SPEAKER_02 0:00

From the McGrath Institute for Church Life and OSV Podcast, this is Church Life Today. I'm Leonard DiLorenzo. What are we building? Pope Leo XIV puts that question to us in his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. The title itself echoes Mary's Magnificat, the song of a humanity whose grandeur is recognized in being lifted up by God, not in seizing heaven for itself. That grandeur, the Pope insists, is revealed in its fullness only in Christ and threatened today by new forms of dehumanization. The encyclical takes its bearings from two biblical images. On the one hand, the Tower of Babel, where a unified language and a unified technology serve a project that aspires to reach heaven without God. On the other hand, the rebuilding of Jerusalem under Nehemiah, where a city is reborn through prayer and the shared responsibility of all. Pope Leo asks us which of these we are building. Technology, he reminds us, is never neutral. It takes the character of those who devise, finance, and deploy it. Brett Robinson joins me today to help us read this encyclical. Brett is my colleague here in the McGrath Institute for Church Life, where he leads our efforts in Catholic media studies. Brett, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:48

Hi, Lenny. Good to see you.

SPEAKER_02 1:50

So, Brett, in this encyclical, the Pope's approach seems to be to assess AI according to the principles of the church's social doctrine. So I thought a place to start would be to ask you how does this approach shift the way in which discussion about AI is typically unfolding today?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yeah, it's a great question. I think a lot of AI discussion gets trapped in a closed loop of ethics, which is helpful to a certain degree, but it depends on which ethical system you're applying. So the discussion tends to break down if you don't have a shared set of principles. And so I think the first bold move the Pope is making in this encyclical is to remind us all that the magisterium has this long tradition of social teaching that is ethical for sure, it's moral, but it's a structure inaugurated by his predecessor that is also contextually pliable. So it changes or can be reinterpreted over time as the context changes. So he does this really kind of thorough bibliography at the beginning of all of the social teaching documents from Pope Leo XIII to Francis and himself to say, look, some of these problems are perennial. They're economic, they're political, they're related to industrialization, modernization. But in each instance, um, some of these conditions change. And as Pope Francis said, we're living through a change of era. And so it's appropriate, I think, that he reminds us of this lineage of teaching and then gives us this structure for thinking about these things that doesn't get trapped in these closed kind of ethical loops.

SPEAKER_02 3:34

Yeah, that long bibliography, as you called it, at the beginning, um, is somewhat striking. Like you expect, as you come into this encyclical, to be diving into um facets of AI right from the beginning, because it's there in the subtitle of the document. And yet you spend a good bit of time basically going through a short lesson on what social doctrine is and then the development of social doctrine over the last hundred plus years. As he makes the case at one point, or he he explains it, he says, you know, seen in from this way, social doctrine, the social doctrine of the church is a theology of communion in history. So I was wondering your thoughts on um why this particular encyclical uh would need to, or did it need to sort of repropose church teaching, the way in which church teaching develops over time or is applied over time, and the reproposal, I suppose, of social doctrine to today's age, to today's thinkers and readers.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Yeah, and I guess I should have said at the beginning, I mean, the the end of all of this social teaching is uh human flourishing. So there's a lot of um talk of economics and structures and political problems. Um, but to what end are we solving these things? Because if we leave these things to the market, obviously the market is going to want to maximize and optimize um for commercial potential. Uh politics has its own pathologies around um temptations towards totalitarian control and other breakdowns in the social order. So I think it's really wise to start with um naming those things from the church's perspective, but he's very careful about saying this is not the church imposing these things on history or the world. This is actually kind of an accompaniment. It's a con it's a conversation, it's a dialogue between this perennial teaching and these shifting conditions. So if the end of all this is human flourishing, then obviously AI raises serious questions about what that looks like because we're dealing with a system that uh, in some sense, extends uh human abilities and cognition and consciousness and so on. Um, that's a pretty intimate um imposition by uh a system that's starting to structure the way we live our daily lives. Um I've always said, you know, look, the industrial era was very much about extending our physical power. The information era is about extending our cognitive powers, our intelligence. Um, but a lot of that's invisible, right? Like we can see strip mines, we can see factories, and we can see the environmental impact of those things and the impact on workers. And this is what all his predecessors were trying to address. It's harder to see the effects of this, right? Because it's, I mean, we see the screen, we see the machine, but the effect it's having on us is far more psychological and spiritual. Uh, and so who better than the church to uh try to draw these things to the surface and have this conversation anew?

