New Vatican document examines potential and risks of AI

ANTIQUA ET NOVA:

Note on the Relationship Between
Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence

I. Intro­duc­tion

1. With wis­dom both ancient and new (cf. Mt. 13:52), we are called to reflect on the cur­rent chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties posed by sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly by the recent devel­op­ment of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence (AI). The Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion regards the gift of intel­li­gence as an essen­tial aspect of how humans are cre­at­ed “in the image of God” (Gen. 1:27). Start­ing from an inte­gral vision of the human per­son and the bib­li­cal call­ing to “till” and “keep” the earth (Gen. 2:15), the Church empha­sizes that this gift of intel­li­gence should be expressed through the respon­si­ble use of rea­son and tech­ni­cal abil­i­ties in the stew­ard­ship of the cre­at­ed world.

2. The Church encour­ages the advance­ment of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, the arts, and oth­er forms of human endeav­or, view­ing them as part of the “col­lab­o­ra­tion of man and woman with God in per­fect­ing the vis­i­ble creation.”[1] As Sir­ach affirms, God “gave skill to human beings, that he might be glo­ri­fied in his mar­velous works” (Sir. 38:6). Human abil­i­ties and cre­ativ­i­ty come from God and, when used right­ly, glo­ri­fy God by reflect­ing his wis­dom and good­ness. In light of this, when we ask our­selves what it means to “be human,” we can­not exclude a con­sid­er­a­tion of our sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal abilities.

3. It is with­in this per­spec­tive that the present Note address­es the anthro­po­log­i­cal and eth­i­cal chal­lenges raised by AI—issues that are par­tic­u­lar­ly sig­nif­i­cant, as one of the goals of this tech­nol­o­gy is to imi­tate the human intel­li­gence that designed it. For instance, unlike many oth­er human cre­ations, AI can be trained on the results of human cre­ativ­i­ty and then gen­er­ate new “arti­facts” with a lev­el of speed and skill that often rivals or sur­pass­es what humans can do, such as pro­duc­ing text or images indis­tin­guish­able from human com­po­si­tions. This rais­es crit­i­cal con­cerns about AI’s poten­tial role in the grow­ing cri­sis of truth in the pub­lic forum. More­over, this tech­nol­o­gy is designed to learn and make cer­tain choic­es autonomous­ly, adapt­ing to new sit­u­a­tions and pro­vid­ing solu­tions not fore­seen by its pro­gram­mers, and thus, it rais­es fun­da­men­tal ques­tions about eth­i­cal respon­si­bil­i­ty and human safe­ty, with broad­er impli­ca­tions for soci­ety as a whole. This new sit­u­a­tion has prompt­ed many peo­ple to reflect on what it means to be human and the role of human­i­ty in the world.

4. Tak­ing all this into account, there is broad con­sen­sus that AI marks a new and sig­nif­i­cant phase in humanity’s engage­ment with tech­nol­o­gy, plac­ing it at the heart of what Pope Fran­cis has described as an “epochal change.”[2] Its impact is felt glob­al­ly and in a wide range of areas, includ­ing inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships, edu­ca­tion, work, art, health­care, law, war­fare, and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. As AI advances rapid­ly toward even greater achieve­ments, it is crit­i­cal­ly impor­tant to con­sid­er its anthro­po­log­i­cal and eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions. This involves not only mit­i­gat­ing risks and pre­vent­ing harm but also ensur­ing that its appli­ca­tions are used to pro­mote human progress and the com­mon good.

5. To con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to the dis­cern­ment regard­ing AI, and in response to Pope Fran­cis’ call for a renewed “wis­dom of heart,”[3] the Church offers its expe­ri­ence through the anthro­po­log­i­cal and eth­i­cal reflec­tions con­tained in this Note. Com­mit­ted to its active role in the glob­al dia­logue on these issues, the Church invites those entrust­ed with trans­mit­ting the faith—including par­ents, teach­ers, pas­tors, and bishops—to ded­i­cate them­selves to this crit­i­cal sub­ject with care and atten­tion. While this doc­u­ment is intend­ed espe­cial­ly for them, it is also meant to be acces­si­ble to a broad­er audi­ence, par­tic­u­lar­ly those who share the con­vic­tion that sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal advances should be direct­ed toward serv­ing the human per­son and the com­mon good.[4]

6. To this end, the doc­u­ment begins by dis­tin­guish­ing between con­cepts of intel­li­gence in AI and in human intel­li­gence. It then explores the Chris­t­ian under­stand­ing of human intel­li­gence, pro­vid­ing a frame­work root­ed in the Church’s philo­soph­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal tra­di­tion. Final­ly, the doc­u­ment offers guide­lines to ensure that the devel­op­ment and use of AI uphold human dig­ni­ty and pro­mote the inte­gral devel­op­ment of the human per­son and society.

II. What is Arti­fi­cial Intelligence?

7. The con­cept of “intel­li­gence” in AI has evolved over time, draw­ing on a range of ideas from var­i­ous dis­ci­plines. While its ori­gins extend back cen­turies, a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone occurred in 1956 when the Amer­i­can com­put­er sci­en­tist John McCarthy orga­nized a sum­mer work­shop at Dart­mouth Uni­ver­si­ty to explore the prob­lem of “Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence,” which he defined as “that of mak­ing a machine behave in ways that would be called intel­li­gent if a human were so behaving.”[5] This work­shop launched a research pro­gram focused on design­ing machines capa­ble of per­form­ing tasks typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the human intel­lect and intel­li­gent behavior.

8. Since then, AI research has advanced rapid­ly, lead­ing to the devel­op­ment of com­plex sys­tems capa­ble of per­form­ing high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed tasks.[6] These so-called “nar­row AI” sys­tems are typ­i­cal­ly designed to han­dle spe­cif­ic and lim­it­ed func­tions, such as trans­lat­ing lan­guages, pre­dict­ing the tra­jec­to­ry of a storm, clas­si­fy­ing images, answer­ing ques­tions, or gen­er­at­ing visu­al con­tent at the user’s request. While the def­i­n­i­tion of “intel­li­gence” in AI research varies, most con­tem­po­rary AI systems—particularly those using machine learning—rely on sta­tis­ti­cal infer­ence rather than log­i­cal deduc­tion. By ana­lyz­ing large datasets to iden­ti­fy pat­terns, AI can “predict”[7] out­comes and pro­pose new approach­es, mim­ic­k­ing some cog­ni­tive process­es typ­i­cal of human prob­lem-solv­ing. Such achieve­ments have been made pos­si­ble through advances in com­put­ing tech­nol­o­gy (includ­ing neur­al net­works, unsu­per­vised machine learn­ing, and evo­lu­tion­ary algo­rithms) as well as hard­ware inno­va­tions (such as spe­cial­ized proces­sors). Togeth­er, these tech­nolo­gies enable AI sys­tems to respond to var­i­ous forms of human input, adapt to new sit­u­a­tions, and even sug­gest nov­el solu­tions not antic­i­pat­ed by their orig­i­nal programmers.[8]

9. Due to these rapid advance­ments, many tasks once man­aged exclu­sive­ly by humans are now entrust­ed to AI. These sys­tems can aug­ment or even super­sede what humans are able to do in many fields, par­tic­u­lar­ly in spe­cial­ized areas such as data analy­sis, image recog­ni­tion, and med­ical diag­no­sis. While each “nar­row AI” appli­ca­tion is designed for a spe­cif­ic task, many researchers aspire to devel­op what is known as “Arti­fi­cial Gen­er­al Intel­li­gence” (AGI)—a sin­gle sys­tem capa­ble of oper­at­ing across all cog­ni­tive domains and per­form­ing any task with­in the scope of human intel­li­gence. Some even argue that AGI could one day achieve the state of “super­in­tel­li­gence,” sur­pass­ing human intel­lec­tu­al capac­i­ties, or con­tribute to “super-longevi­ty” through advances in biotech­nol­o­gy. Oth­ers, how­ev­er, fear that these pos­si­bil­i­ties, even if hypo­thet­i­cal, could one day eclipse the human per­son, while still oth­ers wel­come this poten­tial transformation.[9]

10. Under­ly­ing this and many oth­er per­spec­tives on the sub­ject is the implic­it assump­tion that the term “intel­li­gence” can be used in the same way to refer to both human intel­li­gence and AI. Yet, this does not cap­ture the full scope of the con­cept. In the case of humans, intel­li­gence is a fac­ul­ty that per­tains to the per­son in his or her entire­ty, where­as in the con­text of AI, “intel­li­gence” is under­stood func­tion­al­ly, often with the pre­sump­tion that the activ­i­ties char­ac­ter­is­tic of the human mind can be bro­ken down into dig­i­tized steps that machines can replicate.[10]

11. This func­tion­al per­spec­tive is exem­pli­fied by the “Tur­ing Test,” which con­sid­ers a machine “intel­li­gent” if a per­son can­not dis­tin­guish its behav­ior from that of a human.[11] How­ev­er, in this con­text, the term “behav­ior” refers only to the per­for­mance of spe­cif­ic intel­lec­tu­al tasks; it does not account for the full breadth of human expe­ri­ence, which includes abstrac­tion, emo­tions, cre­ativ­i­ty, and the aes­thet­ic, moral, and reli­gious sen­si­bil­i­ties. Nor does it encom­pass the full range of expres­sions char­ac­ter­is­tic of the human mind. Instead, in the case of AI, the “intel­li­gence” of a sys­tem is eval­u­at­ed method­olog­i­cal­ly, but also reduc­tive­ly, based on its abil­i­ty to pro­duce appro­pri­ate responses—in this case, those asso­ci­at­ed with the human intellect—regardless of how those respons­es are generated.

12. AI’s advanced fea­tures give it sophis­ti­cat­ed abil­i­ties to per­form tasks, but not the abil­i­ty to think.[12] This dis­tinc­tion is cru­cial­ly impor­tant, as the way “intel­li­gence” is defined inevitably shapes how we under­stand the rela­tion­ship between human thought and this technology.[13] To appre­ci­ate this, one must recall the rich­ness of the philo­soph­i­cal tra­di­tion and Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy, which offer a deep­er and more com­pre­hen­sive under­stand­ing of intelligence—an under­stand­ing that is cen­tral to the Church’s teach­ing on the nature, dig­ni­ty, and voca­tion of the human person.[14]

III. Intel­li­gence in the Philo­soph­i­cal and The­o­log­i­cal Tradition

Ratio­nal­i­ty

13. From the dawn of human self-reflec­tion, the mind has played a cen­tral role in under­stand­ing what it means to be “human.” Aris­to­tle observed that “all peo­ple by nature desire to know.”[15] This knowl­edge, with its capac­i­ty for abstrac­tion that grasps the nature and mean­ing of things, sets humans apart from the ani­mal world.[16] As philoso­phers, the­olo­gians, and psy­chol­o­gists have exam­ined the exact nature of this intel­lec­tu­al fac­ul­ty, they have also explored how humans under­stand the world and their unique place with­in it. Through this explo­ration, the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion has come to under­stand the human per­son as a being con­sist­ing of both body and soul—deeply con­nect­ed to this world and yet tran­scend­ing it.[17]

14. In the clas­si­cal tra­di­tion, the con­cept of intel­li­gence is often under­stood through the com­ple­men­tary con­cepts of “rea­son” (ratio) and “intel­lect” (intel­lec­tus). These are not sep­a­rate fac­ul­ties but, as Saint Thomas Aquinas explains, they are two modes in which the same intel­li­gence oper­ates: “The term intel­lect is inferred from the inward grasp of the truth, while the name rea­son is tak­en from the inquis­i­tive and dis­cur­sive process.”[18] This con­cise descrip­tion high­lights the two fun­da­men­tal and com­ple­men­tary dimen­sions of human intel­li­gence. Intel­lec­tus refers to the intu­itive grasp of the truth—that is, appre­hend­ing it with the “eyes” of the mind—which pre­cedes and grounds argu­men­ta­tion itself. Ratio per­tains to rea­son­ing prop­er: the dis­cur­sive, ana­lyt­i­cal process that leads to judg­ment. Togeth­er, intel­lect and rea­son form the two facets of the act of intel­ligere, “the prop­er oper­a­tion of the human being as such.”[19]

15. Describ­ing the human per­son as a “ratio­nal” being does not reduce the per­son to a spe­cif­ic mode of thought; rather, it rec­og­nizes that the abil­i­ty for intel­lec­tu­al under­stand­ing shapes and per­me­ates all aspects of human activity.[20] Whether exer­cised well or poor­ly, this capac­i­ty is an intrin­sic aspect of human nature. In this sense, the “term ‘ratio­nal’ encom­pass­es all the capac­i­ties of the human per­son,” includ­ing those relat­ed to “know­ing and under­stand­ing, as well as those of will­ing, lov­ing, choos­ing, and desir­ing; it also includes all cor­po­re­al func­tions close­ly relat­ed to these abilities.”[21] This com­pre­hen­sive per­spec­tive under­scores how, in the human per­son, cre­at­ed in the “image of God,” rea­son is inte­grat­ed in a way that ele­vates, shapes, and trans­forms both the person’s will and actions.[22]

Embod­i­ment

16. Chris­t­ian thought con­sid­ers the intel­lec­tu­al fac­ul­ties of the human per­son with­in the frame­work of an inte­gral anthro­pol­o­gy that views the human being as essen­tial­ly embod­ied. In the human per­son, spir­it and mat­ter “are not two natures unit­ed, but rather their union forms a sin­gle nature.”[23] In oth­er words, the soul is not mere­ly the imma­te­r­i­al “part” of the per­son con­tained with­in the body, nor is the body an out­er shell hous­ing an intan­gi­ble “core.” Rather, the entire human per­son is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly both mate­r­i­al and spir­i­tu­al. This under­stand­ing reflects the teach­ing of Sacred Scrip­ture, which views the human per­son as a being who lives out rela­tion­ships with God and oth­ers (and thus, an authen­ti­cal­ly spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion) with­in and through this embod­ied existence.[24] The pro­found mean­ing of this con­di­tion is fur­ther illu­mi­nat­ed by the mys­tery of the Incar­na­tion, through which God him­self took on our flesh and “raised it up to a sub­lime dignity.”[25]

17. Although deeply root­ed in bod­i­ly exis­tence, the human per­son tran­scends the mate­r­i­al world through the soul, which is “almost on the hori­zon of eter­ni­ty and time.”[26] The intel­lec­t’s capac­i­ty for tran­scen­dence and the self-pos­sessed free­dom of the will belong to the soul, by which the human per­son “shares in the light of the divine mind.”[27] Nev­er­the­less, the human spir­it does not exer­cise its nor­mal mode of knowl­edge with­out the body.[28] In this way, the intel­lec­tu­al fac­ul­ties of the human per­son are an inte­gral part of an anthro­pol­o­gy that rec­og­nizes that the human per­son is a “uni­ty of body and soul.”[29] Fur­ther aspects of this under­stand­ing will be devel­oped in what follows.

Rela­tion­al­i­ty

18. Human beings are “ordered by their very nature to inter­per­son­al communion,”[30] pos­sess­ing the capac­i­ty to know one anoth­er, to give them­selves in love, and to enter into com­mu­nion with oth­ers. Accord­ing­ly, human intel­li­gence is not an iso­lat­ed fac­ul­ty but is exer­cised in rela­tion­ships, find­ing its fullest expres­sion in dia­logue, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and sol­i­dar­i­ty. We learn with oth­ers, and we learn through others.

19. The rela­tion­al ori­en­ta­tion of the human per­son is ulti­mate­ly ground­ed in the eter­nal self-giv­ing of the Tri­une God, whose love is revealed in cre­ation and redemption.[31] The human per­son is “called to share, by knowl­edge and love, in God’s own life.”[32]

20. This voca­tion to com­mu­nion with God is nec­es­sar­i­ly tied to the call to com­mu­nion with oth­ers. Love of God can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from love for one’s neigh­bor (cf. 1 Jn. 4:20; Mt. 22:37–39). By the grace of shar­ing God’s life, Chris­tians are also called to imi­tate Christ’s out­pour­ing gift (cf. 2 Cor. 9:8–11; Eph. 5:1–2) by fol­low­ing his com­mand to “love one anoth­er, as I have loved you” (Jn. 13:34).[33] Love and ser­vice, echo­ing the divine life of self-giv­ing, tran­scend self-inter­est to respond more ful­ly to the human voca­tion (cf. 1 Jn. 2:9). Even more sub­lime than know­ing many things is the com­mit­ment to care for one anoth­er, for if “I under­stand all mys­ter­ies and all knowl­edge […] but do not have love, I am noth­ing” (1 Cor. 13:2).

