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- Artificial Intelligence, the Papal Encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, and Two Contrasting Biblical Images
The following editorial about Artificial Intelligence, a subject of interest to Waldensians and their friends everywhere, was written by Danielle Garrone and first appeared on the NEV website.
Artificial intelligence has become a part of our daily lives. We are becoming aware of its usefulness as a tool capable of rapidly processing enormous quantities of data. However, we are also aware that, without our knowledge or desire, it can intrude in our everyday lives, for example by collecting and using data, including our personal data, for commercial and propaganda purposes and sometimes even for manipulative or fraudulent purposes. Not to mention its use in warfare…
We sense that AI raises new and urgent ethical, legal, and political issues, which should be addressed with transparent, shared, and binding criteria. We need to ask ourselves who owns AI? Who controls AI? And what are the objectives that should guide its development and further adaptation?
The rapid development of artificial intelligence is a cause for both fascination and fear. How should we evaluate AI, and on the basis of what data? Is that data reliable? And, with what criteria should we evaluate new AI resources and their implications for employment, the economy, education, and culture?
Church leaders and church members are also beginning to question the opportunities, limitations, and risks of AI. In-depth studies are becoming increasingly available to aid in the process of forming judgments about AI. One of these studies, Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas… on the Safeguarding of the Human Person in the Age of Artificial Intelligence is comprehensive, detailed, analytical, fully documented, and well argued. That’s not surprising, given the format and character of an encyclical. On the other hand, given the extremely high stakes, these same five adjectives, comprehensive, detailed, analytical, fully documented, and well argued, can and must characterize all reflections and discussions on the challenges we face in AI. This is even more true in an age of rapid communication, immediate pronouncements, peremptory positions, binary judgments, and facile categorizations of good vs. bad, friend vs. enemy, etc.
The encyclical addresses the opportunities and risks of AI by contrasting two biblical images that suggest two different, indeed entirely opposite, types of construction. As the encyclical says, “on the one hand, the Bible tells of the tower of Babel, where the common work is guided by a plan of domination that ends up dehumanizing (Genesis 11:1-9); on the other hand, the Bible also tells how the ruins of Jerusalem were rebuilt, piece by piece, as a work of shared responsibility (Nehemiah 2:6).
The criteria for addressing technological development and AI, and the consequences of both, are spelled out with a broad reference to the social doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, reaffirming the centrality of the “human person,” whose dignity is conceived in terms of “universal and inviolable human rights.” The protection of the human person is understood in the words of the encyclical as a “search for the common good,” with its first and fundamental implication being “the universal destination of goods that are intended for the benefit of everyone, and that include new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure, and data.” This criterion of the ‘universal destination of goods’ leads to what is defined as an urgent “twofold commitment to both a deepening of scientific research and an exercise of moral and spiritual discernment.” This criterion also leads us to view AI as a “precious aid” that “requires a sober and vigilant approach.” The most recurring term throughout the encyclical (occurring about eighty times, if I counted correctly) is “responsibility.” Quite interesting, especially to our Protestant ears …
Similar documents on AI, also containing analyses, questions, reflections and arguments, are being produced everywhere in the ecumene or universal Christian family, including in our Protestant and Evangelical circles, all intended to provide documented and reliable analyses of developments in AI as well as of their risks and political, legal, ethical, and ideological implications. All of this taken together can help us form a (responsible!) judgement about what we as believers and as citizens want to see happen with AI.
For Catholics, an encyclical is not simply a “memorandum” or a “study document,” but has – as an expression of what they see as the pope’s teaching authority – a guiding value. Magnifica Humanitas deserves to be read thoughtfully by Protestants too. It’s a valuable contribution precisely because of its complexity, its analytical precision, its references to history and culture – especially Christian culture – and its quest for theological discernment. It addresses the same challenges in relation to AI that we too must face both as citizens and as believers.
Daniel Garrone, the author of this editorial about Artificial Intelligence, is the president of the Federation of Protestant Churches in Italy.
The text of the Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical can be found here: https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
AI has already been the subject of one AWS newsletter. The text of that newsletter can be found here: https://www.waldensian.org/ai-may-be-reaching-a-crisis-point/