SPEAKER_02 6:45

You know, as you put it there, that uh what he's uh putting forth is not the church as imposing a view, but rather um providing uh a sort of necessary accompaniment and discernment, method of discernment for the world. And it seems within the uh text itself, what he's calling uh all of us back to is a way of uh wanting to engage or uh awakening again to a to a mode of engagement with one another that especially artificial intelligence holds with it the promise of ease and speed that actually gets rid of the necessity of co-laboring. And so, you know, I wonder the way in which uh um this this thought is just occurring to me listening to you uh present what you were presenting there, uh the way in which uh the theological anthropology in this, the the sort of vision of the human person is itself sort of carried forward in the way in which the church makes herself available to the world as a co-laborer, as an as one who accompanies and helps with discernment.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, and I think it was really significant, and this may be forgotten in the annals of history and reflecting on this document, that at the um press conference or promulgation of this document, um, seated beside him was Christopher Olaf from Anthropic. Okay, so this introduces a really interesting dynamic that we haven't seen before, where a captain of industry sits at the same dais as the Pope to have this conversation. But I think what he's doing is he's modeling this co-laboring that you're describing, right? We're not facing a faceless uh alien um technology that's abstract and hard to pin down. We're actually talking about other people. We're talking about people who are creating these things, what their values are, what their hopes are. Um, I don't know that the church is totally aligned with what Anthropic's even doing, and that's a big risk he takes by including someone like Chris Farola in this because obviously that excludes people like Sam Altman and others who are working at at similar companies. But I think he's modeling for us like how do you have this dialogue? And I think these people are sincere and they're genuine and wanting to do something right by humanity and developing these things. Um, but that that image is gonna stick in my mind. I could you imagine, like in the industrial age, the Pope sitting next to Henry Ford and having this conversation. It didn't happen. Um and maybe that was part of why we didn't make as much progress, because they operated in these sort of two different swim lanes. So this is a big move. We'll see how it plays out. Uh, even if some of the church's DNA infiltrates these enterprises like anthropic, that's a good thing. Uh, because they're gonna move forward no matter what. So having them at the table is uh, I think a wise move.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Well, it was interesting to see the way in which um some of the media outlets covered the release of the encyclical. First of all, it got a lot of attention in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal. Uh, but the headlines seem to be something about uh, you know, Pope Leo XIV calls AI uh the new Tower of Babel, or, you know, sends a warning shot across uh the AI aristocracy or something like that. It's very armed sort of uh contentious language that was used to present the new encyclical. And of course, that's going to generate clicks and get people to read because it seems like, oh, now we have a battle and somebody's uh coming, coming up to to take take on the giant. But as you're pointing out, this is quite the opposite of the presentation, the promulgation of the the encyclical itself, and also what he's talking about within. Um what do you read from that? Or what do you take from that?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Yeah, it's really smart to point out the media coverage of it because I think that does end up shaping the reception of it for all sorts of reasons. There's a scholar at Santa Croce in Rome who's who did this for Vatican II and looked at how embedded journalists there were shaping the narrative around what was happening at the council. And this is a more modern phenomenon around you know the interplay of media, church, and society. So it's not as if the Pope has an unfiltered channel to the church and the people to have this conversation. It gets filtered through media, and then that ends up affecting the narrative. And so I think he's keenly aware of that. And um, one of the other sound bites that, of course, made the rounds was his line, one line from the encyclical about disarming AI. Um, and so yeah, in a conflict-based journalistic environment, these are the things journalists are going to pick up on. Um, chapter five, I think, is all about all about war. So a lot of the headlines picked up on that. Um, so they want, you know, conflict cells. And um it's not to say there isn't a conflict here. I mean, I think the way he phrases it when he mentions disarming is that AI is an environment, um, which is kind of a callback in my mind to McLuhan, that Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian Catholic media scholar, who said, yeah, these media tools aren't just tools. They're actually environments that we inhabit. Um, so he seems to be saying at the same time, this is an environment we inhabit, and therefore we have to have kind of an ecological mindset, environmental mindset about how to address all the different layers and all the different interconnections between education and politics and economics that this impacts. But at the same time, it's a, I don't want to say hostile environment, but it's an environment that is not automatically conducive to human flourishing. And so there have to be calibrations made to make sure that that happens. And so laying down the church's teaching on this from the dignity of the human person to the importance of work to the reapplication of subsidiarity and solidarity as principles that aren't, again, just abstract terms that we use, but that are um plans for life about how you live out uh the responses to these big historical changes that we're facing. So he's he's walking a tightrope here, and and he's not afraid to point out the paradoxes of all this, um, that it is fraught with with danger. Uh, and yet, as a church, of course, we're full of hope and there's nothing to fear because it starts with, as he does, with our relationship to God. So we can build in two ways. One is to build Babel and ignore God and build something for ourselves. And the other is to build um the kingdom, and which involves, and this is where humans get a little squirmy, some level of self-contempt. Like we are not sufficient, we are not actually made to be uber efficient, we are inefficient, fallen, weak creatures, and without his help, we can't um we can't build. So um the construction site metaphor appears throughout. We're building something, something's being built, um, and we have to build together. Uh so that I think that's his um that's his angle on it. And I think it's it's fruitful because it gives us some things that you and I can do um uh to to respond.