Rela­tion­ship with the Truth

21. Human intel­li­gence is ulti­mate­ly “God’s gift fash­ioned for the assim­i­la­tion of truth.”[34] In the dual sense of intel­lec­tus-ratio, it enables the per­son to explore real­i­ties that sur­pass mere sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence or util­i­ty, since “the desire for truth is part of human nature itself. It is an innate prop­er­ty of human rea­son to ask why things are as they are.”[35] Mov­ing beyond the lim­its of empir­i­cal data, human intel­li­gence can “with gen­uine cer­ti­tude attain to real­i­ty itself as knowable.”[36] While real­i­ty remains only par­tial­ly known, the desire for truth “spurs rea­son always to go fur­ther; indeed, it is as if rea­son were over­whelmed to see that it can always go beyond what it has already achieved.”[37] Although Truth in itself tran­scends the bound­aries of human intel­li­gence, it irre­sistibly attracts it.[38] Drawn by this attrac­tion, the human per­son is led to seek “truths of a high­er order.”[39]

22. This innate dri­ve toward the pur­suit of truth is espe­cial­ly evi­dent in the dis­tinct­ly human capac­i­ties for seman­tic under­stand­ing and creativity,[40] through which this search unfolds in a “man­ner that is appro­pri­ate to the social nature and dig­ni­ty of the human person.”[41] Like­wise, a stead­fast ori­en­ta­tion to the truth is essen­tial for char­i­ty to be both authen­tic and universal.[42]

23. The search for truth finds its high­est expres­sion in open­ness to real­i­ties that tran­scend the phys­i­cal and cre­at­ed world. In God, all truths attain their ulti­mate and orig­i­nal meaning.[43] Entrust­ing one­self to God is a “fun­da­men­tal deci­sion that engages the whole person.”[44] In this way, the human per­son becomes ful­ly what he or she is called to be: “the intel­lect and the will dis­play their spir­i­tu­al nature,” enabling the per­son “to act in a way that real­izes per­son­al free­dom to the full.”[45]

Stew­ard­ship of the World

24. The Chris­t­ian faith under­stands cre­ation as the free act of the Tri­une God, who, as Saint Bonaven­ture of Bag­nore­gio explains, cre­ates “not to increase his glo­ry, but to show it forth and to com­mu­ni­cate it.”[46] Since God cre­ates accord­ing to his Wis­dom (cf. Wis. 9:9; Jer. 10:12), cre­ation is imbued with an intrin­sic order that reflects God’s plan (cf. Gen. 1; Dan. 2:21–22; Is. 45:18; Ps. 74:12–17; 104),[47] with­in which God has called human beings to assume a unique role: to cul­ti­vate and care for the world.[48]

25. Shaped by the Divine Crafts­man, humans live out their iden­ti­ty as beings made in ima­go Dei by “keep­ing” and “till­ing” (cf. Gen. 2:15) creation—using their intel­li­gence and skills to care for and devel­op cre­ation in accord with God’s plan.[49] In this, human intel­li­gence reflects the Divine Intel­li­gence that cre­at­ed all things (cf. Gen. 1–2; Jn. 1),[50] con­tin­u­ous­ly sus­tains them, and guides them to their ulti­mate pur­pose in him.[51] More­over, human beings are called to devel­op their abil­i­ties in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, for through them, God is glo­ri­fied (cf. Sir. 38:6). Thus, in a prop­er rela­tion­ship with cre­ation, humans, on the one hand, use their intel­li­gence and skill to coop­er­ate with God in guid­ing cre­ation toward the pur­pose to which he has called it.[52] On the oth­er hand, cre­ation itself, as Saint Bonaven­ture observes, helps the human mind to “ascend grad­u­al­ly to the supreme Prin­ci­ple, who is God.”[53]

An Inte­gral Under­stand­ing of Human Intelligence

26. In this con­text, human intel­li­gence becomes more clear­ly under­stood as a fac­ul­ty that forms an inte­gral part of how the whole per­son engages with real­i­ty. Authen­tic engage­ment requires embrac­ing the full scope of one’s being: spir­i­tu­al, cog­ni­tive, embod­ied, and relational.

27. This engage­ment with real­i­ty unfolds in var­i­ous ways, as each per­son, in his or her mul­ti­fac­eted individuality[54], seeks to under­stand the world, relate to oth­ers, solve prob­lems, express cre­ativ­i­ty, and pur­sue inte­gral well-being through the har­mo­nious inter­play of the var­i­ous dimen­sions of the person’s intelligence.[55] This involves log­i­cal and lin­guis­tic abil­i­ties but can also encom­pass oth­er modes of inter­act­ing with real­i­ty. Con­sid­er the work of an arti­san, who “must know how to dis­cern, in inert mat­ter, a par­tic­u­lar form that oth­ers can­not recognize”[56] and bring it forth through insight and prac­ti­cal skill. Indige­nous peo­ples who live close to the earth often pos­sess a pro­found sense of nature and its cycles.[57] Sim­i­lar­ly, a friend who knows the right word to say or a per­son adept at man­ag­ing human rela­tion­ships exem­pli­fies an intel­li­gence that is “the fruit of self-exam­i­na­tion, dia­logue and gen­er­ous encounter between persons.”[58] As Pope Fran­cis observes, “in this age of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence, we can­not for­get that poet­ry and love are nec­es­sary to save our humanity.”[59]

28. At the heart of the Chris­t­ian under­stand­ing of intel­li­gence is the inte­gra­tion of truth into the moral and spir­i­tu­al life of the per­son, guid­ing his or her actions in light of God’s good­ness and truth. Accord­ing to God’s plan, intel­li­gence, in its fullest sense, also includes the abil­i­ty to savor what is true, good, and beau­ti­ful. As the twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry French poet Paul Claudel expressed, “intel­li­gence is noth­ing with­out delight.”[60] Sim­i­lar­ly, Dante, upon reach­ing the high­est heav­en in Par­adiso, tes­ti­fies that the cul­mi­na­tion of this intel­lec­tu­al delight is found in the “light intel­lec­tu­al full of love, love of true good filled with joy, joy which tran­scends every sweetness.”[61]

29. A prop­er under­stand­ing of human intel­li­gence, there­fore, can­not be reduced to the mere acqui­si­tion of facts or the abil­i­ty to per­form spe­cif­ic tasks. Instead, it involves the person’s open­ness to the ulti­mate ques­tions of life and reflects an ori­en­ta­tion toward the True and the Good. [62] As an expres­sion of the divine image with­in the per­son, human intel­li­gence has the abil­i­ty to access the total­i­ty of being, con­tem­plat­ing exis­tence in its full­ness, which goes beyond what is mea­sur­able, and grasp­ing the mean­ing of what has been under­stood. For believ­ers, this capac­i­ty includes, in a par­tic­u­lar way, the abil­i­ty to grow in the knowl­edge of the mys­ter­ies of God by using rea­son to engage ever more pro­found­ly with revealed truths (intel­lec­tus fidei).[63] True intel­li­gence is shaped by divine love, which “is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spir­it” (Rom. 5:5). From this, it fol­lows that human intel­li­gence pos­sess­es an essen­tial con­tem­pla­tive dimen­sion, an unselfish open­ness to the True, the Good, and the Beau­ti­ful, beyond any util­i­tar­i­an purpose.

The Lim­its of AI

30. In light of the fore­go­ing dis­cus­sion, the dif­fer­ences between human intel­li­gence and cur­rent AI sys­tems become evi­dent. While AI is an extra­or­di­nary tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ment capa­ble of imi­tat­ing cer­tain out­puts asso­ci­at­ed with human intel­li­gence, it oper­ates by per­form­ing tasks, achiev­ing goals, or mak­ing deci­sions based on quan­ti­ta­tive data and com­pu­ta­tion­al log­ic. For exam­ple, with its ana­lyt­i­cal pow­er, AI excels at inte­grat­ing data from a vari­ety of fields, mod­el­ing com­plex sys­tems, and fos­ter­ing inter­dis­ci­pli­nary con­nec­tions. In this way, it can help experts col­lab­o­rate in solv­ing com­plex prob­lems that “can­not be dealt with from a sin­gle per­spec­tive or from a sin­gle set of interests.”[64]

31. How­ev­er, even as AI process­es and sim­u­lates cer­tain expres­sions of intel­li­gence, it remains fun­da­men­tal­ly con­fined to a log­i­cal-math­e­mat­i­cal frame­work, which impos­es inher­ent lim­i­ta­tions. Human intel­li­gence, in con­trast, devel­ops organ­i­cal­ly through­out the person’s phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal growth, shaped by a myr­i­ad of lived expe­ri­ences in the flesh. Although advanced AI sys­tems can “learn” through process­es such as machine learn­ing, this sort of train­ing is fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent from the devel­op­men­tal growth of human intel­li­gence, which is shaped by embod­ied expe­ri­ences, includ­ing sen­so­ry input, emo­tion­al respons­es, social inter­ac­tions, and the unique con­text of each moment. These ele­ments shape and form indi­vid­u­als with­in their per­son­al his­to­ry. In con­trast, AI, lack­ing a phys­i­cal body, relies on com­pu­ta­tion­al rea­son­ing and learn­ing based on vast datasets that include record­ed human expe­ri­ences and knowledge.

32. Con­se­quent­ly, although AI can sim­u­late aspects of human rea­son­ing and per­form spe­cif­ic tasks with incred­i­ble speed and effi­cien­cy, its com­pu­ta­tion­al abil­i­ties rep­re­sent only a frac­tion of the broad­er capac­i­ties of the human mind. For instance, AI can­not cur­rent­ly repli­cate moral dis­cern­ment or the abil­i­ty to estab­lish authen­tic rela­tion­ships. More­over, human intel­li­gence is sit­u­at­ed with­in a per­son­al­ly lived his­to­ry of intel­lec­tu­al and moral for­ma­tion that fun­da­men­tal­ly shapes the individual’s per­spec­tive, encom­pass­ing the phys­i­cal, emo­tion­al, social, moral, and spir­i­tu­al dimen­sions of life. Since AI can­not offer this full­ness of under­stand­ing, approach­es that rely sole­ly on this tech­nol­o­gy or treat it as the pri­ma­ry means of inter­pret­ing the world can lead to “a loss of appre­ci­a­tion for the whole, for the rela­tion­ships between things, and for the broad­er horizon.”[65]

33. Human intel­li­gence is not pri­mar­i­ly about com­plet­ing func­tion­al tasks but about under­stand­ing and active­ly engag­ing with real­i­ty in all its dimen­sions; it is also capa­ble of sur­pris­ing insights. Since AI lacks the rich­ness of cor­po­re­al­i­ty, rela­tion­al­i­ty, and the open­ness of the human heart to truth and good­ness, its capacities—though seem­ing­ly limitless—are incom­pa­ra­ble with the human abil­i­ty to grasp real­i­ty. So much can be learned from an ill­ness, an embrace of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, and even a sim­ple sun­set; indeed, many expe­ri­ences we have as humans open new hori­zons and offer the pos­si­bil­i­ty of attain­ing new wis­dom. No device, work­ing sole­ly with data, can mea­sure up to these and count­less oth­er expe­ri­ences present in our lives.

34. Draw­ing an over­ly close equiv­a­lence between human intel­li­gence and AI risks suc­cumb­ing to a func­tion­al­ist per­spec­tive, where peo­ple are val­ued based on the work they can per­form. How­ev­er, a person’s worth does not depend on pos­sess­ing spe­cif­ic skills, cog­ni­tive and tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments, or indi­vid­ual suc­cess, but on the person’s inher­ent dig­ni­ty, ground­ed in being cre­at­ed in the image of God.[66] This dig­ni­ty remains intact in all cir­cum­stances, includ­ing for those unable to exer­cise their abil­i­ties, whether it be an unborn child, an uncon­scious per­son, or an old­er per­son who is suffering.[67] It also under­pins the tra­di­tion of human rights (and, in par­tic­u­lar, what are now called “neu­ro-rights”), which rep­re­sent “an impor­tant point of con­ver­gence in the search for com­mon ground”[68] and can, thus, serve as a fun­da­men­tal eth­i­cal guide in dis­cus­sions on the respon­si­ble devel­op­ment and use of AI.

35. Con­sid­er­ing all these points, as Pope Fran­cis observes, “the very use of the word ‘intel­li­gence’” in con­nec­tion with AI “can prove misleading”[69] and risks over­look­ing what is most pre­cious in the human per­son. In light of this, AI should not be seen as an arti­fi­cial form of human intel­li­gence but as a prod­uct of it.[70]

IV. The Role of Ethics in Guid­ing the Devel­op­ment and Use of AI

36. Giv­en these con­sid­er­a­tions, one can ask how AI can be under­stood with­in God’s plan. To answer this, it is impor­tant to recall that tech­no-sci­en­tif­ic activ­i­ty is not neu­tral in char­ac­ter but is a human endeav­or that engages the human­is­tic and cul­tur­al dimen­sions of human creativity.[71]

37. Seen as a fruit of the poten­tial inscribed with­in human intelligence,[72] sci­en­tif­ic inquiry and the devel­op­ment of tech­ni­cal skills are part of the “col­lab­o­ra­tion of man and woman with God in per­fect­ing the vis­i­ble creation.”[73] At the same time, all sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal achieve­ments are, ulti­mate­ly, gifts from God.[74] There­fore, human beings must always use their abil­i­ties in view of the high­er pur­pose for which God has grant­ed them.[75]

38. We can grate­ful­ly acknowl­edge how tech­nol­o­gy has “reme­died count­less evils which used to harm and lim­it human beings,”[76] a fact for which we should rejoice. Nev­er­the­less, not all tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments in them­selves rep­re­sent gen­uine human progress.[77] The Church is par­tic­u­lar­ly opposed to those appli­ca­tions that threat­en the sanc­ti­ty of life or the dig­ni­ty of the human person.[78] Like any human endeav­or, tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment must be direct­ed to serve the human per­son and con­tribute to the pur­suit of “greater jus­tice, more exten­sive fra­ter­ni­ty, and a more humane order of social rela­tions,” which are “more valu­able than advances in the tech­ni­cal field.”[79] Con­cerns about the eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ment are shared not only with­in the Church but also among many sci­en­tists, tech­nol­o­gists, and pro­fes­sion­al asso­ci­a­tions, who increas­ing­ly call for eth­i­cal reflec­tion to guide this devel­op­ment in a respon­si­ble way.

39. To address these chal­lenges, it is essen­tial to empha­size the impor­tance of moral respon­si­bil­i­ty ground­ed in the dig­ni­ty and voca­tion of the human per­son. This guid­ing prin­ci­ple also applies to ques­tions con­cern­ing AI. In this con­text, the eth­i­cal dimen­sion takes on pri­ma­ry impor­tance because it is peo­ple who design sys­tems and deter­mine the pur­pos­es for which they are used.[80] Between a machine and a human being, only the lat­ter is tru­ly a moral agent—a sub­ject of moral respon­si­bil­i­ty who exer­cis­es free­dom in his or her deci­sions and accepts their consequences.[81] It is not the machine but the human who is in rela­tion­ship with truth and good­ness, guid­ed by a moral con­science that calls the per­son “to love and to do what is good and to avoid evil,”[82] bear­ing wit­ness to “the author­i­ty of truth in ref­er­ence to the supreme Good to which the human per­son is drawn.”[83] Like­wise, between a machine and a human, only the human can be suf­fi­cient­ly self-aware to the point of lis­ten­ing and fol­low­ing the voice of con­science, dis­cern­ing with pru­dence, and seek­ing the good that is pos­si­ble in every situation.[84] In fact, all of this also belongs to the person’s exer­cise of intelligence.

40. Like any prod­uct of human cre­ativ­i­ty, AI can be direct­ed toward pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive ends.[85] When used in ways that respect human dig­ni­ty and pro­mote the well-being of indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties, it can con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to the human voca­tion. Yet, as in all areas where humans are called to make deci­sions, the shad­ow of evil also looms here. Where human free­dom allows for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of choos­ing what is wrong, the moral eval­u­a­tion of this tech­nol­o­gy will need to take into account how it is direct­ed and used.

41. At the same time, it is not only the ends that are eth­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant but also the means employed to achieve them. Addi­tion­al­ly, the over­all vision and under­stand­ing of the human per­son embed­ded with­in these sys­tems are impor­tant to con­sid­er as well. Tech­no­log­i­cal prod­ucts reflect the world­view of their devel­op­ers, own­ers, users, and regulators,[86] and have the pow­er to “shape the world and engage con­sciences on the lev­el of values.”[87] On a soci­etal lev­el, some tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments could also rein­force rela­tion­ships and pow­er dynam­ics that are incon­sis­tent with a prop­er under­stand­ing of the human per­son and society.

42. There­fore, the ends and the means used in a giv­en appli­ca­tion of AI, as well as the over­all vision it incor­po­rates, must all be eval­u­at­ed to ensure they respect human dig­ni­ty and pro­mote the com­mon good.[88] As Pope Fran­cis has stat­ed, “the intrin­sic dig­ni­ty of every man and every woman” must be “the key cri­te­ri­on in eval­u­at­ing emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies; these will prove eth­i­cal­ly sound to the extent that they help respect that dig­ni­ty and increase its expres­sion at every lev­el of human life,”[89] includ­ing in the social and eco­nom­ic spheres. In this sense, human intel­li­gence plays a cru­cial role not only in design­ing and pro­duc­ing tech­nol­o­gy but also in direct­ing its use in line with the authen­tic good of the human person.[90] The respon­si­bil­i­ty for man­ag­ing this wise­ly per­tains to every lev­el of soci­ety, guid­ed by the prin­ci­ple of sub­sidiar­i­ty and oth­er prin­ci­ples of Catholic Social Teaching.

Help­ing Human Free­dom and Decision-Making

43. The com­mit­ment to ensur­ing that AI always sup­ports and pro­motes the supreme val­ue of the dig­ni­ty of every human being and the full­ness of the human voca­tion serves as a cri­te­ri­on of dis­cern­ment for devel­op­ers, own­ers, oper­a­tors, and reg­u­la­tors of AI, as well as to its users. It remains valid for every appli­ca­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy at every lev­el of its use.

44. An eval­u­a­tion of the impli­ca­tions of this guid­ing prin­ci­ple could begin by con­sid­er­ing the impor­tance of moral respon­si­bil­i­ty. Since full moral causal­i­ty belongs only to per­son­al agents, not arti­fi­cial ones, it is cru­cial to be able to iden­ti­fy and define who bears respon­si­bil­i­ty for the process­es involved in AI, par­tic­u­lar­ly those capa­ble of learn­ing, cor­rec­tion, and repro­gram­ming. While bot­tom-up approach­es and very deep neur­al net­works enable AI to solve com­plex prob­lems, they make it dif­fi­cult to under­stand the process­es that lead to the solu­tions they adopt­ed. This com­pli­cates account­abil­i­ty since if an AI appli­ca­tion pro­duces unde­sired out­comes, deter­min­ing who is respon­si­ble becomes dif­fi­cult. To address this prob­lem, atten­tion needs to be giv­en to the nature of account­abil­i­ty process­es in com­plex, high­ly auto­mat­ed set­tings, where results may only become evi­dent in the medi­um to long term. For this, it is impor­tant that ulti­mate respon­si­bil­i­ty for deci­sions made using AI rests with the human deci­sion-mak­ers and that there is account­abil­i­ty for the use of AI at each stage of the deci­sion-mak­ing process.[91]

45. In addi­tion to deter­min­ing who is respon­si­ble, it is essen­tial to iden­ti­fy the objec­tives giv­en to AI sys­tems. Although these sys­tems may use unsu­per­vised autonomous learn­ing mech­a­nisms and some­times fol­low paths that humans can­not recon­struct, they ulti­mate­ly pur­sue goals that humans have assigned to them and are gov­erned by process­es estab­lished by their design­ers and pro­gram­mers. Yet, this presents a chal­lenge because, as AI mod­els become increas­ing­ly capa­ble of inde­pen­dent learn­ing, the abil­i­ty to main­tain con­trol over them to ensure that such appli­ca­tions serve human pur­pos­es may effec­tive­ly dimin­ish. This rais­es the crit­i­cal ques­tion of how to ensure that AI sys­tems are ordered for the good of peo­ple and not against them.

