Pope Francis gives his support for AI, but it must be ‘ordered to the human person’
Pope Francis says AI – artificial intelligence – poses “a unique set of questions and challenges” for humanity.
In a message sent to the 2025 World Economic Forum (WEF) taking place in Davos, Switzerland, the pontiff said AI is intended to imitate the human intelligence that designed it.
“Unlike many other human inventions, AI is trained on the results of human creativity, which enables it to generate new artefacts with a skill level and speed that often rival or surpasses human capabilities, raising critical concerns about its impact on humanity’s role in the world,” Francis writes.
“Furthermore, the results that AI can produce are almost indistinguishable from those of human beings, raising questions about its effect on the growing crisis of truth in the public forum,” he says.
“Moreover, this technology is designed to learn and make certain choices autonomously, adapting to new situations and providing answers not foreseen by its programmers, thus raising fundamental questions about ethical responsibility, human safety, and the broader implications of these developments for society,” the pope added.
AI is the central focus of the WEF meeting, which is bringing together the world’s leaders in government, business, and finance.
The AI world has grown by leaps and bounds over the past few years, and is expected to grow exponentially over the next decade. From self-driving cars to producing articles, the AI revolution seems to be the biggest cultural revolution since the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s.
Speaking to the conference, Yann LeCun – the VP and chief AI scientist at Meta – said science might be able to give AI the blueprints of human common sense in five to six years.
“Every one of us would be running around with AI assistants within 10-15 years,” LeCun predicted. “It might live in our smart glasses or things like that, and they will be with us at all times. All of us would be like an executive in a large company with a staff of people following them, but they would be virtual people.”
“It’s going to take some more time to actually make this work. It’s always harder than we think. People have been sort of overly enthusiastic about the capabilities of the new techniques we just came up with and turned out to be disappointed,” he said.
LeCun added that so far, AI hasn’t really achieved much beyond book learning.
““We’re not even close to matching the understanding of the physical world of any animal, a cat or a dog. They have a much better understanding of the physical world than any system we have today,” he said.
However, Francis said the very use of the word “intelligence” in connection with AI is a misnomer, “since AI is not an artificial form of human intelligence but a product of it.”
“When used correctly, AI assists the human person in fulfilling his or her vocation, in freedom and responsibility,” admitted the pope.
“As with all other human activity and technological development, AI may not always be predictable from their inception and become part of efforts to achieve ‘greater justice, more extensive fraternity and a more humane order of social relations’, which are ‘more valuable than advances in the technical field’,” the pontiff writes.
Francis also warned there is a risk that AI will be used to advance the “technocratic paradigm”, which perceives all the world’s problems as solvable through technological means alone.
“Within this paradigm, human dignity and fraternity are frequently subordinated in the pursuit of efficiency, as though reality, goodness, and truth inherently emanate from technological and economic power. Yet human dignity must never be violated for the sake of efficiency. Technological developments that do not improve life for everyone, but instead create or worsen inequalities and conflicts, cannot be called true progress,” the pope explained.
“For this reason, AI should be placed at the service of a healthier, more human, more social and more integral development,” he said.
Francis said to “navigate the complexities of AI,” governments and businesses must exercise due diligence and vigilance.
“As with many technologies, the effects of the various uses of AI may not always be predictable from their inception. As the application of AI and its social impact become clearer over time, appropriate responses should be made at all levels of society, according to the principle of subsidiarity, with individual users, families, civil society, corporations, institutions, governments, and international organizations working at their proper levels to ensure that AI is directed to the good of all,” the pope said.
“Today, there are significant challenges and opportunities when AI is placed within a framework of relational intelligence, where everyone shares responsibility for the integral well-being of others,” Francis said.
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