A nice post on LinkedIn that speaks of the first three days of the Pope who coincide with the themes that has been carrying out for some years already: “but I remain humble …”. Don Luca Peyron is theologian and ironic, more than anything else both together, but it becomes very serious when he feels how artificial intelligence is a theme that the Church has to face with speed and commitment: “Fortunately, Francesco had already begun to talk about it, Leo XIV will surely give continuity. The fact that he said that the choice of his name is a large part from this aspect, is a spur to do more”.
Don Luca Di Ai has been talking about it for years, he is a professor of the theology of digital transformation at the Catholic of Milan, as well as director of the university pastoral care in Torin and coordinator of the service for the digital apostolate: “At 23 years old, I dealt with the first in Italy of the relationship between the Internet and law: the great names in the sector did not even know how to turn on a computer, as today they do not know how to handle artificial intelligence. GiulioDori asked me to take the university chair.
So how to deal with the theme Ia linked to faith?
“To intra compared to the announcement of the Gospel and extra compared to dialogue with the world. For this reason I was also the promoter of the Italian Foundation for artificial intelligence applied to industries, which works in Turin on behalf of the government”.
What does the Bible with artificial intelligence have to do with it?
“It has to do with it, but we have to make passages: it is first of all a slippery phrase which means many things. What is certain is that the IA is no longer an instrument, but it is a culture. A method of exercising a certain type of technology that is increasingly the way we read reality and ourselves”.
And what is the danger?
“I make an example: the machine when it is efficient, effective and fast is considered good. If I transpose this criterion to people, only an efficient, effective and fast person becomes good. And this creates a permanent performance anxiety, especially in young people”.
The risk is to feel inadequate.
“That’s right. Then there is the fact that the car not only imitates rather well, but often goes beyond the human in some functions. If I stop exercising my control, reality becomes mediocre statistical. And if I stop thinking why a machine does it for me, will I still be able to have a critical thinking?”.
And therefore it is one -way culture.
“It is the Ikea effect: I ate in the chair of straw children in which my mother, my grandmother, my great -grandmother. My grandchildren ate on a plastic high chair: it is much more comfortable, but our homes risk becoming identical. And democracy is at risk”.
In what sense?
“Artificial intelligence is an instrument of power and an instrument of order, which becomes significant in the hands of very few subjects. If with the algorithms I move the consensus and only four people in the world decide how we have to dress or which high to buy high chair, it is not the skynet of terminator but we are not missing”.
Let’s go back to the Bible …
“Christianity is based on three fundamental ideas: that God exists and is Father Son and Holy Spirit, that God has embodied himself, and that Christ is risen. It means that the human being at the moment in which Christ takes on the flesh, assumes a dignity that he already had partially because he had because the image and likeness of God. But when God himself assumes the flesh, assumes a divine dignity”.
So?
“For Christians, everything that authentically human is authentically divine and divine. It is the meeting point between Christianity and anyone else: pursuing the authenticity and fullness of the human is the goal in which it can also be recognized those who do not believe. The Bible as an anthropological reading code of social coexistence becomes a means of decoding the derivative culture of artificial intelligence, and not only for believers. This is the background link. “
Is there the danger that the IA can turn into a kind of religion?
“An example: if Zuckerberg said that he can solve the problem of solitude by giving a bot to talk to, he creates only an illusion. Dehumanizes, because talking to a car, and beyond the data that I deliver to dear Zuck, does not bring out the human who are”.
So?
“So it is not a danger: it is already happening. If I attribute to the car a position of human partner, even oracle, I really make an idol, that is, a tool of salvation. And I close the circle of human involution”.
What is the antidote?
“Understanding that the car, at most, can transfer a word that informs, which is not the one that performs the word of God with the Word. If I think with the ia to speak with Padre Pio or Jesus Christ, I am satisfied with a stuff that is not only a little less, but it is precisely another thing. A deception”.
And the value of the confession is canceled.
“A car can be an oracle that helps me to be in certain rules. But the encounter with the mercy of God is not to go to ask the priest if what I did is sin or not. Jesus told the Pharisees: passing his life to make laws, but with God you do not have a relationship”
Is it difficult to explain this to young people today?
“No. This year I have already done 94 conferences in schools or universities: the boys are natively aware. The difficult is the next step: how do I not be digital? Someone replies: if it is a legal thing it is right to do it. But I point out that Hitler has also legally risen to power”.
So what can the pontiff do?
“Pope Francis supported those who tried to understand something of these themes when there were those who asked me if I were a booked. Now it is clear that the IA concerns the Church, which is not an instrument but an existential posture.
The risk of absolute monopoly can be scratched not with the laws, but thanks to a conscious public opinion without which we would not be free, here: the Pope can allow even the simplest people to realize that this is not a marginal question. But a path to a more complete democracy “.