46. While respon­si­bil­i­ty for the eth­i­cal use of AI sys­tems starts with those who devel­op, pro­duce, man­age, and over­see such sys­tems, it is also shared by those who use them. As Pope Fran­cis not­ed, the machine “makes a tech­ni­cal choice among sev­er­al pos­si­bil­i­ties based either on well-defined cri­te­ria or on sta­tis­ti­cal infer­ences. Human beings, how­ev­er, not only choose, but in their hearts are capa­ble of deciding.”[92] Those who use AI to accom­plish a task and fol­low its results cre­ate a con­text in which they are ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble for the pow­er they have del­e­gat­ed. There­fore, inso­far as AI can assist humans in mak­ing deci­sions, the algo­rithms that gov­ern it should be trust­wor­thy, secure, robust enough to han­dle incon­sis­ten­cies, and trans­par­ent in their oper­a­tion to mit­i­gate bias­es and unin­tend­ed side effects.[93] Reg­u­la­to­ry frame­works should ensure that all legal enti­ties remain account­able for the use of AI and all its con­se­quences, with appro­pri­ate safe­guards for trans­paren­cy, pri­va­cy, and accountability.[94] More­over, those using AI should be care­ful not to become over­ly depen­dent on it for their deci­sion-mak­ing, a trend that increas­es con­tem­po­rary society’s already high reliance on technology.

47. The Church’s moral and social teach­ing pro­vides resources to help ensure that AI is used in a way that pre­serves human agency. Con­sid­er­a­tions about jus­tice, for exam­ple, should also address issues such as fos­ter­ing just social dynam­ics, uphold­ing inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty, and pro­mot­ing peace. By exer­cis­ing pru­dence, indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties can dis­cern ways to use AI to ben­e­fit human­i­ty while avoid­ing appli­ca­tions that could degrade human dig­ni­ty or harm the envi­ron­ment. In this con­text, the con­cept of respon­si­bil­i­ty should be under­stood not only in its most lim­it­ed sense but as a “respon­si­bil­i­ty for the care for oth­ers, which is more than sim­ply account­ing for results achieved.”[95]

48. There­fore, AI, like any tech­nol­o­gy, can be part of a con­scious and respon­si­ble answer to humanity’s voca­tion to the good. How­ev­er, as pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cussed, AI must be direct­ed by human intel­li­gence to align with this voca­tion, ensur­ing it respects the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son. Rec­og­niz­ing this “exalt­ed dig­ni­ty,” the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil affirmed that “the social order and its devel­op­ment must invari­ably work to the ben­e­fit of the human person.”[96] In light of this, the use of AI, as Pope Fran­cis said, must be “accom­pa­nied by an eth­ic inspired by a vision of the com­mon good, an eth­ic of free­dom, respon­si­bil­i­ty, and fra­ter­ni­ty, capa­ble of fos­ter­ing the full devel­op­ment of peo­ple in rela­tion to oth­ers and to the whole of creation.”[97]

V. Spe­cif­ic Questions

49. With­in this gen­er­al per­spec­tive, some obser­va­tions fol­low below to illus­trate how the pre­ced­ing argu­ments can help pro­vide an eth­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion in prac­ti­cal sit­u­a­tions, in line with the “wis­dom of heart” that Pope Fran­cis has proposed.[98] While not exhaus­tive, this dis­cus­sion is offered in ser­vice of the dia­logue that con­sid­ers how AI can be used to uphold the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son and pro­mote the com­mon good.[99]

AI and Society

50. As Pope Fran­cis observed, “the inher­ent dig­ni­ty of each human being and the fra­ter­ni­ty that binds us togeth­er as mem­bers of the one human fam­i­ly must under­gird the devel­op­ment of new tech­nolo­gies and serve as indis­putable cri­te­ria for eval­u­at­ing them before they are employed.”[100]

51. Viewed through this lens, AI could “intro­duce impor­tant inno­va­tions in agri­cul­ture, edu­ca­tion and cul­ture, an improved lev­el of life for entire nations and peo­ples, and the growth of human fra­ter­ni­ty and social friend­ship,” and thus be “used to pro­mote inte­gral human development.”[101] AI could also help orga­ni­za­tions iden­ti­fy those in need and counter dis­crim­i­na­tion and mar­gin­al­iza­tion. These and oth­er sim­i­lar appli­ca­tions of this tech­nol­o­gy could con­tribute to human devel­op­ment and the com­mon good.[102]

52. How­ev­er, while AI holds many pos­si­bil­i­ties for pro­mot­ing the good, it can also hin­der or even counter human devel­op­ment and the com­mon good. Pope Fran­cis has not­ed that “evi­dence to date sug­gests that dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies have increased inequal­i­ty in our world. Not just dif­fer­ences in mate­r­i­al wealth, which are also sig­nif­i­cant, but also dif­fer­ences in access to polit­i­cal and social influence.”[103] In this sense, AI could be used to per­pet­u­ate mar­gin­al­iza­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion, cre­ate new forms of pover­ty, widen the “dig­i­tal divide,” and wors­en exist­ing social inequalities.[104]

53. More­over, the con­cen­tra­tion of the pow­er over main­stream AI appli­ca­tions in the hands of a few pow­er­ful com­pa­nies rais­es sig­nif­i­cant eth­i­cal con­cerns. Exac­er­bat­ing this prob­lem is the inher­ent nature of AI sys­tems, where no sin­gle indi­vid­ual can exer­cise com­plete over­sight over the vast and com­plex datasets used for com­pu­ta­tion. This lack of well-defined account­abil­i­ty cre­ates the risk that AI could be manip­u­lat­ed for per­son­al or cor­po­rate gain or to direct pub­lic opin­ion for the ben­e­fit of a spe­cif­ic indus­try. Such enti­ties, moti­vat­ed by their own inter­ests, pos­sess the capac­i­ty to exer­cise “forms of con­trol as sub­tle as they are inva­sive, cre­at­ing mech­a­nisms for the manip­u­la­tion of con­sciences and of the demo­c­ra­t­ic process.”[105]

54. Fur­ther­more, there is the risk of AI being used to pro­mote what Pope Fran­cis has called the “tech­no­crat­ic par­a­digm,” which per­ceives all the world’s prob­lems as solv­able through tech­no­log­i­cal means alone.[106] In this par­a­digm, human dig­ni­ty and fra­ter­ni­ty are often set aside in the name of effi­cien­cy, “as if real­i­ty, good­ness, and truth auto­mat­i­cal­ly flow from tech­no­log­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pow­er as such.”[107] Yet, human dig­ni­ty and the com­mon good must nev­er be vio­lat­ed for the sake of efficiency,[108] for “tech­no­log­i­cal devel­op­ments that do not lead to an improve­ment in the qual­i­ty of life of all human­i­ty, but on the con­trary, aggra­vate inequal­i­ties and con­flicts, can nev­er count as true progress.”[109] Instead, AI should be put “at the ser­vice of anoth­er type of progress, one which is health­i­er, more human, more social, more integral.”[110]

55. Achiev­ing this objec­tive requires a deep­er reflec­tion on the rela­tion­ship between auton­o­my and respon­si­bil­i­ty. Greater auton­o­my height­ens each person’s respon­si­bil­i­ty across var­i­ous aspects of com­mu­nal life. For Chris­tians, the foun­da­tion of this respon­si­bil­i­ty lies in the recog­ni­tion that all human capac­i­ties, includ­ing the person’s auton­o­my, come from God and are meant to be used in the ser­vice of others.[111] There­fore, rather than mere­ly pur­su­ing eco­nom­ic or tech­no­log­i­cal objec­tives, AI should serve “the com­mon good of the entire human fam­i­ly,” which is “the sum total of social con­di­tions that allow peo­ple, either as groups or as indi­vid­u­als, to reach their ful­fill­ment more ful­ly and more easily.”[112]

AI and Human Relationships

56. The Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil observed that “by his inner­most nature man is a social being; and if he does not enter into rela­tions with oth­ers, he can nei­ther live nor devel­op his gifts.”[113] This con­vic­tion under­scores that liv­ing in soci­ety is intrin­sic to the nature and voca­tion of the human person.[114] As social beings, we seek rela­tion­ships that involve mutu­al exchange and the pur­suit of truth, in the course of which, peo­ple “share with each oth­er the truth they have dis­cov­ered, or think they have dis­cov­ered, in such a way that they help one anoth­er in the search for truth.”[115]

57. Such a quest, along with oth­er aspects of human com­mu­ni­ca­tion, pre­sup­pos­es encoun­ters and mutu­al exchange between indi­vid­u­als shaped by their unique his­to­ries, thoughts, con­vic­tions, and rela­tion­ships. Nor can we for­get that human intel­li­gence is a diverse, mul­ti­fac­eted, and com­plex real­i­ty: indi­vid­ual and social, ratio­nal and affec­tive, con­cep­tu­al and sym­bol­ic. Pope Fran­cis under­scores this dynam­ic, not­ing that “togeth­er, we can seek the truth in dia­logue, in relaxed con­ver­sa­tion or in pas­sion­ate debate. To do so calls for per­se­ver­ance; it entails moments of silence and suf­fer­ing, yet it can patient­ly embrace the broad­er expe­ri­ence of indi­vid­u­als and peo­ples. […] The process of build­ing fra­ter­ni­ty, be it local or uni­ver­sal, can only be under­tak­en by spir­its that are free and open to authen­tic encounters.”[116]

58. It is in this con­text that one can con­sid­er the chal­lenges AI pos­es to human rela­tion­ships. Like oth­er tech­no­log­i­cal tools, AI has the poten­tial to fos­ter con­nec­tions with­in the human fam­i­ly. How­ev­er, it could also hin­der a true encounter with real­i­ty and, ulti­mate­ly, lead peo­ple to “a deep and melan­cholic dis­sat­is­fac­tion with inter­per­son­al rela­tions, or a harm­ful sense of isolation.”[117] Authen­tic human rela­tion­ships require the rich­ness of being with oth­ers in their pain, their pleas, and their joy.[118] Since human intel­li­gence is expressed and enriched also in inter­per­son­al and embod­ied ways, authen­tic and spon­ta­neous encoun­ters with oth­ers are indis­pens­able for engag­ing with real­i­ty in its fullness.

59. Because “true wis­dom demands an encounter with reality,”[119] the rise of AI intro­duces anoth­er chal­lenge. Since AI can effec­tive­ly imi­tate the prod­ucts of human intel­li­gence, the abil­i­ty to know when one is inter­act­ing with a human or a machine can no longer be tak­en for grant­ed. Gen­er­a­tive AI can pro­duce text, speech, images, and oth­er advanced out­puts that are usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with human beings. Yet, it must be under­stood for what it is: a tool, not a person.[120] This dis­tinc­tion is often obscured by the lan­guage used by prac­ti­tion­ers, which tends to anthro­po­mor­phize AI and thus blurs the line between human and machine.

60. Anthro­po­mor­phiz­ing AI also pos­es spe­cif­ic chal­lenges for the devel­op­ment of chil­dren, poten­tial­ly encour­ag­ing them to devel­op pat­terns of inter­ac­tion that treat human rela­tion­ships in a trans­ac­tion­al man­ner, as one would relate to a chat­bot. Such habits could lead young peo­ple to see teach­ers as mere dis­pensers of infor­ma­tion rather than as men­tors who guide and nur­ture their intel­lec­tu­al and moral growth. Gen­uine rela­tion­ships, root­ed in empa­thy and a stead­fast com­mit­ment to the good of the oth­er, are essen­tial and irre­place­able in fos­ter­ing the full devel­op­ment of the human person.

61. In this con­text, it is impor­tant to clar­i­fy that, despite the use of anthro­po­mor­phic lan­guage, no AI appli­ca­tion can gen­uine­ly expe­ri­ence empa­thy. Emo­tions can­not be reduced to facial expres­sions or phras­es gen­er­at­ed in response to prompts; they reflect the way a per­son, as a whole, relates to the world and to his or her own life, with the body play­ing a cen­tral role. True empa­thy requires the abil­i­ty to lis­ten, rec­og­nize another’s irre­ducible unique­ness, wel­come their oth­er­ness, and grasp the mean­ing behind even their silences.[121] Unlike the realm of ana­lyt­i­cal judg­ment in which AI excels, true empa­thy belongs to the rela­tion­al sphere. It involves intu­it­ing and appre­hend­ing the lived expe­ri­ences of anoth­er while main­tain­ing the dis­tinc­tion between self and other.[122] While AI can sim­u­late empa­thet­ic respons­es, it can­not repli­cate the emi­nent­ly per­son­al and rela­tion­al nature of authen­tic empathy.[123]

62. In light of the above, it is clear why mis­rep­re­sent­ing AI as a per­son should always be avoid­ed; doing so for fraud­u­lent pur­pos­es is a grave eth­i­cal vio­la­tion that could erode social trust. Sim­i­lar­ly, using AI to deceive in oth­er contexts—such as in edu­ca­tion or in human rela­tion­ships, includ­ing the sphere of sexuality—is also to be con­sid­ered immoral and requires care­ful over­sight to pre­vent harm, main­tain trans­paren­cy, and ensure the dig­ni­ty of all people.[124]

63. In an increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed world, some peo­ple have turned to AI in search of deep human rela­tion­ships, sim­ple com­pan­ion­ship, or even emo­tion­al bonds. How­ev­er, while human beings are meant to expe­ri­ence authen­tic rela­tion­ships, AI can only sim­u­late them. Nev­er­the­less, such rela­tion­ships with oth­ers are an inte­gral part of how a per­son grows to become who he or she is meant to be. If AI is used to help peo­ple fos­ter gen­uine con­nec­tions between peo­ple, it can con­tribute pos­i­tive­ly to the full real­iza­tion of the per­son. Con­verse­ly, if we replace rela­tion­ships with God and with oth­ers with inter­ac­tions with tech­nol­o­gy, we risk replac­ing authen­tic rela­tion­al­i­ty with a life­less image (cf. Ps. 106:20; Rom. 1:22–23). Instead of retreat­ing into arti­fi­cial worlds, we are called to engage in a com­mit­ted and inten­tion­al way with real­i­ty, espe­cial­ly by iden­ti­fy­ing with the poor and suf­fer­ing, con­sol­ing those in sor­row, and forg­ing bonds of com­mu­nion with all.

AI, the Econ­o­my, and Labor

64. Due to its inter­dis­ci­pli­nary nature, AI is being increas­ing­ly inte­grat­ed into eco­nom­ic and finan­cial sys­tems. Sig­nif­i­cant invest­ments are cur­rent­ly being made not only in the tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor but also in ener­gy, finance, and media, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the areas of mar­ket­ing and sales, logis­tics, tech­no­log­i­cal inno­va­tion, com­pli­ance, and risk man­age­ment. At the same time, AI’s appli­ca­tions in these areas have also high­light­ed its ambiva­lent nature, as a source of tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ties but also pro­found risks. A first real crit­i­cal point in this area con­cerns the pos­si­bil­i­ty that—due to the con­cen­tra­tion of AI appli­ca­tions in the hands of a few corporations—only those large com­pa­nies would ben­e­fit from the val­ue cre­at­ed by AI rather than the busi­ness­es that use it.

65. Oth­er broad­er aspects of AI’s impact on the eco­nom­ic-finan­cial sphere must also be care­ful­ly exam­ined, par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cern­ing the inter­ac­tion between con­crete real­i­ty and the dig­i­tal world. One impor­tant con­sid­er­a­tion in this regard involves the coex­is­tence of diverse and alter­na­tive forms of eco­nom­ic and finan­cial insti­tu­tions with­in a giv­en con­text. This fac­tor should be encour­aged, as it can bring ben­e­fits in how it sup­ports the real econ­o­my by fos­ter­ing its devel­op­ment and sta­bil­i­ty, espe­cial­ly dur­ing times of cri­sis. Nev­er­the­less, it should be stressed that dig­i­tal real­i­ties, not restrict­ed by any spa­tial bonds, tend to be more homo­ge­neous and imper­son­al than com­mu­ni­ties root­ed in a par­tic­u­lar place and a spe­cif­ic his­to­ry, with a com­mon jour­ney char­ac­ter­ized by shared val­ues and hopes, but also by inevitable dis­agree­ments and diver­gences. This diver­si­ty is an unde­ni­able asset to a community’s eco­nom­ic life. Turn­ing over the econ­o­my and finance entire­ly to dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy would reduce this vari­ety and rich­ness. As a result, many solu­tions to eco­nom­ic prob­lems that can be reached through nat­ur­al dia­logue between the involved par­ties may no longer be attain­able in a world dom­i­nat­ed by pro­ce­dures and only the appear­ance of nearness.

66. Anoth­er area where AI is already hav­ing a pro­found impact is the world of work. As in many oth­er fields, AI is dri­ving fun­da­men­tal trans­for­ma­tions across many pro­fes­sions, with a range of effects. On the one hand, it has the poten­tial to enhance exper­tise and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, cre­ate new jobs, enable work­ers to focus on more inno­v­a­tive tasks, and open new hori­zons for cre­ativ­i­ty and innovation.

