Pope addresses ethical challenges
of technological progress
Pope Francis meets in Audience with participants at the
meeting on the "Common Good in the Digital Age", promoted by the
Pontifical Council for Culture and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human
Development.
By Vatican News
When Cardinal Ravasi addressed the Pope at the beginning of
the Audience, he said it was the complexity of ongoing scientific research in
the field of digital culture that had inspired the two Vatican Dicasteries to
“join forces”.
From AI to Transhumanism
The Cardinal listed some of the issues discussed during
their meeting: from digital systems to autonomous weaponry, from artificial
intelligence to blockchain, from robotization to transhumanism. The “guiding
star” of their reflections, he said, remained the “value of the common good and
the protection of the dignity of the human person”.
Pope Francis responded by acknowledging “the remarkable
developments in the field of technology, in particular those dealing with
artificial intelligence”, and how these “raise increasingly significant
implications in all areas of human activity”.
Technology and ethics
Referencing his Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si’,
the Pope said “the indisputable benefit that humanity will be able to draw from
technological progress depends on the degree to which the new possibilities at
our disposal are employed in an ethical manner”
He spoke of a “technocratic paradigm” that promises the
imposition of uncontrolled and unlimited progress that endangers the whole of
humanity. Instead, the Pope encouraged concretely fostering “the culture of
encounter and interdisciplinary dialogue”.
The common good
Pope Francis praised the “inclusive and fruitful dialogue”
that characterized the meeting, and that “helps everyone to learn from one
another and does not allow anyone to close themselves off in prearranged
methodologies”.
Commenting on the objectives of the meeting itself, the Pope
recognized the challenge of precisely stating “both theoretical and practical
moral principles” so that “the ethical challenges examined may be addressed
precisely in the context of the common good”.
Robotics
Pope Francis spoke specifically about the positive and
negative roles of robots in the workplace: on the one hand, undertaking
“arduous and repetitive types of work”, on the other, depriving “thousands of
people of work, putting their dignity at risk”.
Artificial intelligence
The Pope also addressed the issue of artificial
intelligence. While allowing “greater access to reliable information”, AI can
also circulate “tendentious opinions and false data” that can “manipulate the
opinions of millions of people, to the point of endangering the very
institutions that guarantee peaceful civil coexistence”, he said.
The good of the individual
Pope Francis added a warning: “If so-called technological
progress were to become an enemy of the common good”, he said, “this would lead
to an unfortunate regression, to a form of barbarism dictated by the law of the
strongest”. “The common good cannot be separated from the specific good of each
individual”.
A better world
The Pope concluded by affirming that “a better world is
possible thanks to technological progress, if this is accompanied by an ethic
inspired by a vision of the common good, an ethic of freedom, responsibility
and fraternity, capable of fostering the full development of people in relation
to others and to the whole of creation”.
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