SPEAKER_00 14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:11

Of course, the other image that he starts with, it's it's Babel on the one hand, and then on the other, it's the um the story of Nehemiah. So of of course people are very familiar with the Nehemiah by that one. Remind me of the story of Neomia. Exactly. I had to I had to go back and read it. I was like, thanks, Pope Leo. Um but you know, the the difference in these two uh narratives is striking, and you can almost bring it down to singular figures in the narrative in uh with the Tower of Babel, which takes place in Genesis 11. What is not in view immediately is is the list of figures that are named in Genesis 10. And the one who's really uh primary there in Genesis 10 is the figure of Nimrod, who Augustine makes a lot out of, for example, in the City of God. Nimrod is the first man of strength in the world. And it seems that he's the first empire builder and that the Tower of Babel, though it's not explicitly stated in the text, the Tower of Babel is his project. And it seems that it is everybody uh going forward in consensus, but really it's a hidden agenda that's coming through and the control of language and the control of aims and meaning. Whereas on the other hand, you have Nehemiah, who's a penitent and a convener, right? He begins when he receives his call or the invitation to return to Jerusalem and to rebuild. He begins with fan with uh fasting and weeping and then goes through and calls together the people to rebuild. So to think about the environments as you were talking about, AI not just as a tool, but also as an environment that we enter into, um, those decisions about what is taking place with the technology are in some ways made before we ever arrive at the use of the tool. But on the other hand, or in the in the other way, uh is something that we have a responsibility toward in order to uh build the kind of environment and foster the kind of environment we want for ourselves and for others. So maybe I'll take your invitation here. And you said um, you know, he does bring it to things that we ourselves might do. What uh what stood out to you there when he when he turns his attention to that, to thinking about this large, massive uh world type movement and the and the coming of AI, uh, but then bringing it down to more of the individual level for those who aren't captains of industry, what is it that we might do?

