Shepherding Electric Sheep

AI has made great strides in the past few months, leading to conversations about AI’s role in the world. Is AI-created art art? Is AI going to replace millions of jobs? Is AI’s intelligence going to surpass human intelligence? How is it going to shape our understanding of the world, of information and expression, of consciousness?

Pope Francis recently addressed AI, citing the benefits it can contribute to areas like medicine and engineering, but he also cautioned developers to “respect such values as inclusion, transparency, security, equity, privacy and reliability.” You’ll forgive me if I’m not as trusting as the pope. I don’t trust developers, or rather, the corporations funding AI, to act ethically.

Technology should be used to benefit humanity—to reduce suffering and inequality. And yet, it’s often used for profit—increasing inequality and remaining unaccountable for its consequences on society. With AI, it’s not just about the haves getting the profits and the nots not, but also the impact it will have on information, verification of the truth, and personal/social biases in the coding creating the algorithms.   

But even beyond its use, AI raises other ethical questions. Can an artificial creation become sentient? Would it, in fact, be alive? Does it deserve rights and autonomy? Or are we just anthropomorphizing a computer that we’ve programed to mimic human consciousness and emotions? What happens to our connections if we can’t tell who we’re talking to is human or not? Does it cheapen the human experience if it can be replicated by AI?

I think the questions should be asked and debated long before the technology becomes common-place. Some are having those conversations. In 2021, the Pontifical Council of Culture held a symposium “The Challenge of Artificial Intelligence for Human Society and the Idea of the Human Person.” The panels addressed how and to what extent the emergence of AI requires us to rethink what it means to be human, the prescriptive and normative consequences that AI raises, and humanity and hope in the context of emerging AI.

But I think in the broader society, we lack substantive, ethical conversations on technology in general. Just because we can do something doesn’t necessarily mean we should. And what we allow shapes who we are. We are a society that allows organ transplants, in vitro fertilization, and GMOs. We flirt around the idea of using nuclear weapons and general reject creating human clones (though cloned animals are ok). Why is that? It is about our personal comfort, or are there real ethical lines?

As Christians, we should approach all our actions with ethical concern, including what technology should be embraced, rejected, or used with caution. I don’t know how much AI will disrupt society nor its true impact. I don’t know what social and ethical consequences it may bring. But I do know we need to be aware of the ethical implications of new technology and address what is and isn’t worth society’s acceptance. We need to form our consciences before the robots do.