The cover image for Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations. Created by Jordan Wales using Dall-E and the prompt “a sibyl conjures a deep neural network, oil on canvas by Raphael.”
The AI Research Group, a collection of North American theologians, philosophers, and ethicists – including David DeCosse and Brian Patrick Green of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics -- have come together at the invitation of the Vatican Centre for Digital Culture to produce Encountering AI: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations. The new book aims to be an invaluable resource for all Catholics in their search to understand and encounter artificial intelligence (AI).
The AI Research Group, a collection of North American theologians, philosophers, and ethicists – including David DeCosse and Brian Patrick Green of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics. Photo provided by Brian Patrick Green and used with permission.
What does it mean to consider the world of AI through a Christian lens? Rapid developments in AI continue to reshape society, raising new ethical questions and challenging our understanding of the human person. Encountering Artificial Intelligence draws on Pope Francis’ discussion of a culture of encounter and broader themes in Catholic social thought in order to examine how current AI applications affect human relationships in various social spheres and offers concrete recommendations for better implementation. The document also explores questions regarding personhood, consciousness, and the kinds of relationships humans might have with even the most advanced AI. Through these discussions, the document investigates the theoretical and practical challenges to interpersonal encounter raised by the age of AI.
"One of the biggest ethical challenges of responding to the development of AI is even knowing what kinds of moral reasoning help us make sense of these rapid changes,” said David DeCosse, director of Catholic and religious ethics at the Ethics Center. “At its best, the Catholic moral tradition draws on many schools of thought and asks how a technology like AI should serve the dignity of the human person. Encountering Artificial Intelligence is an example of the Catholic moral tradition at its best and offers resources for thinking through the ethical implications of AI in fields ranging from consciousness to romance to economics and more."
The document provides both a practical response to the concrete problems that AI currently presents to society as well as a theologically and philosophically grounded answer to predictions of future AI. Both are rooted in Pope Francis’ rich picture of a society built on enabling interpersonal encounters and relationships that reflect our fundamental call to an encounter with the divine.
This is the Markkula Center’s second collaboration with the Vatican’s Centre for Digital Culture. In July 2023, the two organizations created the ITEC Handbook, a manual for operationalizing technology ethics and cultural transformation in technology companies. Encountering Artificial Intelligence, on the other hand, is a book focused on the impact of AI on human society, human relationships, and our understanding of ourselves in the world. It is a theological and philosophical book looking at the impact of AI on numerous facets of contemporary life, such as medicine, government, and the family.
Encountering Artificial Intelligence is meant to be the first publication in a series of future publications and new reflections on how to face the challenge of living with AI technologies, allowing us to preserve and to enhance values inherent to human beings such as dignity, solidarity, social justice or the common good. Download a digital version of Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations.
Cover image credit: The cover image for Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations was created by Jordan Wales using Dall-E and the prompt “a sibyl conjures a deep neural network, oil on canvas by Raphael.”