67. How­ev­er, while AI promis­es to boost pro­duc­tiv­i­ty by tak­ing over mun­dane tasks, it fre­quent­ly forces work­ers to adapt to the speed and demands of machines rather than machines being designed to sup­port those who work. As a result, con­trary to the adver­tised ben­e­fits of AI, cur­rent approach­es to the tech­nol­o­gy can para­dox­i­cal­ly deskill work­ers, sub­ject them to auto­mat­ed sur­veil­lance, and rel­e­gate them to rigid and repet­i­tive tasks. The need to keep up with the pace of tech­nol­o­gy can erode work­ers’ sense of agency and sti­fle the inno­v­a­tive abil­i­ties they are expect­ed to bring to their work.[125]

68. AI is cur­rent­ly elim­i­nat­ing the need for some jobs that were once per­formed by humans. If AI is used to replace human work­ers rather than com­ple­ment them, there is a “sub­stan­tial risk of dis­pro­por­tion­ate ben­e­fit for the few at the price of the impov­er­ish­ment of many.”[126] Addi­tion­al­ly, as AI becomes more pow­er­ful, there is an asso­ci­at­ed risk that human labor may lose its val­ue in the eco­nom­ic realm. This is the log­i­cal con­se­quence of the tech­no­crat­ic par­a­digm: a world of human­i­ty enslaved to effi­cien­cy, where, ulti­mate­ly, the cost of human­i­ty must be cut. Yet, human lives are intrin­si­cal­ly valu­able, inde­pen­dent of their eco­nom­ic out­put. Nev­er­the­less, the “cur­rent mod­el,” Pope Fran­cis explains, “does not appear to favor an invest­ment in efforts to help the slow, the weak, or the less tal­ent­ed to find oppor­tu­ni­ties in life.”[127] In light of this, “we can­not allow a tool as pow­er­ful and indis­pens­able as Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to rein­force such a par­a­digm, but rather, we must make Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence a bul­wark against its expansion.”[128]

69. It is impor­tant to remem­ber that “the order of things must be sub­or­di­nate to the order of per­sons, and not the oth­er way around.”[129] Human work must not only be at the ser­vice of prof­it but at “the ser­vice of the whole human per­son […] tak­ing into account the person’s mate­r­i­al needs and the require­ments of his or her intel­lec­tu­al, moral, spir­i­tu­al, and reli­gious life.”[130] In this con­text, the Church rec­og­nizes that work is “not only a means of earn­ing one’s dai­ly bread” but is also “an essen­tial dimen­sion of social life” and “a means […] of per­son­al growth, the build­ing of healthy rela­tion­ships, self-expres­sion and the exchange of gifts. Work gives us a sense of shared respon­si­bil­i­ty for the devel­op­ment of the world, and ulti­mate­ly, for our life as a people.”[131]

70. Since work is a “part of the mean­ing of life on this earth, a path to growth, human devel­op­ment and per­son­al ful­fill­ment,” “the goal should not be that tech­no­log­i­cal progress increas­ing­ly replaces human work, for this would be detri­men­tal to humanity”[132]—rather, it should pro­mote human labor. Seen in this light, AI should assist, not replace, human judg­ment. Sim­i­lar­ly, it must nev­er degrade cre­ativ­i­ty or reduce work­ers to mere “cogs in a machine.” There­fore, “respect for the dig­ni­ty of labor­ers and the impor­tance of employ­ment for the eco­nom­ic well-being of indi­vid­u­als, fam­i­lies, and soci­eties, for job secu­ri­ty and just wages, ought to be a high pri­or­i­ty for the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty as these forms of tech­nol­o­gy pen­e­trate more deeply into our workplaces.”[133]

AI and Healthcare

71. As par­tic­i­pants in God’s heal­ing work, health­care pro­fes­sion­als have the voca­tion and respon­si­bil­i­ty to be “guardians and ser­vants of human life.”[134] Because of this, the health­care pro­fes­sion car­ries an “intrin­sic and unde­ni­able eth­i­cal dimen­sion,” rec­og­nized by the Hip­po­crat­ic Oath, which oblig­es physi­cians and health­care pro­fes­sion­als to com­mit them­selves to hav­ing “absolute respect for human life and its sacredness.”[135] Fol­low­ing the exam­ple of the Good Samar­i­tan, this com­mit­ment is to be car­ried out by men and women “who reject the cre­ation of a soci­ety of exclu­sion, and act instead as neigh­bors, lift­ing up and reha­bil­i­tat­ing the fall­en for the sake of the com­mon good.”[136]

72. Seen in this light, AI seems to hold immense poten­tial in a vari­ety of appli­ca­tions in the med­ical field, such as assist­ing the diag­nos­tic work of health­care providers, facil­i­tat­ing rela­tion­ships between patients and med­ical staff, offer­ing new treat­ments, and expand­ing access to qual­i­ty care also for those who are iso­lat­ed or mar­gin­al­ized. In these ways, the tech­nol­o­gy could enhance the “com­pas­sion­ate and lov­ing closeness”[137] that health­care providers are called to extend to the sick and suffering.

73. How­ev­er, if AI is used not to enhance but to replace the rela­tion­ship between patients and health­care providers—leaving patients to inter­act with a machine rather than a human being—it would reduce a cru­cial­ly impor­tant human rela­tion­al struc­ture to a cen­tral­ized, imper­son­al, and unequal frame­work. Instead of encour­ag­ing sol­i­dar­i­ty with the sick and suf­fer­ing, such appli­ca­tions of AI would risk wors­en­ing the lone­li­ness that often accom­pa­nies ill­ness, espe­cial­ly in the con­text of a cul­ture where “per­sons are no longer seen as a para­mount val­ue to be cared for and respected.”[138] This mis­use of AI would not align with respect for the dig­ni­ty of the human per­son and sol­i­dar­i­ty with the suffering.

74. Respon­si­bil­i­ty for the well-being of patients and the deci­sions that touch upon their lives are at the heart of the health­care pro­fes­sion. This account­abil­i­ty requires med­ical pro­fes­sion­als to exer­cise all their skill and intel­li­gence in mak­ing well-rea­soned and eth­i­cal­ly ground­ed choic­es regard­ing those entrust­ed to their care, always respect­ing the invi­o­lable dig­ni­ty of the patients and the need for informed con­sent. As a result, deci­sions regard­ing patient treat­ment and the weight of respon­si­bil­i­ty they entail must always remain with the human per­son and should nev­er be del­e­gat­ed to AI.[139]

75. In addi­tion, using AI to deter­mine who should receive treat­ment based pre­dom­i­nant­ly on eco­nom­ic mea­sures or met­rics of effi­cien­cy rep­re­sents a par­tic­u­lar­ly prob­lem­at­ic instance of the “tech­no­crat­ic par­a­digm” that must be rejected.[140] For, “opti­miz­ing resources means using them in an eth­i­cal and fra­ter­nal way, and not penal­iz­ing the most fragile.”[141] Addi­tion­al­ly, AI tools in health­care are “exposed to forms of bias and dis­crim­i­na­tion,” where “sys­temic errors can eas­i­ly mul­ti­ply, pro­duc­ing not only injus­tices in indi­vid­ual cas­es but also, due to the domi­no effect, real forms of social inequality.”[142]

76. The inte­gra­tion of AI into health­care also pos­es the risk of ampli­fy­ing oth­er exist­ing dis­par­i­ties in access to med­ical care. As health­care becomes increas­ing­ly ori­ent­ed toward pre­ven­tion and lifestyle-based approach­es, AI-dri­ven solu­tions may inad­ver­tent­ly favor more afflu­ent pop­u­la­tions who already enjoy bet­ter access to med­ical resources and qual­i­ty nutri­tion. This trend risks rein­forc­ing a “med­i­cine for the rich” mod­el, where those with finan­cial means ben­e­fit from advanced pre­ven­ta­tive tools and per­son­al­ized health infor­ma­tion while oth­ers strug­gle to access even basic ser­vices. To pre­vent such inequities, equi­table frame­works are need­ed to ensure that the use of AI in health­care does not wors­en exist­ing health­care inequal­i­ties but rather serves the com­mon good.

AI and Education

77. The words of the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil remain ful­ly rel­e­vant today: “True edu­ca­tion strives to form indi­vid­u­als with a view toward their final end and the good of the soci­ety to which they belong.”[143] As such, edu­ca­tion is “nev­er a mere process of pass­ing on facts and intel­lec­tu­al skills: rather, its aim is to con­tribute to the person’s holis­tic for­ma­tion in its var­i­ous aspects (intel­lec­tu­al, cul­tur­al, spir­i­tu­al, etc.), includ­ing, for exam­ple, com­mu­ni­ty life and rela­tions with­in the aca­d­e­m­ic community,”[144] in keep­ing with the nature and dig­ni­ty of the human person.

78. This approach involves a com­mit­ment to cul­ti­vat­ing the mind, but always as a part of the inte­gral devel­op­ment of the per­son: “We must break that idea of edu­ca­tion which holds that edu­cat­ing means fill­ing one’s head with ideas. That is the way we edu­cate automa­tons, cere­bral minds, not peo­ple. Edu­cat­ing is tak­ing a risk in the ten­sion between the mind, the heart, and the hands.”[145]

79. At the cen­ter of this work of form­ing the whole human per­son is the indis­pens­able rela­tion­ship between teacher and stu­dent. Teach­ers do more than con­vey knowl­edge; they mod­el essen­tial human qual­i­ties and inspire the joy of discovery.[146] Their pres­ence moti­vates stu­dents both through the con­tent they teach and the care they demon­strate for their stu­dents. This bond fos­ters trust, mutu­al under­stand­ing, and the capac­i­ty to address each person’s unique dig­ni­ty and poten­tial. On the part of the stu­dent, this can gen­er­ate a gen­uine desire to grow. The phys­i­cal pres­ence of a teacher cre­ates a rela­tion­al dynam­ic that AI can­not repli­cate, one that deep­ens engage­ment and nur­tures the student’s inte­gral development.

80. In this con­text, AI presents both oppor­tu­ni­ties and chal­lenges. If used in a pru­dent man­ner, with­in the con­text of an exist­ing teacher-stu­dent rela­tion­ship and ordered to the authen­tic goals of edu­ca­tion, AI can become a valu­able edu­ca­tion­al resource by enhanc­ing access to edu­ca­tion, offer­ing tai­lored sup­port, and pro­vid­ing imme­di­ate feed­back to stu­dents. These ben­e­fits could enhance the learn­ing expe­ri­ence, espe­cial­ly in cas­es where indi­vid­u­al­ized atten­tion is need­ed, or edu­ca­tion­al resources are oth­er­wise scarce.

81. Nev­er­the­less, an essen­tial part of edu­ca­tion is form­ing “the intel­lect to rea­son well in all mat­ters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it,”[147] while help­ing the “lan­guage of the head” to grow har­mo­nious­ly with the “lan­guage of the heart” and the “lan­guage of the hands.”[148] This is all the more vital in an age marked by tech­nol­o­gy, in which “it is no longer mere­ly a ques­tion of ‘using’ instru­ments of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, but of liv­ing in a high­ly dig­i­tal­ized cul­ture that has had a pro­found impact on […] our abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate, learn, be informed and enter into rela­tion­ship with others.”[149] How­ev­er, instead of fos­ter­ing “a cul­ti­vat­ed intel­lect,” which “brings with it a pow­er and a grace to every work and occu­pa­tion that it undertakes,”[150] the exten­sive use of AI in edu­ca­tion could lead to the stu­dents’ increased reliance on tech­nol­o­gy, erod­ing their abil­i­ty to per­form some skills inde­pen­dent­ly and wors­en­ing their depen­dence on screens.[151]

82. Addi­tion­al­ly, while some AI sys­tems are designed to help peo­ple devel­op their crit­i­cal think­ing abil­i­ties and prob­lem-solv­ing skills, many oth­ers mere­ly pro­vide answers instead of prompt­ing stu­dents to arrive at answers them­selves or write text for themselves.[152] Instead of train­ing young peo­ple how to amass infor­ma­tion and gen­er­ate quick respons­es, edu­ca­tion should encour­age “the respon­si­ble use of free­dom to face issues with good sense and intelligence.”[153] Build­ing on this, “edu­ca­tion in the use of forms of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence should aim above all at pro­mot­ing crit­i­cal think­ing. Users of all ages, but espe­cial­ly the young, need to devel­op a dis­cern­ing approach to the use of data and con­tent col­lect­ed on the web or pro­duced by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence sys­tems. Schools, uni­ver­si­ties, and sci­en­tif­ic soci­eties are chal­lenged to help stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­als to grasp the social and eth­i­cal aspects of the devel­op­ment and uses of technology.”[154]

83. As Saint John Paul II recalled, “in the world today, char­ac­ter­ized by such rapid devel­op­ments in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, the tasks of a Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty assume an ever greater impor­tance and urgency.”[155] In a par­tic­u­lar way, Catholic uni­ver­si­ties are urged to be present as great lab­o­ra­to­ries of hope at this cross­roads of his­to­ry. In an inter-dis­ci­pli­nary and cross-dis­ci­pli­nary key, they are urged to engage “with wis­dom and creativity”[156] in care­ful research on this phe­nom­e­non, help­ing to draw out the salu­tary poten­tial with­in the var­i­ous fields of sci­ence and real­i­ty, and guid­ing them always towards eth­i­cal­ly sound appli­ca­tions that clear­ly serve the cohe­sion of our soci­eties and the com­mon good, reach­ing new fron­tiers in the dia­logue between faith and reason.

84. More­over, it should be not­ed that cur­rent AI pro­grams have been known to pro­vide biased or fab­ri­cat­ed infor­ma­tion, which can lead stu­dents to trust inac­cu­rate con­tent. This prob­lem “not only runs the risk of legit­imiz­ing fake news and strength­en­ing a dom­i­nant culture’s advan­tage, but, in short, it also under­mines the edu­ca­tion­al process itself.”[157] With time, clear­er dis­tinc­tions may emerge between prop­er and improp­er uses of AI in edu­ca­tion and research. Yet, a deci­sive guide­line is that the use of AI should always be trans­par­ent and nev­er misrepresented.

AI, Mis­in­for­ma­tion, Deep­fakes, and Abuse

85. AI could be used as an aid to human dig­ni­ty if it helps peo­ple under­stand com­plex con­cepts or directs them to sound resources that sup­port their search for the truth.[158]

86. How­ev­er, AI also presents a seri­ous risk of gen­er­at­ing manip­u­lat­ed con­tent and false infor­ma­tion, which can eas­i­ly mis­lead peo­ple due to its resem­blance to the truth. Such mis­in­for­ma­tion might occur unin­ten­tion­al­ly, as in the case of AI “hal­lu­ci­na­tion,” where a gen­er­a­tive AI sys­tem yields results that appear real but are not. Since gen­er­at­ing con­tent that mim­ics human arti­facts is cen­tral to AI’s func­tion­al­i­ty, mit­i­gat­ing these risks proves chal­leng­ing. Yet, the con­se­quences of such aber­ra­tions and false infor­ma­tion can be quite grave. For this rea­son, all those involved in pro­duc­ing and using AI sys­tems should be com­mit­ted to the truth­ful­ness and accu­ra­cy of the infor­ma­tion processed by such sys­tems and dis­sem­i­nat­ed to the public.

87. While AI has a latent poten­tial to gen­er­ate false infor­ma­tion, an even more trou­bling prob­lem lies in the delib­er­ate mis­use of AI for manip­u­la­tion. This can occur when indi­vid­u­als or orga­ni­za­tions inten­tion­al­ly gen­er­ate and spread false con­tent with the aim to deceive or cause harm, such as “deep­fake” images, videos, and audio—referring to a false depic­tion of a per­son, edit­ed or gen­er­at­ed by an AI algo­rithm. The dan­ger of deep­fakes is par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent when they are used to tar­get or harm oth­ers. While the images or videos them­selves may be arti­fi­cial, the dam­age they cause is real, leav­ing “deep scars in the hearts of those who suf­fer it” and “real wounds in their human dignity.”[159]

88. On a broad­er scale, by dis­tort­ing “our rela­tion­ship with oth­ers and with reality,”[160] AI-gen­er­at­ed fake media can grad­u­al­ly under­mine the foun­da­tions of soci­ety. This issue requires care­ful reg­u­la­tion, as misinformation—especially through AI-con­trolled or influ­enced media—can spread unin­ten­tion­al­ly, fuel­ing polit­i­cal polar­iza­tion and social unrest. When soci­ety becomes indif­fer­ent to the truth, var­i­ous groups con­struct their own ver­sions of “facts,” weak­en­ing the “rec­i­p­ro­cal ties and mutu­al dependencies”[161] that under­pin the fab­ric of social life. As deep­fakes cause peo­ple to ques­tion every­thing and AI-gen­er­at­ed false con­tent erodes trust in what they see and hear, polar­iza­tion and con­flict will only grow. Such wide­spread decep­tion is no triv­ial mat­ter; it strikes at the core of human­i­ty, dis­man­tling the foun­da­tion­al trust on which soci­eties are built.[162]

89. Coun­ter­ing AI-dri­ven false­hoods is not only the work of indus­try experts—it requires the efforts of all peo­ple of good­will. “If tech­nol­o­gy is to serve human dig­ni­ty and not harm it, and if it is to pro­mote peace rather than vio­lence, then the human com­mu­ni­ty must be proac­tive in address­ing these trends with respect to human dig­ni­ty and the pro­mo­tion of the good.”[163] Those who pro­duce and share AI-gen­er­at­ed con­tent should always exer­cise dili­gence in ver­i­fy­ing the truth of what they dis­sem­i­nate and, in all cas­es, should “avoid the shar­ing of words and images that are degrad­ing of human beings, that pro­mote hatred and intol­er­ance, that debase the good­ness and inti­ma­cy of human sex­u­al­i­ty or that exploit the weak and vulnerable.”[164] This calls for the ongo­ing pru­dence and care­ful dis­cern­ment of all users regard­ing their activ­i­ty online.[165]

AI, Pri­va­cy, and Surveillance

90. Humans are inher­ent­ly rela­tion­al, and the data each per­son gen­er­ates in the dig­i­tal world can be seen as an objec­ti­fied expres­sion of this rela­tion­al nature. Data con­veys not only infor­ma­tion but also per­son­al and rela­tion­al knowl­edge, which, in an increas­ing­ly dig­i­tized con­text, can amount to pow­er over the indi­vid­ual. More­over, while some types of data may per­tain to pub­lic aspects of a person’s life, oth­ers may touch upon the individual’s inte­ri­or­i­ty, per­haps even their con­science. Seen in this way, pri­va­cy plays an essen­tial role in pro­tect­ing the bound­aries of a person’s inner life, pre­serv­ing their free­dom to relate to oth­ers, express them­selves, and make deci­sions with­out undue con­trol. This pro­tec­tion is also tied to the defense of reli­gious free­dom, as sur­veil­lance can also be mis­used to exert con­trol over the lives of believ­ers and how they express their faith.

