, of which he happened to be the object, to other alterations and simulations of reality. While acknowledging the progress of the new frontier of generative intelligence, he warns about the possible risks and pathologies and that “It is important therefore to understand, appreciate, and regulate instruments that, in the wrong hands, could lead to disturbing scenarios,” since, “Like every other product of human intelligence and skill, algorithms are not neutral”.

He therefore reiterates the need to take preventive action and to implement ethical regulation for which he renews his appeal to the international Community “to forestall harmful, discriminatory, and socially unjust effects of the use of systems of artificial intelligence and to combat their misuse for the purpose of reducing pluralism, polarizing public opinion or creating forms of groupthink”.