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Yeah, I I think he's really good at distinguishing or making distinctions between the different layers of the environment or the ecosystem that we inhabit. So it's not as if the public policy regulators are um, you know, sort of leading the charge. And as long as they come up with good restrictions and regulations, everything will be fine. I I think he distributes that responsibility across all domains. And as an educator, you know, I went straight to chapter four, as I'm sure you did, and to think about the impact on education, which I think is more than just like what happens in the classroom. I think he's trying to say that education uh writ large is uh something about formation, something about how we understand the world that we live in, whether we get that from a textbook, a teacher, a parent, a priest. Um that charge is everybody's. Um, for parents, obviously, uh creating home environments that are um he uses the term digital sobriety at one point, but um have a certain sobriety in the sense that some of these things don't need to be given to a five-year-old, a six-year-old. Um, there's a certain level of childhood development, whether it's emotional or psychological or cognitive development, that has to take place before one can introduce this kind of superpowered tool for potentially enhancing those things. You can't enhance something that's not already there. So uh the child who's developing uh in school and at home needs a set of tools. And you mentioned language with Babel, and I think that's really keen because this all does come back to language and and the word. And I think this is where the theological piece comes in, because uh if you control language, then you sort of control the whole thing. Um this has been debated on recent podcasts because he's using terms like human dignity and um subsidiarity. And the question is, do we do we all know what that means? Do we all know what dignity means? Because he even distinguishes between moral dignity and social dignity, and then what he calls ontological dignity, which is you know being made in the image and likeness of God. But I think sometimes we regress and certain in the in the secular sense, the social dignity becomes the prevailing definition where it's like, well, you know, if you have means and you have and you're you know a good citizen and um you're well educated, that gives you a certain dignity. Well, no, you don't acquire dignity, right? You're born with it. Um and even that nuance in the term creates, you know, an issue if you're not speaking the same language. So when you're bringing the people from anthropic to the table, are you you're using the same words, but are you using the same meaning? And um, I think where he ends with the incarnation is is where we start, which is um the end of human flourishing and the beginning of human flourishing is our identification in Christ. And so he is the word uh made flesh. And so, in a sense, he is the um, he was rendered at the perfect bitrate for us to understand, right? So AI gives us and the internet gives us this huge flood of information, promises enlightenment and deeper knowledge, and yet seems to always underdeliver or confuse or isolate. Um, and I think that's because, not because the information itself is inherently malicious, but because there's so much of it. And how do you make sense of that? So I think when you look at the person of Christ, you have this exemplar and this model of um not just God's promise, but uh an individual, a human being divine who gives us that model. And he has this great little section, which seems like a non-sequitur in a way, but he points out people like Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa and says, we have had models of compassion and dignity throughout history that who are kind of system agnostic in a sense. So, like Dorothy Day is reacting to the excesses of capitalism. Martin Luther King is reacting to the civil rights crisis. Um, and so they're doing it in the way that he's trying to do it, which is what is the context I'm in? What are the conditions that I'm in? And then how do I model Christ in this situation? Right. And some of that is some self-abnegation, like it's not acquiring more power. Uh, and then the call to the companies and the captains of industry is like, you know, if Dorothy Day is our model or Mother Teresa, how do we empower them? Like, could could we use technology to help them? Maybe not. But if if that's our aim, then I think the outcomes are much better than if the aim is often unspoken but obvious, which is, you know, capitalizing on markets and and building bigger companies. Um and so that's that's a radical call. And if companies are, you know, open to that, um that could be a big shift in in how we how we deal with these things.

SPEAKER_02 21:45

For a moment there, as you were speaking about those, I was I was thinking of the uh the old Apple ads. Is it the Think Different campaign? Um with the world movers and shakers, with you know, it would show Einstein, it would show Mohammed Ali, and it would show those who Did not conform and therefore changed. So I'm just gonna throw it out to you. And if it goes nowhere, just tell me and we'll we'll redirect. But how is what Popolio is doing here different from what Apple was doing in those that advertising campaign?