91. It is appro­pri­ate, there­fore, to address the issue of pri­va­cy from a con­cern for the legit­i­mate free­dom and inalien­able dig­ni­ty of the human per­son “in all circumstances.”[166] The Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil includ­ed the right “to safe­guard pri­va­cy” among the fun­da­men­tal rights “nec­es­sary for liv­ing a gen­uine­ly human life,” a right that should be extend­ed to all peo­ple on account of their “sub­lime dignity.”[167] Fur­ther­more, the Church has also affirmed the right to the legit­i­mate respect for a pri­vate life in the con­text of affirm­ing the person’s right to a good rep­u­ta­tion, defense of their phys­i­cal and men­tal integri­ty, and free­dom from harm or undue intrusion[168]—essential com­po­nents of the due respect for the intrin­sic dig­ni­ty of the human person.[169]

92. Advances in AI-pow­ered data pro­cess­ing and analy­sis now make it pos­si­ble to infer pat­terns in a person’s behav­ior and think­ing from even a small amount of infor­ma­tion, mak­ing the role of data pri­va­cy even more imper­a­tive as a safe­guard for the dig­ni­ty and rela­tion­al nature of the human per­son. As Pope Fran­cis observed, “while closed and intol­er­ant atti­tudes towards oth­ers are on the rise, dis­tances are oth­er­wise shrink­ing or dis­ap­pear­ing to the point that the right to pri­va­cy scarce­ly exists. Every­thing has become a kind of spec­ta­cle to be exam­ined and inspect­ed, and people’s lives are now under con­stant surveillance.”[170]

93. While there can be legit­i­mate and prop­er ways to use AI in keep­ing with human dig­ni­ty and the com­mon good, using it for sur­veil­lance aimed at exploit­ing, restrict­ing oth­ers’ free­dom, or ben­e­fit­ting a few at the expense of the many is unjus­ti­fi­able. The risk of sur­veil­lance over­reach must be mon­i­tored by appro­pri­ate reg­u­la­tors to ensure trans­paren­cy and pub­lic account­abil­i­ty. Those respon­si­ble for sur­veil­lance should nev­er exceed their author­i­ty, which must always favor the dig­ni­ty and free­dom of every per­son as the essen­tial basis of a just and humane society.

94. Fur­ther­more, “fun­da­men­tal respect for human dig­ni­ty demands that we refuse to allow the unique­ness of the per­son to be iden­ti­fied with a set of data.”[171] This espe­cial­ly applies when AI is used to eval­u­ate indi­vid­u­als or groups based on their behav­ior, char­ac­ter­is­tics, or history—a prac­tice known as “social scor­ing”: “In social and eco­nom­ic deci­sion-mak­ing, we should be cau­tious about del­e­gat­ing judg­ments to algo­rithms that process data, often col­lect­ed sur­rep­ti­tious­ly, on an individual’s make­up and pri­or behav­ior. Such data can be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by soci­etal prej­u­dices and pre­con­cep­tions. A person’s past behav­ior should not be used to deny him or her the oppor­tu­ni­ty to change, grow, and con­tribute to soci­ety. We can­not allow algo­rithms to lim­it or con­di­tion respect for human dig­ni­ty, or to exclude com­pas­sion, mer­cy, for­give­ness, and above all, the hope that peo­ple are able to change.”[172]

AI and the Pro­tec­tion of Our Com­mon Home

95. AI has many promis­ing appli­ca­tions for improv­ing our rela­tion­ship with our “com­mon home,” such as cre­at­ing mod­els to fore­cast extreme cli­mate events, propos­ing engi­neer­ing solu­tions to reduce their impact, man­ag­ing relief oper­a­tions, and pre­dict­ing pop­u­la­tion shifts.[173] Addi­tion­al­ly, AI can sup­port sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, opti­mize ener­gy usage, and pro­vide ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems for pub­lic health emer­gen­cies. These advance­ments have the poten­tial to strength­en resilience against cli­mate-relat­ed chal­lenges and pro­mote more sus­tain­able development.

96. At the same time, cur­rent AI mod­els and the hard­ware required to sup­port them con­sume vast amounts of ener­gy and water, sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tribut­ing to CO2 emis­sions and strain­ing resources. This real­i­ty is often obscured by the way this tech­nol­o­gy is pre­sent­ed in the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion, where words such as “the cloud”[174] can give the impres­sion that data is stored and processed in an intan­gi­ble realm, detached from the phys­i­cal world. How­ev­er, “the cloud” is not an ethe­re­al domain sep­a­rate from the phys­i­cal world; as with all com­put­ing tech­nolo­gies, it relies on phys­i­cal machines, cables, and ener­gy. The same is true of the tech­nol­o­gy behind AI. As these sys­tems grow in com­plex­i­ty, espe­cial­ly large lan­guage mod­els (LLMs), they require ever-larg­er datasets, increased com­pu­ta­tion­al pow­er, and greater stor­age infra­struc­ture. Con­sid­er­ing the heavy toll these tech­nolo­gies take on the envi­ron­ment, it is vital to devel­op sus­tain­able solu­tions that reduce their impact on our com­mon home.

97. Even then, as Pope Fran­cis teach­es, it is essen­tial “that we look for solu­tions not only in tech­nol­o­gy but in a change of humanity.”[175] A com­plete and authen­tic under­stand­ing of cre­ation rec­og­nizes that the val­ue of all cre­at­ed things can­not be reduced to their mere util­i­ty. There­fore, a ful­ly human approach to the stew­ard­ship of the earth rejects the dis­tort­ed anthro­pocen­trism of the tech­no­crat­ic par­a­digm, which seeks to “extract every­thing pos­si­ble” from the world,[176] and rejects the “myth of progress,” which assumes that “eco­log­i­cal prob­lems will solve them­selves sim­ply with the appli­ca­tion of new tech­nol­o­gy and with­out any need for eth­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions or deep change.”[177] Such a mind­set must give way to a more holis­tic approach that respects the order of cre­ation and pro­motes the inte­gral good of the human per­son while safe­guard­ing our com­mon home.[178]

AI and Warfare

98. The Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil and the con­sis­tent teach­ing of the Popes since then have insist­ed that peace is not mere­ly the absence of war and is not lim­it­ed to main­tain­ing a bal­ance of pow­ers between adver­saries. Instead, in the words of Saint Augus­tine, peace is “the tran­quil­i­ty of order.”[179] Indeed, peace can­not be attained with­out safe­guard­ing the goods of per­sons, free com­mu­ni­ca­tion, respect for the dig­ni­ty of per­sons and peo­ples, and the assid­u­ous prac­tice of fra­ter­ni­ty. Peace is the work of jus­tice and the effect of char­i­ty and can­not be achieved through force alone; instead, it must be prin­ci­pal­ly built through patient diplo­ma­cy, the active pro­mo­tion of jus­tice, sol­i­dar­i­ty, inte­gral human devel­op­ment, and respect for the dig­ni­ty of all people.[180] In this way, the tools used to main­tain peace should nev­er be allowed to jus­ti­fy injus­tice, vio­lence, or oppres­sion. Instead, they should always be gov­erned by a “firm deter­mi­na­tion to respect oth­er peo­ple and nations, along with their dig­ni­ty, as well as the delib­er­ate prac­tice of fraternity.”[181]

99. While AI’s ana­lyt­i­cal abil­i­ties could help nations seek peace and ensure secu­ri­ty, the “weaponiza­tion of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence” can also be high­ly prob­lem­at­ic. Pope Fran­cis has observed that “the abil­i­ty to con­duct mil­i­tary oper­a­tions through remote con­trol sys­tems has led to a less­ened per­cep­tion of the dev­as­ta­tion caused by those weapon sys­tems and the bur­den of respon­si­bil­i­ty for their use, result­ing in an even more cold and detached approach to the immense tragedy of war.”[182] More­over, the ease with which autonomous weapons make war more viable mil­i­tates against the prin­ci­ple of war as a last resort in legit­i­mate self-defense,[183] poten­tial­ly increas­ing the instru­ments of war well beyond the scope of human over­sight and pre­cip­i­tat­ing a desta­bi­liz­ing arms race, with cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences for human rights.[184]

100. In par­tic­u­lar, Lethal Autonomous Weapon Sys­tems, which are capa­ble of iden­ti­fy­ing and strik­ing tar­gets with­out direct human inter­ven­tion, are a “cause for grave eth­i­cal con­cern” because they lack the “unique human capac­i­ty for moral judg­ment and eth­i­cal decision-making.”[185] For this rea­son, Pope Fran­cis has urgent­ly called for a recon­sid­er­a­tion of the devel­op­ment of these weapons and a pro­hi­bi­tion on their use, start­ing with “an effec­tive and con­crete com­mit­ment to intro­duce ever greater and prop­er human con­trol. No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being.”[186]

101. Since it is a small step from machines that can kill autonomous­ly with pre­ci­sion to those capa­ble of large-scale destruc­tion, some AI researchers have expressed con­cerns that such tech­nol­o­gy pos­es an “exis­ten­tial risk” by hav­ing the poten­tial to act in ways that could threat­en the sur­vival of entire regions or even of human­i­ty itself. This dan­ger demands seri­ous atten­tion, reflect­ing the long-stand­ing con­cern about tech­nolo­gies that grant war “an uncon­trol­lable destruc­tive pow­er over great num­bers of inno­cent civilians,”[187] with­out even spar­ing chil­dren. In this con­text, the call from Gaudi­um et Spes to “under­take an eval­u­a­tion of war with an entire­ly new attitude”[188] is more urgent than ever.

102. At the same time, while the the­o­ret­i­cal risks of AI deserve atten­tion, the more imme­di­ate and press­ing con­cern lies in how indi­vid­u­als with mali­cious inten­tions might mis­use this technology.[189] Like any tool, AI is an exten­sion of human pow­er, and while its future capa­bil­i­ties are unpre­dictable, humanity’s past actions pro­vide clear warn­ings. The atroc­i­ties com­mit­ted through­out his­to­ry are enough to raise deep con­cerns about the poten­tial abus­es of AI.

103. Saint John Paul II observed that “human­i­ty now has instru­ments of unprece­dent­ed pow­er: we can turn this world into a gar­den, or reduce it to a pile of rubble.”[190] Giv­en this fact, the Church reminds us, in the words of Pope Fran­cis, that “we are free to apply our intel­li­gence towards things evolv­ing pos­i­tive­ly,” or toward “deca­dence and mutu­al destruction.”[191] To pre­vent human­i­ty from spi­ral­ing into self-destruction,[192] there must be a clear stand against all appli­ca­tions of tech­nol­o­gy that inher­ent­ly threat­en human life and dig­ni­ty. This com­mit­ment requires care­ful dis­cern­ment about the use of AI, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mil­i­tary defense appli­ca­tions, to ensure that it always respects human dig­ni­ty and serves the com­mon good. The devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of AI in arma­ments should be sub­ject to the high­est lev­els of eth­i­cal scruti­ny, gov­erned by a con­cern for human dig­ni­ty and the sanc­ti­ty of life.[193]

AI and Our Rela­tion­ship with God

104. Tech­nol­o­gy offers remark­able tools to over­see and devel­op the world’s resources. How­ev­er, in some cas­es, human­i­ty is increas­ing­ly ced­ing con­trol of these resources to machines. With­in some cir­cles of sci­en­tists and futur­ists, there is opti­mism about the poten­tial of arti­fi­cial gen­er­al intel­li­gence (AGI), a hypo­thet­i­cal form of AI that would match or sur­pass human intel­li­gence and bring about unimag­in­able advance­ments. Some even spec­u­late that AGI could achieve super­hu­man capa­bil­i­ties. At the same time, as soci­ety drifts away from a con­nec­tion with the tran­scen­dent, some are tempt­ed to turn to AI in search of mean­ing or fulfillment—longings that can only be tru­ly sat­is­fied in com­mu­nion with God.[194]

105. How­ev­er, the pre­sump­tion of sub­sti­tut­ing God for an arti­fact of human mak­ing is idol­a­try, a prac­tice Scrip­ture explic­it­ly warns against (e.g., Ex. 20:4; 32:1–5; 34:17). More­over, AI may prove even more seduc­tive than tra­di­tion­al idols for, unlike idols that “have mouths but do not speak; eyes, but do not see; ears, but do not hear” (Ps. 115:5–6), AI can “speak,” or at least gives the illu­sion of doing so (cf. Rev. 13:15). Yet, it is vital to remem­ber that AI is but a pale reflec­tion of humanity—it is craft­ed by human minds, trained on human-gen­er­at­ed mate­r­i­al, respon­sive to human input, and sus­tained through human labor. AI can­not pos­sess many of the capa­bil­i­ties spe­cif­ic to human life, and it is also fal­li­ble. By turn­ing to AI as a per­ceived “Oth­er” greater than itself, with which to share exis­tence and respon­si­bil­i­ties, human­i­ty risks cre­at­ing a sub­sti­tute for God. How­ev­er, it is not AI that is ulti­mate­ly dei­fied and wor­shipped, but human­i­ty itself—which, in this way, becomes enslaved to its own work.[195]

106. While AI has the poten­tial to serve human­i­ty and con­tribute to the com­mon good, it remains a cre­ation of human hands, bear­ing “the imprint of human art and inge­nu­ity” (Acts 17:29). It must nev­er be ascribed undue worth. As the Book of Wis­dom affirms: “For a man made them, and one whose spir­it is bor­rowed formed them; for no man can form a god which is like him­self. He is mor­tal, and what he makes with law­less hands is dead, for he is bet­ter than the objects he wor­ships since he has life, but they nev­er have” (Wis. 15:16–17).

107. In con­trast, human beings, “by their inte­ri­or life, tran­scend the entire mate­r­i­al uni­verse; they expe­ri­ence this deep inte­ri­or­i­ty when they enter into their own heart, where God, who probes the heart, awaits them, and where they decide their own des­tiny in the sight of God.”[196] It is with­in the heart, as Pope Fran­cis reminds us, that each indi­vid­ual dis­cov­ers the “mys­te­ri­ous con­nec­tion between self-knowl­edge and open­ness to oth­ers, between the encounter with one’s per­son­al unique­ness and the will­ing­ness to give one­self to others.”[197] There­fore, it is the heart alone that is “capa­ble of set­ting our oth­er pow­ers and pas­sions, and our entire per­son, in a stance of rev­er­ence and lov­ing obe­di­ence before the Lord,”[198] who “offers to treat each one of us as a ‘Thou,’ always and forever.”[199]

VI. Con­clud­ing Reflections

108. Con­sid­er­ing the var­i­ous chal­lenges posed by advances in tech­nol­o­gy, Pope Fran­cis empha­sized the need for growth in “human respon­si­bil­i­ty, val­ues, and con­science,” pro­por­tion­ate to the growth in the poten­tial that this tech­nol­o­gy brings[200]—recognizing that “with an increase in human pow­er comes a broad­en­ing of respon­si­bil­i­ty on the part of indi­vid­u­als and communities.”[201]

109. At the same time, the “essen­tial and fun­da­men­tal ques­tion” remains “whether in the con­text of this progress man, as man, is becom­ing tru­ly bet­ter, that is to say, more mature spir­i­tu­al­ly, more aware of the dig­ni­ty of his human­i­ty, more respon­si­ble, more open to oth­ers, espe­cial­ly the need­i­est and the weak­est, and read­ier to give and to aid all.”[202]

110. As a result, it is cru­cial to know how to eval­u­ate indi­vid­ual appli­ca­tions of AI in par­tic­u­lar con­texts to deter­mine whether its use pro­motes human dig­ni­ty, the voca­tion of the human per­son, and the com­mon good. As with many tech­nolo­gies, the effects of the var­i­ous uses of AI may not always be pre­dictable from their incep­tion. As these appli­ca­tions and their social impacts become clear­er, appro­pri­ate respons­es should be made at all lev­els of soci­ety, fol­low­ing the prin­ci­ple of sub­sidiar­i­ty. Indi­vid­ual users, fam­i­lies, civ­il soci­ety, cor­po­ra­tions, insti­tu­tions, gov­ern­ments, and inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions should work at their prop­er lev­els to ensure that AI is used for the good of all.

