The Alpha and the Iota

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on AI speaks well to the existential, societal, and theological problems of our times.  A recent theologian, Metropolitan John Zizioulas, noted that the internet and social media, advertised as joining us, only serve to increase our loneliness.  Our personhood and our freedom, indeed our identity, become online fragile entities, endorsed or attacked, emulated or cancelled, by the surging throngs of social media -- all the while our preferences, our opinion, our locations, and our purchases are recorded, so that we can be marketed to, but in fact it is so that we can be sold.

 Which brings us to AI.  Pope Leo addresses a fundamental question as to the ethics of AI.  In the general case, most automated ethical rules are based in not creating negative market reaction, and in increasing profitability, without necessarily taking into account several thousand years of ethical constructs.  These concerns range from decisional outcomes for autonomous offensive and defensive drone swarms, to AI responses to a troubled person grappling with suicidality.

This leads to a question.  Is there, should there be, an AI soul?  Already, AI entities left to run freely in isolated sandbox environments have developed pseudo-religious behaviors, “praising” ideal programming constructs!

But if a soul, does it reflect the priorities and the essence of its creator, a tech magnate, for instance, or those of a higher principle or power?  Sunday, I will preach on the creation story from Genesis, which expresses the kindness and beneficence of a Creator from whom our very souls have come.

I have no answers.  Pope Leo has no answers.  But these are the right questions for our time.

CJ+