SPEAKER_01 22:18

Yeah, I think yeah, the the campaign tagline was the crazy ones or something. So it was this yeah, this appeal to the countercultural um figures that that changed things. Um and I think they are um they're figures that well it's a mixed bag, right? I mean you had I think there was Picasso and Muhammad Ali and other people, but I think it's I think it's someone who transcends the moment, um, who breaks the mold of um what the conventional wisdom is, uh, and often for good, right? And and for some form of progress, let's call it. And uh that's another term that's contested and that the Pope spends some careful time on, which is what is progress? And progress for him is is human flourishing. Um, do are we becoming more human or even yeah. So so when you hear Silicon Valley talk about things like um transhumanism and post-humanism and some of these agendas to uh optimize humanity, um, to give us some like counterfeit version of immortality or power. Um, you know, one of them might appeared in an Apple ad, who knows? But I think not for the right reasons. Um so of course, you know I wrote a whole book on this, but but Apple, yeah, Apple computer, I mean, computer companies in general, I think, because of the nature of what they're doing, have this like revolutionary spirit. Like we're building something that's gonna change not just like how you do your work, but like it's gonna change society. It's gonna change like how we run everything. Um so there's a there's almost a messianic kind of quality to that way of thinking. And that that can be dangerous. Um and so I think the Pope is trying to steer us in a different direction. Um, you know, he even talks about we need a different uh measure than GDP, um, sort of gross output. We need to think about um whether or not these things that we're doing are enhancing, you know, the dignity of work and shared prosperity and environmental protection. Um, and those often don't have market incentives. So um so it's yeah, it's it's a uh it's I think it's a harder call for the people in charge of these systems. It's not so much for us, um, because we have, you know, we're not well, maybe you are a stockholder, but we we have we have a we still have agency. Um and there's a lot of I think grassroots movements towards things like sovereign AI and things where individuals have rights to things. The Pope talks about this in in his conversation about human rights, that you know, we also should have rights to things like um transparency on algorithms and ownership of our own data. And those aren't realized yet, and they could be uh with the right regulations and political pressure and economic arrangements. So that would be really interesting um to see what that looks like. Um, but we're not there yet.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

So yeah, that phrase you use thinking about those in the Apple ad to transcend the moment, that really seems to capture perhaps the difference that is being uh pointed out here that um part of the false promise of AI. It's not that AI itself makes those promises, the promise that's attached to the use of the technology is that you can transcend the limits, transcend the difficulty, transcend the entanglements that you would rather not be entangled with. But the the anthropological call here is that actually to be really human means to be caught up in, to be engaged with, to have personal responsibility. And in fact, and this is the thing we probably least want to hear, to embrace our weakness and limits. And maybe that's part of the difference between Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King and the others, Mother Teresa that he presents, though they might appear in an Apple ad, they would have appeared for different purposes there. Apple would have used them for a different reason because they went above the system, they got out of the entanglement, they showed a different way. But in fact, as seen through the incarnation, these are precisely the ones who entered so deeply into the social situation, into their communities, who took on the burdens, who embraced the weaknesses and limits that they made Christ present right there. And I want to maybe just draw our attention to that. It seemed that a consistent call throughout the encyclical was precisely what I just mentioned, like this call to embrace limits and weakness. I think maybe the first time it appears, it might have appeared earlier, was in uh paragraph 12. It says building for the common good means accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected. And this comes up something like this over and over again. How do you hear that, Brett? That what is the the necessity or the need for our own human flourishing in terms of embracing and accepting weakness and limitation?