111. A sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge and oppor­tu­ni­ty for the com­mon good today lies in con­sid­er­ing AI with­in a frame­work of rela­tion­al intel­li­gence, which empha­sizes the inter­con­nect­ed­ness of indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­ni­ties and high­lights our shared respon­si­bil­i­ty for fos­ter­ing the inte­gral well-being of oth­ers. The twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry philoso­pher Nicholas Berdyaev observed that peo­ple often blame machines for per­son­al and social prob­lems; how­ev­er, “this only humil­i­ates man and does not cor­re­spond to his dig­ni­ty,” for “it is unwor­thy to trans­fer respon­si­bil­i­ty from man to a machine.”[203] Only the human per­son can be moral­ly respon­si­ble, and the chal­lenges of a tech­no­log­i­cal soci­ety are ulti­mate­ly spir­i­tu­al in nature. There­fore, fac­ing those chal­lenges “demands an inten­si­fi­ca­tion of spirituality.”[204]

112. A fur­ther point to con­sid­er is the call, prompt­ed by the appear­ance of AI on the world stage, for a renewed appre­ci­a­tion of all that is human. Years ago, the French Catholic author Georges Bernanos warned that “the dan­ger is not in the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of machines, but in the ever-increas­ing num­ber of men accus­tomed from their child­hood to desire only what machines can give.”[205] This chal­lenge is as true today as it was then, as the rapid pace of dig­i­ti­za­tion risks a “dig­i­tal reduc­tion­ism,” where non-quan­tifi­able aspects of life are set aside and then for­got­ten or even deemed irrel­e­vant because they can­not be com­put­ed in for­mal terms. AI should be used only as a tool to com­ple­ment human intel­li­gence rather than replace its richness.[206] Cul­ti­vat­ing those aspects of human life that tran­scend com­pu­ta­tion is cru­cial for pre­serv­ing “an authen­tic human­i­ty” that “seems to dwell in the midst of our tech­no­log­i­cal cul­ture, almost unno­ticed, like a mist seep­ing gen­tly beneath a closed door.”[207]

True Wis­dom

113. The vast expanse of the world’s knowl­edge is now acces­si­ble in ways that would have filled past gen­er­a­tions with awe. How­ev­er, to ensure that advance­ments in knowl­edge do not become human­ly or spir­i­tu­al­ly bar­ren, one must go beyond the mere accu­mu­la­tion of data and strive to achieve true wisdom.[208]

114. This wis­dom is the gift that human­i­ty needs most to address the pro­found ques­tions and eth­i­cal chal­lenges posed by AI: “Only by adopt­ing a spir­i­tu­al way of view­ing real­i­ty, only by recov­er­ing a wis­dom of the heart, can we con­front and inter­pret the new­ness of our time.”[209] Such “wis­dom of the heart” is “the virtue that enables us to inte­grate the whole and its parts, our deci­sions and their con­se­quences.” It “can­not be sought from machines,” but it “lets itself be found by those who seek it and be seen by those who love it; it antic­i­pates those who desire it, and it goes in search of those who are wor­thy of it (cf. Wis 6:12–16).”[210]

115. In a world marked by AI, we need the grace of the Holy Spir­it, who “enables us to look at things with God’s eyes, to see con­nec­tions, sit­u­a­tions, events and to uncov­er their real meaning.”[211]

116. Since a “person’s per­fec­tion is mea­sured not by the infor­ma­tion or knowl­edge they pos­sess, but by the depth of their charity,”[212] how we incor­po­rate AI “to include the least of our broth­ers and sis­ters, the vul­ner­a­ble, and those most in need, will be the true mea­sure of our humanity.”[213] The “wis­dom of the heart” can illu­mi­nate and guide the human-cen­tered use of this tech­nol­o­gy to help pro­mote the com­mon good, care for our “com­mon home,” advance the search for the truth, fos­ter inte­gral human devel­op­ment, favor human sol­i­dar­i­ty and fra­ter­ni­ty, and lead human­i­ty to its ulti­mate goal: hap­pi­ness and full com­mu­nion with God.[214]

117. From this per­spec­tive of wis­dom, believ­ers will be able to act as moral agents capa­ble of using this tech­nol­o­gy to pro­mote an authen­tic vision of the human per­son and society.[215] This should be done with the under­stand­ing that tech­no­log­i­cal progress is part of God’s plan for creation—an activ­i­ty that we are called to order toward the Paschal Mys­tery of Jesus Christ, in the con­tin­u­al search for the True and the Good.

The Supreme Pon­tiff, Fran­cis, at the Audi­ence grant­ed on 14 Jan­u­ary 2025 to the under­signed Pre­fects and Sec­re­taries of the Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith and the Dicas­t­ery for Cul­ture and Edu­ca­tion, approved this Note and ordered its publication.

Giv­en in Rome, at the offices of the Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith and the Dicas­t­ery for Cul­ture and Edu­ca­tion, on 28 Jan­u­ary 2025, the Litur­gi­cal Memo­r­i­al of Saint Thomas Aquinas, Doc­tor of the Church.

Víc­tor Manuel Card. Fer­nán­dez José Card. Tolenti­no de Mendonça

Pre­fect Prefect

Msgr. Arman­do Mat­teo Most Rev. Paul Tighe

Sec­re­tary, Doc­tri­nal Sec­tion Sec­re­tary, Cul­ture Section

Ex audi­en­tia die 14 ian­uarii 2025

Fran­cis­cus

_________________

[1] Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 378. See also Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 34: AAS 58 (1966), 1052–1053.

[2] Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the Ple­nary Assem­bly of the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my for Life (28 Feb­ru­ary 2020): AAS 112 (2020), 307. Cf. Id., Christ­mas Greet­ings to the Roman Curia (21 Decem­ber 2019): AAS 112 (2020), 43.

[3] Cf. Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVIII World Day of Social Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (24 Jan­u­ary 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Jan­u­ary 2024, 8.

[4] Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 2293; Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 35: AAS 58 (1966), 1053.

[5] J. McCarthy, et al., “A Pro­pos­al for the Dart­mouth Sum­mer Research Project on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence” (31 August 1955), http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/dartmouth/
dartmouth.html (accessed: 21 Octo­ber 2024).

[6] Cf. Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), pars. 2–3: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 2.

[7] Terms in this doc­u­ment describ­ing the out­puts or process­es of AI are used fig­u­ra­tive­ly to explain its oper­a­tions and are not intend­ed to anthro­po­mor­phize the machine.

[8] Cf. Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 3; Id., Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 2: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 2.

[9] Here, one can see the pri­ma­ry posi­tions of the “tran­shu­man­ists” and the “posthu­man­ists.” Tran­shu­man­ists argue that tech­no­log­i­cal advance­ments will enable humans to over­come their bio­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tions and enhance both their phys­i­cal and cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. Posthu­man­ists, on the oth­er hand, con­tend that such advances will ulti­mate­ly alter human iden­ti­ty to the extent that human­i­ty itself may no longer be con­sid­ered tru­ly “human.” Both views rest on a fun­da­men­tal­ly neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of human cor­po­ral­i­ty, which treats the body more as an obsta­cle than as an inte­gral part of the person’s iden­ti­ty and call to full real­iza­tion. Yet, this neg­a­tive view of the body is incon­sis­tent with a prop­er under­stand­ing of human dig­ni­ty. While the Church sup­ports gen­uine sci­en­tif­ic progress, it affirms that human dig­ni­ty is root­ed in “the per­son as an insep­a­ra­ble uni­ty of body and soul.” Thus, “dig­ni­ty is also inher­ent in each person’s body, which par­tic­i­pates in its own way in being in ima­go Dei” (Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta [8 April 2024], par. 18).

[10] This approach reflects a func­tion­al­ist per­spec­tive, which reduces the human mind to its func­tions and assumes that its func­tions can be entire­ly quan­ti­fied in phys­i­cal or math­e­mat­i­cal terms. How­ev­er, even if a future AGI were to appear tru­ly intel­li­gent, it would still remain func­tion­al in nature.

[11] Cf. A.M. Tur­ing, “Com­put­ing Machin­ery and Intel­li­gence,” Mind 59 (1950) 443–460.

[12] If “think­ing” is attrib­uted to machines, it must be clar­i­fied that this refers to cal­cu­la­tive think­ing rather than crit­i­cal think­ing. Sim­i­lar­ly, if machines are said to oper­ate using log­i­cal think­ing, it must be spec­i­fied that this is lim­it­ed to com­pu­ta­tion­al log­ic. On the oth­er hand, by its very nature, human thought is a cre­ative process that eludes pro­gram­ming and tran­scends constraints.

[13] On the foun­da­tion­al role of lan­guage in shap­ing under­stand­ing, cf. M. Hei­deg­ger, Über den Human­is­mus, Kloster­mann, Frank­furt am Main 1949 (en. tr. “Let­ter on Human­ism,” in Basic Writ­ings: Mar­tin Hei­deg­ger, Rout­ledge, Lon­don ‒ New York 2010, 141–182).

[14] For fur­ther dis­cus­sion of these anthro­po­log­i­cal and the­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tions, see AI Research Group of the Cen­tre for Dig­i­tal Cul­ture of the Dicas­t­ery for Cul­ture and Edu­ca­tion, Encoun­ter­ing Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Eth­i­cal and Anthro­po­log­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tions (The­o­log­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tions of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence 1), M.J. Gaudet, N. Herzfeld, P. Scherz, J.J. Wales, eds., Jour­nal of Moral The­ol­o­gy, Pick­wick, Eugene 2024, 43–144.

[15] Aris­to­tle, Meta­physics, I.1, 980 a 21.

[16] Cf. Augus­tine, De Gen­e­si ad lit­ter­am III, 20, 30: PL 34, 292: “Man is made in the image of God in rela­tion to that [fac­ul­ty] by which he is supe­ri­or to the irra­tional ani­mals. Now, this [fac­ul­ty] is rea­son itself, or the ‘mind,’ or ‘intel­li­gence,’ what­ev­er oth­er name it may more suit­ably be giv­en”; Id., Enar­ra­tiones in Psalmos 54, 3: PL 36, 629: “When con­sid­er­ing all that they have, humans dis­cov­er that they are most dis­tin­guished from ani­mals pre­cise­ly by the fact they pos­sess intel­li­gence.” This is also reit­er­at­ed by Saint Thomas Aquinas, who states that “man is the most per­fect of all earth­ly beings endowed with motion, and his prop­er and nat­ur­al oper­a­tion is intel­lec­tion,” by which man abstracts from things and “receives in his mind things actu­al­ly intel­li­gi­ble” (Thomas Aquinas, Sum­ma Con­tra Gen­tiles II, 76).

[17] Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 15: AAS 58 (1966), 1036.

[18] Aquinas, Sum­ma The­olo­giae, II-II, q. 49, a. 5, ad 3. Cf. ibid., I, q. 79; II-II, q. 47, a. 3; II-II, q. 49, a. 2. For a con­tem­po­rary per­spec­tive that echoes ele­ments of the clas­si­cal and medieval dis­tinc­tion between these two modes of cog­ni­tion, cf. D. Kah­ne­man, Think­ing, Fast and Slow, New York 2011.

[19] Aquinas, Sum­ma The­olo­giae, I, q. 76, a. 1, resp.

[20] Cf. Ire­naeus of Lyon, Adver­sus Haere­ses, V, 6, 1: PG 7(2), 1136–1138.

[21] Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (8 April 2024), par. 9. Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 213: AAS 112 (2020), 1045: “The intel­lect can inves­ti­gate the real­i­ty of things through reflec­tion, expe­ri­ence and dia­logue, and come to rec­og­nize in that real­i­ty, which tran­scends it, the basis of cer­tain uni­ver­sal moral demands.”

[22] Cf. Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Doc­tri­nal Note on Some Aspects of Evan­ge­liza­tion (3 Decem­ber 2007), par. 4: AAS 100 (2008), 491–492.

[23] Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 365. Cf. Aquinas, Sum­ma The­olo­giae, I, q. 75, a. 4, resp.

[24] Indeed, Sacred Scrip­ture “gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ers the human per­son as a being who exists in the body and is unthink­able out­side of it” (Pon­tif­i­cal Bib­li­cal Com­mis­sion, “Che cosa è l’uomo?” (Sal 8,5): Un itin­er­ario di antropolo­gia bib­li­ca [30 Sep­tem­ber 2019], par. 19). Cf. ibid., pars. 20–21, 43–44, 48.

[25] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 22: AAS 58 (1966), 1042: Cf. Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Instruc­tion Dig­ni­tas Per­son­ae (8 Sep­tem­ber 2008), par. 7: AAS 100 (2008), 863: “Christ did not dis­dain human bod­i­li­ness, but instead ful­ly dis­closed its mean­ing and value.”

[26] Aquinas, Sum­ma Con­tra Gen­tiles II, 81.

[27] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 15: AAS 58 (1966), 1036.

[28] Cf. Aquinas, Sum­ma The­olo­giae I, q. 89, a. 1, resp.: “to be sep­a­rat­ed from the body is not in accor­dance with [the soul’s] nature […] and hence it is unit­ed to the body in order that it may have an exis­tence and an oper­a­tion suit­able to its nature.”

[29] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 14: AAS 58 (1966), 1035. Cf. Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (8 April 2024), par. 18.

[30] Inter­na­tion­al The­o­log­i­cal Com­mis­sion, Com­mu­nion and Stew­ard­ship: Human Per­sons Cre­at­ed in the Image of God (2004), par. 56. Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 357.

[31] Cf. Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Instruc­tion Dig­ni­tas Per­son­ae (8 Sep­tem­ber 2008), pars. 5, 8; Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (8 April 2024), pars. 15, 24, 53–54.

[32] Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 356. Cf. ibid., par. 221.

[33] Cf. Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (8 April 2024), pars. 13, 26–27.

[34] Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Instruc­tion Don­um Ver­i­tatis (24 May 1990), 6: AAS 82 (1990), 1552. Cf. John Paul II, Encycli­cal Ver­i­tatis Splen­dor (6 August 1993), par. 109: AAS 85 (1993), 1219. Cf. Pseu­do-Diony­sius, De divi­nis nominibus, VII, 2: PG 3, 868B‑C: “Human souls also pos­sess rea­son and with it they cir­cle in dis­course around the truth of things. […] [O]n account of the man­ner in which they are capa­ble of con­cen­trat­ing the many into the one, they too, in their own fash­ion and as far as they can, are wor­thy of con­cep­tions like those of the angels” (en. tr. Pseu­do-Diony­sius: The Com­plete Works, Paulist Press, New York – Mah­wah 1987, 106–107).

[35] John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fides et Ratio (14 Sep­tem­ber 1998), par. 3: AAS 91 (1999), 7.

[36] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 15: AAS 58 (1966), 1036.

[37] John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fides et Ratio (14 Sep­tem­ber 1998), par. 42: AAS 91 (1999), 38. Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 208: AAS 112 (2020), 1043: “the human mind is capa­ble of tran­scend­ing imme­di­ate con­cerns and grasp­ing cer­tain truths that are unchang­ing, as true now as in the past. As it peers into human nature, rea­son dis­cov­ers uni­ver­sal val­ues derived from that same nature”; ibid., par. 184: AAS 112 (2020), 1034.

[38] Cf. B. Pas­cal, Pen­sées, no. 267 (ed. Brun­schvicg): “The last pro­ceed­ing of rea­son is to rec­og­nize that there is an infin­i­ty of things which are beyond it” (en. tr. Pascal’s Pen­sées, E.P. Dut­ton, New York 1958, 77).

[39] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 15: AAS 58 (1966), 1036. Cf. Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Doc­tri­nal Note on Some Aspects of Evan­ge­liza­tion (3 Decem­ber 2007), par. 4: AAS 100 (2008), 491–492.

[40] Our seman­tic capac­i­ty allows us to under­stand mes­sages in any form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in a man­ner that both takes into account and tran­scends their mate­r­i­al or empir­i­cal struc­tures (such as com­put­er code). Here, intel­li­gence becomes a wis­dom that “enables us to look at things with God’s eyes, to see con­nec­tions, sit­u­a­tions, events and to uncov­er their real mean­ing” (Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVIII World Day of Social Com­mu­ni­ca­tions [24 Jan­u­ary 2024]: L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Jan­u­ary 2024, 8). Our cre­ativ­i­ty enables us to gen­er­ate new con­tent or ideas, pri­mar­i­ly by offer­ing an orig­i­nal view­point on real­i­ty. Both capac­i­ties depend on the exis­tence of a per­son­al sub­jec­tiv­i­ty for their full realization.

[41] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tatis Humanae (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 3: AAS 58 (1966), 931.

[42] Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 184: AAS 112 (2020), 1034: “Char­i­ty, when accom­pa­nied by a com­mit­ment to the truth, is much more than per­son­al feel­ing […]. Indeed, its close rela­tion to truth fos­ters its uni­ver­sal­i­ty and pre­serves it from being ‘con­fined to a nar­row field devoid of rela­tion­ships.’ […] Charity’s open­ness to truth thus pro­tects it from ‘a fideism that deprives it of its human and uni­ver­sal breadth.’” The inter­nal quotes are from Bene­dict XVI, Encycli­cal Let­ter Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate (29 June 2009), pars. 2–4: AAS 101 (2009), 642–643.

[43] Cf. Inter­na­tion­al The­o­log­i­cal Com­mis­sion, Com­mu­nion and Stew­ard­ship: Human Per­sons Cre­at­ed in the Image of God (2004), par. 7.

[44] John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fides et Ratio (14 Sep­tem­ber 1998), par. 13: AAS 91 (1999), 15. Cf. Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Doc­tri­nal Note on Some Aspects of Evan­ge­liza­tion (3 Decem­ber 2007), par. 4: AAS 100 (2008), 491–492.

[45] John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fides et Ratio (14 Sep­tem­ber 1998), par. 13: AAS 91 (1999), 15.

[46] Bonaven­ture, In II Librum Sen­ten­tiarum, d. I, p. 2, a. 2, q. 1; as quot­ed in Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 293. Cf. ibid., par. 294.

[47] Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, pars. 295, 299, 302. Bonaven­ture likens the uni­verse to “a book reflect­ing, rep­re­sent­ing, and describ­ing its Mak­er,” the Tri­une God who grants exis­tence to all things (Bre­vil­o­quium 2.12.1). Cf. Alain de Lille, De Incar­na­tione Christi, PL 210, 579a: “Omnis mun­di crea­tu­ra qua­si liber et pic­tura nobis est et speculum.”

[48] Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 67: AAS 107 (2015), 874; John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Laborem Exercens (14 Sep­tem­ber 1981), par. 6: AAS 73 (1981), 589–592; Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), pars. 33–34: AAS 58 (1966), 1052–1053; Inter­na­tion­al The­o­log­i­cal Com­mis­sion, Com­mu­nion and Stew­ard­ship: Human Per­sons Cre­at­ed in the Image of God (2004), par. 57: “human beings occu­py a unique place in the uni­verse accord­ing to the divine plan: they enjoy the priv­i­lege of shar­ing in the divine gov­er­nance of vis­i­ble cre­ation. […] Since man’s place as ruler is in fact a par­tic­i­pa­tion in the divine gov­er­nance of cre­ation, we speak of it here as a form of stewardship.”

[49] Cf. John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Ver­i­tatis Splen­dor (6 August 1993), pars. 38–39: AAS 85 (1993), 1164–1165.

[50] Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), pars. 33–34: AAS 58 (1966), 1052–1053. This idea is also reflect­ed in the cre­ation account, where God brings crea­tures to Adam “to see what he would call them. And what­ev­er [he] called every liv­ing crea­ture, that was its name” (Gen. 2:19), an action that demon­strates the active engage­ment of human intel­li­gence in the stew­ard­ship of God’s cre­ation. Cf. John Chrysos­tom, Homil­i­ae in Gen­es­im, XIV, 17–21: PG 53, 116–117.

[51] Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 301.

[52] Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 302.

[53] Bonaven­ture, Bre­vil­o­quium 2.12.1. Cf. ibid., 2.11.2.

[54] Cf. Fran­cis, Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Evan­gelii Gaudi­um (24 Novem­ber 2013), par. 236: AAS 105 (2023), 1115; Id., Address to Par­tic­i­pants in the Meet­ing of Uni­ver­si­ty Chap­lains and Pas­toral Work­ers Pro­mot­ed by the Dicas­t­ery for Cul­ture and Edu­ca­tion (24 Novem­ber 2023): L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Novem­ber 2023, 7.

[55] Cf. J.H. New­man, The Idea of a Uni­ver­si­ty Defined and Illus­trat­ed, Dis­course 5.1, Basil Mon­tagu Pick­er­ing, Lon­don 18733, 99–100; Fran­cis, Address to Rec­tors, Pro­fes­sors, Stu­dents and Staff of the Roman Pon­tif­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ties and Insti­tu­tions (25 Feb­ru­ary 2023): AAS 115 (2023), 316.

[56] Fran­cis, Address to the Mem­bers of the Nation­al Con­fed­er­a­tion of Arti­sans and Small- and Medi­um-Sized Enter­pris­es (CNA) (15 Novem­ber 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 15 Novem­ber 2024, 8.

[57] Cf. Fran­cis, Post-Syn­odal Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Queri­da Ama­zo­nia (2 Feb­ru­ary 2020), par. 41: AAS 112 (2020), 246; Id., Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 146: AAS 107 (2015), 906.

[58] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 47: AAS 107 (2015), 864. Cf. Id., Encycli­cal Let­ter Dilex­it Nos (24 Octo­ber 2024), pars. 17–24: L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Octo­ber 2024, 5; Id., Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 47–50: AAS 112 (2020), 985–987.

[59] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Dilex­it Nos (24 Octo­ber 2024), par. 20: L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Octo­ber 2024, 5.

[60] P. Claudel, Con­ver­sa­tion sur Jean Racine, Gal­li­mard, Paris 1956, 32: “L’intelligence n’est rien sans la délec­ta­tion.” Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Dilex­it Nos (24 Octo­ber 2024), par. 13: L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Octo­ber 2024, 5: “The mind and the will are put at the ser­vice of the greater good by sens­ing and savor­ing truths.”

[61] Dante, Par­adiso, Can­to XXX: “luce intel­let­tüal, piena d’amore; / amor di vero ben, pien di letizia; / letizia che trascende ogne dol­zore” (en. tr. The Divine Com­e­dy of Dante Alighieri, C.E. Nor­ton, tr., Houghton Mif­flin, Boston 1920, 232).

[62] Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tatis Humanae (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 3: AAS 58 (1966), 931: “[T]he high­est norm of human life is the divine law itself—eternal, objec­tive and uni­ver­sal, by which God orders, directs and gov­erns the whole world and the ways of the human com­mu­ni­ty accord­ing to a plan con­ceived in his wis­dom and love. God has enabled man to par­tic­i­pate in this law of his so that, under the gen­tle dis­po­si­tion of divine prov­i­dence, many may be able to arrive at a deep­er and deep­er knowl­edge of unchange­able truth.” Also cf. Id., Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 16: AAS 58 (1966), 1037.

[63] Cf. First Vat­i­can Coun­cil, Dog­mat­ic Con­sti­tu­tion Dei Fil­ius (24 April 1870), ch. 4, DH 3016.

[64] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 110: AAS 107 (2015), 892.

[65] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 110: AAS 107 (2015), 891. Cf. Id., Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 204: AAS 112 (2020), 1042.

[66] Cf. John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Cen­tes­imus Annus (1 May 1991), par. 11: AAS 83 (1991), 807: “God has imprint­ed his own image and like­ness on man (cf. Gen 1:26), con­fer­ring upon him an incom­pa­ra­ble dig­ni­ty […]. In effect, beyond the rights which man acquires by his own work, there exist rights which do not cor­re­spond to any work he per­forms, but which flow from his essen­tial dig­ni­ty as a per­son.” Cf. Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 3–4.

[67] Cf. Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (8 April 2024), par. 8. Cf. ibid., par. 9; Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Instruc­tion Dig­ni­tas Per­son­ae (8 Sep­tem­ber 2008), par. 22.

[68] Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the Ple­nary Assem­bly of the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my for Life (28 Feb­ru­ary 2020): AAS 112 (2024), 310.

[69] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVIII World Day of Social Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (24 Jan­u­ary 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Jan­u­ary 2024, 8.

[70] In this sense, “Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence” is under­stood as a tech­ni­cal term to indi­cate this tech­nol­o­gy, recall­ing that the expres­sion is also used to des­ig­nate the field of study and not only its applications.

[71] Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), pars. 34–35: AAS 58 (1966), 1052–1053; John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Cen­tes­imus Annus (1 May 1991), par. 51: AAS 83 (1991), 856–857.

[72] For exam­ple, see the encour­age­ment of sci­en­tif­ic explo­ration in Alber­tus Mag­nus (De Min­er­al­ibus, II, 2, 1) and the appre­ci­a­tion for the mechan­i­cal arts in Hugh of St. Vic­tor (Didas­cal­i­con, I, 9). These writ­ers, among a long list of oth­er Catholics engaged in sci­en­tif­ic research and tech­no­log­i­cal explo­ration, illus­trate that “faith and sci­ence can be unit­ed in char­i­ty, pro­vid­ed that sci­ence is put at the ser­vice of the men and woman of our time and not mis­used to harm or even destroy them” (Fran­cis, Address to Par­tic­i­pants in the 2024 Lemaître Con­fer­ence of the Vat­i­can Obser­va­to­ry [20 June 2024]: L’Osservatore Romano, 20 June 2024, 8). Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 36: AAS 58 (1966), 1053–1054; John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fides et Ratio (14 Sep­tem­ber 1998), pars. 2, 106: AAS 91 (1999), 6–7.86–87.

[73] Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 378.

[74] Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 34: AAS 58 (1966), 1053.

[75] Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 35: AAS 58 (1966), 1053.

[76] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 102: AAS 107 (2015), 888.

[77] Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 105: AAS 107 (2015), 889; Id., Encycli­cal Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 27: AAS 112 (2020), 978; Bene­dict XVI, Encycli­cal Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate (29 June 2009), par. 23: AAS 101 (2009), 657–658.

[78] Cf. Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (8 April 2024), pars. 38–39, 47; Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Instruc­tion Dig­ni­tas Per­son­ae (8 Sep­tem­ber 2008), passim.

[79] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 35: AAS 58 (1966), 1053. Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par 2293.

[80] Cf. Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 2–4.

[81] Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 1749: “Free­dom makes man a moral sub­ject. When he acts delib­er­ate­ly, man is, so to speak, the father of his acts.”

[82] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 16: AAS 58 (1966), 1037. Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 1776.

[83] Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 1777.

[84] Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, pars. 1779–1781; Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the “Min­er­va Dia­logues” (27 March 2023): AAS 115 (2023), 463, where the Holy Father encour­aged efforts “to ensure that tech­nol­o­gy remains human-cen­tered, eth­i­cal­ly ground­ed and direct­ed toward the good.”

[85] Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 166: AAS 112 (2020), 1026–1027; Id., Address to the Ple­nary Assem­bly of the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my of Sci­ences (23 Sep­tem­ber 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 23 Sep­tem­ber 2024, 10. On the role of human agency in choos­ing a wider aim (Ziel) that then informs the par­tic­u­lar pur­pose (Zweck) for which each tech­no­log­i­cal appli­ca­tion is cre­at­ed, cf. F. Dessauer, Stre­it um die Tech­nik, Herder-Bücherei, Freiburg i. Br. 1959, 70–71.

[86] Cf. Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 4: “Tech­nol­o­gy is born for a pur­pose and, in its impact on human soci­ety, always rep­re­sents a form of order in social rela­tions and an arrange­ment of pow­er, thus enabling cer­tain peo­ple to per­form spe­cif­ic actions while pre­vent­ing oth­ers from per­form­ing dif­fer­ent ones. In a more or less explic­it way, this con­sti­tu­tive pow­er-dimen­sion of tech­nol­o­gy always includes the world­view of those who invent­ed and devel­oped it.”

[87] Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the Ple­nary Assem­bly of the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my of Life (28 Feb­ru­ary 2020): AAS 112 (2020), 309.

[88] Cf. Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 3–4.

[89] Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the “Min­er­va Dia­logues” (27 March 2023): AAS 115 (2023), 464. Cf. Id., Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti, pars. 212–213: AAS 112 (2020), 1044–1045.

[90] Cf. John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Laborem Exercens (14 Sep­tem­ber 1981), par. 5: AAS 73 (1981), 589; Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 3–4.

[91] Cf. Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 2: “Faced with the mar­vels of machines, which seem to know how to choose inde­pen­dent­ly, we should be very clear that deci­sion-mak­ing […] must always be left to the human per­son. We would con­demn human­i­ty to a future with­out hope if we took away people’s abil­i­ty to make deci­sions about them­selves and their lives, by doom­ing them to depend on the choic­es of machines.”

[92] Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 2.

[93] The term “bias” in this doc­u­ment refers to algo­rith­mic bias (sys­tem­at­ic and con­sis­tent errors in com­put­er sys­tems that may dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly prej­u­dice cer­tain groups in unin­tend­ed ways) or learn­ing bias (which will result in train­ing on a biased data set) and not the “bias vec­tor” in neur­al net­works (which is a para­me­ter used to adjust the out­put of “neu­rons” to adjust more accu­rate­ly to the data).

[94] Cf. Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the “Min­er­va Dia­logues” (27 March 2023): AAS 115 (2023), 464, where the Holy Father affirmed the growth in con­sen­sus “on the need for devel­op­ment process­es to respect such val­ues as inclu­sion, trans­paren­cy, secu­ri­ty, equi­ty, pri­va­cy and reli­a­bil­i­ty,” and also wel­comed “the efforts of inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions to reg­u­late these tech­nolo­gies so that they pro­mote gen­uine progress, con­tribut­ing, that is, to a bet­ter world and an inte­gral­ly high­er qual­i­ty of life.”

[95] Fran­cis, Greet­ings to a Del­e­ga­tion of the “Max Planck Soci­ety” (23 Feb­ru­ary 2023): L’Osservatore Romano, 23 Feb­ru­ary 2023, 8.

[96] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 26: AAS 58 (1966), 1046–1047.

[97] Fran­cis, Address to Par­tic­i­pants at the Sem­i­nar “The Com­mon Good in the Dig­i­tal Age” (27 Sep­tem­ber 2019): AAS 111 (2019), 1571.

[98] Cf. Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVIII World Day of Social Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (24 Jan­u­ary 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Jan­u­ary 2024, 8. For fur­ther dis­cus­sion of the eth­i­cal ques­tions raised by AI from a Catholic per­spec­tive, see AI Research Group of the Cen­tre for Dig­i­tal Cul­ture of the Dicas­t­ery for Cul­ture and Edu­ca­tion, Encoun­ter­ing Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: Eth­i­cal and Anthro­po­log­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tions (The­o­log­i­cal Inves­ti­ga­tions of Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence 1), M.J. Gaudet, N. Herzfeld, P. Scherz, J.J. Wales, eds., Jour­nal of Moral The­ol­o­gy, Pick­wick, Eugene 2024, 147–253.

[99] On the impor­tance of dia­logue in a plu­ral­ist soci­ety ori­ent­ed toward a “robust and sol­id social ethics,” see Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), pars. 211–214: AAS 112 (2020), 1044–1045.

[100] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 2: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 2.

[101] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 6: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 3. Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 26: AAS 58 (1966), 1046–1047.

[102] Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 112: AAS 107 (2015), 892–893.

[103] Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the “Min­er­va Dia­logues” (27 March 2023): AAS 115 (2023), 464.

[104] Cf. Pon­tif­i­cal Coun­cil for Social Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Ethics in Inter­net (22 Feb­ru­ary 2002), par. 10.

[105] Fran­cis, Post-Syn­odal Exhor­ta­tion Chris­tus Viv­it (25 March 2019), par. 89: AAS 111 (2019), 413–414; quot­ing the Final Doc­u­ment of the XV Ordi­nary Gen­er­al Assem­bly of the Syn­od of Bish­ops (27 Octo­ber 2018), par. 24: AAS 110 (2018), 1593. Cf. Bene­dict XVI, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the Inter­na­tion­al Con­gress on Nat­ur­al Moral Law (12 Feb­ru­ary 2017): AAS 99 (2007), 245.

[106] Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), pars. 105–114: AAS 107 (2015), 889–893; Id., Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Lau­date Deum (4 Octo­ber 2023), pars. 20–33: AAS 115 (2023), 1047–1050.

[107] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 105: AAS 107 (2015), 889. Cf. Id., Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Lau­date Deum (4 Octo­ber 2023), pars. 20–21: AAS 115 (2023), 1047.

[108] Cf. Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the Ple­nary Assem­bly of the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­e­my for Life (28 Feb­ru­ary 2020): AAS 112 (2020), 308–309.

[109] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 2: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 2.

[110] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 112: AAS 107 (2015), 892.

[111] Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), pars. 101, 103, 111, 115, 167: AAS 112 (2020), 1004–1005, 1007–1009, 1027.

[112] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 26: AAS 58 (1966), 1046–1047; cf. Leo XIII, Encycli­cal Let­ter Rerum Novarum (15 May 1891), par. 35: Acta Leo­nis XIII, 11 (1892), 123.

[113] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 12: AAS 58 (1966), 1034.

[114] Cf. Pon­tif­i­cal Coun­cil for Jus­tice and Peace, Com­pendi­um of the Social Doc­trine of the Church (2004), par. 149.

[115] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tatis Humanae (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 3: AAS 58 (1966), 931. Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 50: AAS 112 (2020), 986–987.

[116] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 50: AAS 112 (2020), 986–987.

[117] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 47: AAS 107 (2015), 865. Cf. Id., Post-Syn­odal Exhor­ta­tion Chris­tus Viv­it (25 March 2019), pars. 88–89: AAS 111 (2019), 413–414.

[118] Cf. Fran­cis, Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Evan­gelii Gaudi­um (24 Novem­ber 2013), par. 88: AAS 105 (2013), 1057.

[119] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 47: AAS 112 (2020), 985.

[120] Cf. Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 2.

[121] Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 50: AAS 112 (2020), 986–987.

[122] Cf. E. Stein, Zum Prob­lem der Ein­füh­lung, Buch­druck­erei des Waisen­haus­es, Halle 1917 (en. tr. On the Prob­lem of Empa­thy, ICS Pub­li­ca­tions, Wash­ing­ton D.C. 1989).

[123] Cf. Fran­cis, Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Evan­gelii Gaudi­um (24 Novem­ber 2013), par. 88: AAS 105 (2013), 1057: “[Many peo­ple] want their inter­per­son­al rela­tion­ships pro­vid­ed by sophis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment, by screens and sys­tems which can be turned on and off on com­mand. Mean­while, the Gospel tells us con­stant­ly to run the risk of a face-to-face encounter with oth­ers, with their phys­i­cal pres­ence which chal­lenges us, with their pain and their pleas, with their joy which infects us in our close and con­tin­u­ous inter­ac­tion. True faith in the incar­nate Son of God is insep­a­ra­ble from self-giv­ing, from mem­ber­ship in the com­mu­ni­ty, from ser­vice, from rec­on­cil­i­a­tion with oth­ers.” Also cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 24: AAS 58 (1966), 1044–1045.

[124] Cf. Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (8 April 2024), par. 1.

[125] Cf. Fran­cis, Address to Par­tic­i­pants at the Sem­i­nar “The Com­mon Good in the Dig­i­tal Age” (27 Sep­tem­ber 2019): AAS 111 (2019), 1570; Id, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), pars. 18, 124–129: AAS 107 (2015), 854.897–899.

[126] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 5: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 3.

[127] Fran­cis, Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Evan­gelii Gaudi­um (24 Novem­ber 2013), par. 209: AAS 105 (2013), 1107.

[128] Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 4. For Pope Fran­cis’ teach­ing about AI in rela­tion­ship to the “tech­no­crat­ic par­a­digm,” cf. Id., Encycli­cal Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), pars. 106–114: AAS 107 (2015), 889–893.

[129] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 26: AAS 58 (1966), 1046–1047.; as quot­ed in Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, par. 1912. Cf. John XXIII, Encycli­cal Let­ter Mater et Mag­is­tra (15 May 1961), par. 219: AAS 53 (1961), 453.

[130] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par 64: AAS 58 (1966), 1086.

[131] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 162: AAS 112 (2020), 1025. Cf. John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Laborem Exercens (14 Sep­tem­ber 1981), par. 6: AAS 73 (1981), 591: “work is ‘for man’ and not man ‘for work.’ Through this con­clu­sion one right­ly comes to rec­og­nize the pre-emi­nence of the sub­jec­tive mean­ing of work over the objec­tive one.”

[132] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 128: AAS 107 (2015), 898. Cf. Id., Post-Syn­odal Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Amor­is Laeti­tia (19 March 2016), par. 24: AAS 108 (2016), 319–320.

[133] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 5: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 3.

[134] John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Evan­geli­um Vitae (25 March 1995), par. 89: AAS 87 (1995), 502.

[135] Ibid.

[136] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 67: AAS 112 (2020), 993; as quot­ed in Id., Mes­sage for the XXXI World Day of the Sick (11 Feb­ru­ary 2023): L’Osservatore Romano, 10 Jan­u­ary 2023, 8.

[137] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the XXXII World Day of the Sick (11 Feb­ru­ary 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 13 Jan­u­ary 2024, 12.

[138] Fran­cis, Address to the Diplo­mat­ic Corps Accred­it­ed to the Holy See (11 Jan­u­ary 2016): AAS 108 (2016), 120. Cf. Id., Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 18: AAS 112 (2020), 975; Id., Mes­sage for the XXXII World Day of the Sick (11 Feb­ru­ary 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 13 Jan­u­ary 2024, 12.

[139] Cf. Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the “Min­er­va Dia­logues” (27 March 2023): AAS 115 (2023), 465; Id., Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 2.

[140] Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), pars. 105, 107: AAS 107 (2015), 889–890; Id., Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), pars. 18–21: AAS 112 (2020), 975–976; Id., Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the “Min­er­va Dia­logues” (27 March 2023): AAS 115 (2023), 465.

[141] Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants at the Meet­ing Spon­sored by the Char­i­ty and Health Com­mis­sion of the Ital­ian Bish­ops’ Con­fer­ence (10 Feb­ru­ary 2017): AAS 109 (2017), 243. Cf. ibid., 242–243: “If there is a sec­tor in which the throw­away cul­ture is man­i­fest, with its painful con­se­quences, it is that of health­care. When a sick per­son is not placed in the cen­ter or their dig­ni­ty is not con­sid­ered, this gives rise to atti­tudes that can lead even to spec­u­la­tion on the mis­for­tune of oth­ers. And this is very grave! […] The appli­ca­tion of a busi­ness approach to the health­care sec­tor, if indis­crim­i­nate […] may risk dis­card­ing human beings.”

[142] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 5: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 3.

[143] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Dec­la­ra­tion Gravis­si­mum Edu­ca­tio­n­is (28 Octo­ber 1965), par. 1: AAS 58 (1966), 729.

[144] Con­gre­ga­tion for Catholic Edu­ca­tion, Instruc­tion on the Use of Dis­tance Learn­ing in Eccle­si­as­ti­cal Uni­ver­si­ties and Fac­ul­ties, I. Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Dec­la­ra­tion Gravis­si­mum Edu­ca­tio­n­is (28 Octo­ber 1965), par. 1: AAS 58 (1966), 729; Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LXIX World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2016), 6: AAS 108 (2016), 57–58.

[145] Fran­cis, Address to Mem­bers of the Glob­al Researchers Advanc­ing Catholic Edu­ca­tion Project (20 April 2022): AAS 114 (2022), 580.

[146] Cf. Paul VI, Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Evan­gelii Nun­tian­di (8 Decem­ber 1975), par. 41: AAS 68 (1976), 31, quot­ing Id., Address to the Mem­bers of the “Con­sil­i­um de Laicis” (2 Octo­ber 1974): AAS 66 (1974), 568: “if [the con­tem­po­rary per­son] does lis­ten to teach­ers, it is because they are witnesses.”

[147] J.H. New­man, The Idea of a Uni­ver­si­ty Defined and Illus­trat­ed, Dis­course 6.1, Lon­don 18733, 125–126.

[148] Fran­cis, Meet­ing with the Stu­dents of the Bar­bari­go Col­lege of Pad­ua in the 100th Year of its Foun­da­tion (23 March 2019): L’Osservatore Romano, 24 March 2019, 8. Cf. Id., Address to Rec­tors, Pro­fes­sors, Stu­dents and Staff of the Roman Pon­tif­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ties and Insti­tu­tions (25 Feb­ru­ary 2023): AAS 115 (2023), 316.

[149] Fran­cis, Post-Syn­odal Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Chris­tus Viv­it (25 March 2019), par. 86: AAS 111 (2019), 413, quot­ing the XV Ordi­nary Gen­er­al Assem­bly of the Syn­od of Bish­ops, Final Doc­u­ment (27 Octo­ber 2018), par. 21: AAS 110 (2018), 1592.

[150] J.H. New­man, The Idea of a Uni­ver­si­ty Defined and Illus­trat­ed, Dis­course 7.6, Basil Mon­tagu Pick­er­ing, Lon­don 18733, 167.

[151] Cf. Fran­cis, Post-Syn­odal Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Chris­tus Viv­it (25 March 2019), par. 88: AAS 111 (2019), 413.

[152] In a 2023 pol­i­cy doc­u­ment about the use of gen­er­a­tive AI in edu­ca­tion and research, UNESCO notes: “One of the key ques­tions [of the use of gen­er­a­tive AI (GenAI) in edu­ca­tion and research] is whether humans can pos­si­bly cede basic lev­els of think­ing and skill-acqui­si­tion process­es to AI and rather con­cen­trate on high­er-order think­ing skills based on the out­puts pro­vid­ed by AI. Writ­ing, for exam­ple, is often asso­ci­at­ed with the struc­tur­ing of think­ing. With GenAI […], humans can now start with a well-struc­tured out­line pro­vid­ed by GenAI. Some experts have char­ac­ter­ized the use of GenAI to gen­er­ate text in this way as ‘writ­ing with­out think­ing’” (UNESCO, Guid­ance for Gen­er­a­tive AI in Edu­ca­tion and Research [2023], 37–38). The Ger­man-Amer­i­can philoso­pher Han­nah Arendt fore­saw such a pos­si­bil­i­ty in her 1959 book, The Human Con­di­tion, and cau­tioned: “If it should turn out to be true that knowl­edge (in the sense of know-how) and thought have part­ed com­pa­ny for good, then we would indeed become the help­less slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how” (Id., The Human Con­di­tion, Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press, Chica­go 20182, 3).

[153] Fran­cis, Post-Syn­odal Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Amor­is Laeti­tia (19 March 2016), par. 262: AAS 108 (2016), 417.

[154] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 7: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 3; cf. Id., Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 167: AAS 107 (2015), 914.

[155] John Paul II, Apos­tolic Con­sti­tu­tion Ex Corde Eccle­si­ae (15 August 1990), 7: AAS 82 (1990), 1479.

[156] Fran­cis, Apos­tolic Con­sti­tu­tion Ver­i­tatis Gaudi­um (29 Jan­u­ary 2018), 4c: AAS 110 (2018), 9–10.

[157] Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 3.

[158] For exam­ple, it might help peo­ple access the “array of resources for gen­er­at­ing greater knowl­edge of truth” con­tained in the works of phi­los­o­phy (John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fides et Ratio [14 Sep­tem­ber 1998], par. 3: AAS 91 [1999], 7). Cf. ibid., par. 4: AAS 91 (1999), 7–8.

[159] Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (8 April 2024), par. 43. Cf. ibid., pars. 61–62.

[160] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVIII World Day of Social Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (24 Jan­u­ary 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Jan­u­ary 2024, 8.

[161] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par 25: AAS 58 (1966), 1053; cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), pas­sim: AAS 112 (2020), 969‑1074.

[162] Cf. Fran­cis., Post-Syn­odal Exhor­ta­tion Chris­tus Viv­it (25 March 2019), par. 89: AAS 111 (2019), 414; John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fides et Ratio (14 Sep­tem­ber 1998), par. 25: AAS 91 (1999), 25–26: “Peo­ple can­not be gen­uine­ly indif­fer­ent to the ques­tion of whether what they know is true or not. […] It is this that Saint Augus­tine teach­es when he writes: ‘I have met many who want­ed to deceive, but none who want­ed to be deceived’”; quot­ing Augus­tine, Con­fes­siones, X, 23, 33: PL 32, 794.

[163] Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (4 April 2024), par. 62.

[164] Bene­dict XVI, Mes­sage for the XLIII World Day of Social Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (24 May 2009): L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Jan­u­ary 2009, 8.

[165] Cf. Dicas­t­ery for Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Towards Full Pres­ence: A Pas­toral Reflec­tion on Engage­ment with Social Media (28 May 2023), par. 41; Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Decree Inter Mir­i­fi­ca (4 Decem­ber 1963), pars. 4, 8–12: AAS 56 (1964), 146, 148–149.

[166] Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (4 April 2024), pars. 1, 6, 16, 24.

[167] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes, (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 26: AAS 58 (1966), 1046. Cf. Leo XIII, Encycli­cal Let­ter Rerum Novarum (15 May 1891), par. 40: Acta Leo­nis XIII, 11 (1892), 127: “no man may with impuni­ty vio­late that human dig­ni­ty which God him­self treats with great rev­er­ence”; as quot­ed in John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Cen­tes­imus Annus (1 May 1991), par. 9: AAS 83 (1991), 804.

[168] Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, pars. 2477, 2489; can. 220 CIC; can. 23 CCEO; John Paul II, Address to the Third Gen­er­al Con­fer­ence of the Latin Amer­i­can Epis­co­pate (28 Jan­u­ary 1979), III.1–2: Inseg­na­men­ti II/1 (1979), 202–203.

[169] Cf. Per­ma­nent Observ­er Mis­sion of the Holy See to the Unit­ed Nations, Holy See State­ment to the The­mat­ic Dis­cus­sion on Oth­er Dis­ar­ma­ment Mea­sures and Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty (24 Octo­ber 2022): “Uphold­ing human dig­ni­ty in cyber­space oblig­es States to also respect the right to pri­va­cy, by shield­ing cit­i­zens from intru­sive sur­veil­lance and allow­ing them to safe­guard their per­son­al infor­ma­tion from unau­tho­rized access.”

[170] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 42: AAS 112 (2020), 984.

[171] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 5: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 3.

[172] Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the “Min­er­va Dia­logues” (27 March 2023): AAS 115 (2023), 465.

[173] The 2023 Inter­im Report of the Unit­ed Nations AI Advi­so­ry Body iden­ti­fied a list of “ear­ly promis­es of AI help­ing to address cli­mate change” (Unit­ed Nations AI Advi­so­ry Body, Inter­im Report: Gov­ern­ing AI for Human­i­ty [Decem­ber 2023], 3). The doc­u­ment observed that, “tak­en togeth­er with pre­dic­tive sys­tems that can trans­form data into insights and insights into actions, AI-enabled tools may help devel­op new strate­gies and invest­ments to reduce emis­sions, influ­ence new pri­vate sec­tor invest­ments in net zero, pro­tect bio­di­ver­si­ty, and build broad-based social resilience” (ibid.).

[174] “The cloud” refers to a net­work of phys­i­cal servers through­out the world that enables users to store, process, and man­age their data remotely.

[175] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 9: AAS 107 (2015), 850.

[176] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 106: AAS 107 (2015), 890.

[177] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 60: AAS 107 (2015), 870.

[178] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), pars. 3, 13: AAS 107 (2015), 848.852.

[179] Augus­tine, De Civ­i­tate Dei, XIX, 13, 1: PL 41, 640.

[180] Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), pars. 77–82: AAS 58 (1966), 1100–1107; Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), pars. 256–262: AAS 112 (2020), 1060–1063; Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (4 April 2024), pars. 38–39; Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, pars. 2302–2317.

[181] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 78: AAS 58 (1966), 1101.

[182] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 6: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 3.

[183] Cf. Cat­e­chism of the Catholic Church, pars. 2308–2310.

[184] Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), pars. 80–81: AAS 58 (1966), 1103–1105.

[185] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 6: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 3. Cf. Id., Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 2: “We need to ensure and safe­guard a space for prop­er human con­trol over the choic­es made by arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence pro­grams: human dig­ni­ty itself depends on it.”

[186] Fran­cis, Address at the G7 Ses­sion on Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence in Bor­go Egnazia (Puglia) (14 June 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 14 June 2024, 2. Cf. Per­ma­nent Observ­er Mis­sion of the Holy See to the Unit­ed Nations, Holy See State­ment to Work­ing Group II on Emerg­ing Tech­nolo­gies at the UN Dis­ar­ma­ment Com­mis­sion (3 April 2024): “The devel­op­ment and use of lethal autonomous weapons sys­tems (LAWS) that lack the appro­pri­ate human con­trol would pose fun­da­men­tal eth­i­cal con­cerns, giv­en that LAWS can nev­er be moral­ly respon­si­ble sub­jects capa­ble of com­ply­ing with inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law.”

[187] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 258: AAS 112 (2020), 1061. Cf. Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 80: AAS 58 (1966), 1103–1104.

[188] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 80: AAS 58 (1966), 1103–1104.

[189] Cf. Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 6: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 3: “Nor can we ignore the pos­si­bil­i­ty of sophis­ti­cat­ed weapons end­ing up in the wrong hands, facil­i­tat­ing, for instance, ter­ror­ist attacks or inter­ven­tions aimed at desta­bi­liz­ing the insti­tu­tions of legit­i­mate sys­tems of gov­ern­ment. In a word, the world does not need new tech­nolo­gies that con­tribute to the unjust devel­op­ment of com­merce and the weapons trade and con­se­quent­ly end up pro­mot­ing the fol­ly of war.”

[190] John Paul II, Act of Entrust­ment to Mary for the Jubilee of Bish­ops (8 Octo­ber 2000), par. 3: Inseg­na­men­ti XXIII/2 (200), 565.

[191] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 79: AAS 107 (2015), 878.

[192] Cf. Bene­dict XVI, Encycli­cal Let­ter Car­i­tas in Ver­i­tate (29 June 2009), par. 51: AAS 101 (2009), 687.

[193] Cf. Dicas­t­ery for the Doc­trine of the Faith, Dec­la­ra­tion Dig­ni­tas Infini­ta (8 April 2024), pars. 38–39.

[194] Cf. Augus­tine, Con­fes­siones, I, 1, 1: PL 32, 661.

[195] Cf. John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Sol­lic­i­tu­do Rei Socialis (30 Decem­ber 1987), par. 28: AAS 80 (1988), 548: “[T]here is a bet­ter under­stand­ing today that the mere accu­mu­la­tion of goods and ser­vices […] is not enough for the real­iza­tion of human hap­pi­ness. Nor, in con­se­quence, does the avail­abil­i­ty of the many real ben­e­fits pro­vid­ed in recent times by sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy, includ­ing the com­put­er sci­ences, bring free­dom from every form of slav­ery. On the con­trary, […] unless all the con­sid­er­able body of resources and poten­tial at man’s dis­pos­al is guid­ed by a moral under­stand­ing and by an ori­en­ta­tion towards the true good of the human race, it eas­i­ly turns against man to oppress him.” Cf. ibid., pars. 29, 37: AAS 80 (1988), 550–551.563–564.

[196] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 14: AAS 58 (1966), 1036.

[197] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Dilex­it Nos (24 Octo­ber 2024), par. 18: L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Octo­ber 2024, 5.

[198] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Dilex­it Nos (24 Octo­ber 2024), par. 27: L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Octo­ber 2024, 6.

[199] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Dilex­it Nos (24 Octo­ber 2024), par. 25: L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Octo­ber 2024, 5–6.

[200] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 105: AAS 107 (2015), 889. Cf. R. Guar­di­ni, Das Ende der Neuzeit, Würzburg 19659, 87 ff. (en. tr. The End of the Mod­ern World, Wilm­ing­ton 1998, 82–83).

[201] Sec­ond Vat­i­can Ecu­meni­cal Coun­cil, Pas­toral Con­sti­tu­tion Gaudi­um et Spes (7 Decem­ber 1965), par. 34: AAS 58 (1966), 1053.

[202] John Paul II, Encycli­cal Let­ter Redemp­tor Homin­is (4 March 1979), par. 15: AAS 71 (1979), 287–288.

[203] N. Berdyaev, “Man and Machine,” in C. Mitcham – R. Mack­ey, eds., Phi­los­o­phy and Tech­nol­o­gy: Read­ings in the Philo­soph­i­cal Prob­lems of Tech­nol­o­gy, New York 19832, 212–213.

[204] N. Berdyaev, “Man and Machine,” 210.

[205] G. Bernanos, “La révo­lu­tion de la lib­erté” (1944), in Id., Le Chemin de la Croix-des-Âmes, Rocher 1987, 829.

[206] Cf. Fran­cis, Meet­ing with the Stu­dents of the Bar­bari­go Col­lege of Pad­ua in the 100th Year of its Foun­da­tion (23 March 2019): L’Osservatore Romano, 24 March 2019, 8. Cf. Id., Address to Rec­tors, Pro­fes­sors, Stu­dents and Staff of the Roman Pon­tif­i­cal Uni­ver­si­ties and Insti­tu­tions (25 Feb­ru­ary 2023).

[207] Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 112: AAS 107 (2015), 892–893.

[208] Cf. Bonaven­ture, Hex. XIX, 3; Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Fratel­li Tut­ti (3 Octo­ber 2020), par. 50: AAS 112 (2020), 986: “The flood of infor­ma­tion at our fin­ger­tips does not make for greater wis­dom. Wis­dom is not born of quick search­es on the inter­net nor is it a mass of unver­i­fied data. That is not the way to mature in the encounter with truth.”

[209] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVIII World Day of Social Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (24 Jan­u­ary 2024): L’Osservatore Romano, 24 Jan­u­ary 2024, 8.

[210] Ibid.

[211] Ibid.

[212] Fran­cis, Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Gaudete et Exsul­tate (19 March 2018), par. 37: AAS 110 (2018), 1121.

[213] Fran­cis, Mes­sage for the LVII World Day of Peace (1 Jan­u­ary 2024), par. 6: L’Osservatore Romano, 14 Decem­ber 2023, 3. Cf. Id., Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 112: AAS 107 (2015), 892–893; Id., Apos­tolic Exhor­ta­tion Gaudete et Exsul­tate (19 March 2018), par. 46: AAS 110 (2018), 1123–1124.

[214] Cf. Fran­cis, Encycli­cal Let­ter Lauda­to Si’ (24 May 2015), par. 112: AAS 107 (2015), 892–893.

[215] Cf. Fran­cis, Address to the Par­tic­i­pants in the Sem­i­nar “The Com­mon Good in the Dig­i­tal Age” (27 Sep­tem­ber 2019): AAS 111 (2019), 1570–1571.

[01166-EN.01] [Orig­i­nal text: Italian]