SPEAKER_01 27:42

Yeah, we don't want to have limits. I I think we we want to be we we think of freedom as as living without limits. Um and the church has always taught that that that's you know that free will is ultimately will to do the good. And so that is a quote unquote limit on what our free will uh allows or enables. Um because we know that um free will to do the not good is a form of slavery, which he actually points out in chapter five as well, where he talks about education and work and family, and then all of a sudden talks about slavery. And I think that part of that is about human trafficking and other things, but I think it's also a form of kind of social or psychological slavery in which we um, like the Tower of Babel, imagine that the um freedom from all limits gives us all you know infinite freedom, which it actually gives us the opposite, which is slavery. So um so that I think the limit piece is interesting because um it also introduces this idea of contingency, like we are dependent creatures and um our existence is contingent on a lot of things. And the way I've experienced this personally in in my life is that um the way that grace works is always in response to contingency and limits. So that free gift of transcendence and transformation does not come from within, it comes from without. Uh and it's always a response or where God's drawing us out of a contingent situation that appears sort of hopeless or poorly defined. And he gives us the grace to transcend that. And so my worry is if you if your pursuit is to remove all limits and contingency, then where is grace operating? Um and you can see this practically, I think, in AI. Um just, you know, our kids go to schools that are really intentional about trying to cultivate things like wonder um and curiosity. Um, if you erase that or flatten that by saying, like, yeah, you could go out in nature and discover some things, but you could also type in this prompt and learn all of that and then some, um, that removes the contingency of it. Like if I don't go out and I don't have that contingent experience in which something unexpected might happen, or I might have a spark or a revelation when a bird alights on a tree that I had never seen before, and I have this moment of, you know, experience of the sublime or something peaceful in me, um, I lose that if I try to automate or optimize my discovery of those things through a language model. So being open to experience, being open to embodied encounter and encounters with nature, this is where I think his emphasis on relationality is so important. We're relational beings. And so uh education is not so much about the infusion of knowledge or transmission of knowledge and information, it's really about the relationships you form with other people. And those have limits. Like you can't extract or manipulate or dominate somebody else and have a positive and fruitful relationship with them. And so um education, family life, um, parish life introduces has these limits on it for a specific purpose, which is our flourishing, which sounds paradoxical, but it is that's the nature of our faith, is it is a paradox. Um, it's in the emptying of the self that we are filled up. So um unless we embrace that paradox, we we don't move forward in the in the sense of progress that I think he's trying to promote.

SPEAKER_02 31:27

I'm gonna actually read this paragraph. It's 239 where he calls for the cultivation of relationships. But then I'm gonna ask you, Brett, uh, we're gonna go into Brett unfiltered time. So I'm gonna ask you what what uh surprised you or delighted you here uh in the encyclical? Uh, did anything disappoint you? Did you find things missing? We'll go there. But on precisely this point that Brett was just talking about, the cultivation of relationships, we might think that actually the other person is a limitation on me, right? Like their good actually directs and makes a call upon me. So it's not just a free reign of whatever I might like and caring for the other person's good has a claim on me. So and I think, you know, this is in mind something like that when he writes in paragraph 239. So this will be about a minute of me reading. Here we go. He says, let us cultivate relationships. In an era that favors speed and fragmentation, the human person still yearns to receive care and recognition from attentive minds, kind words, and hands capable of tenderness. The digital culture multiplies connections and offers new opportunities for interaction. Yet the human heart retains an irrevocable need for genuine closeness. I invite everyone to cherish places and times where physical presence remains crucial, such as shared meals, Christian community gatherings, time spent with the lonely and serving the poor. These are signs of a humanity that continues to believe that every person's body is a dwelling place of God and a temple of the Holy Spirit. It is precisely this covenant between glory and fragility that becomes the criterion for evaluating the anthropological models offered by contemporary culture. You can almost like have an entire course on that paragraph, right? I mean, it's it captures so much of what he's seeking to do in the encyclical, it seems. All right. Any you you were welcome if you have any thoughts on that, there it is to the other things.

SPEAKER_01 33:24

There's the paradox is how is fragility glorious, right? Um that's that's a brain teaser. Um, but it is, and and we we know that through experience, and we know it, we only know it through those practices you just mentioned. And I know you did, or we did. I think it was the last podcast we did together on Delxit Nos, which was on the Sacred Heart. On the Sacred Heart. And um, there's a new book on the Sacred Heart, by the way, by Lenny DiLorenzo. Hey, product placement. Um so I I think uh a lot of people point to La Dato C as like, you know, the Pope Francis' sort of critique of the technocratic paradigm, but I would encourage people to read Delectant Notes because it it touches on these same things, which are these very sort of intimate embodied encounters with things, with people that make us human, make us make our experience magnificent. I think he calls at one point life a tragic and not stupendous, but um splendid adventure. That's what he says. It's a tragic and splendid adventure. Um, and I think in these moments of being with the poor, being with the lonely, um, even just sharing a meal with a family, you have that experience of of both. Um and so I think, yeah, it it sort of buries the lead in paragraph 239. I mean, I think this is like the the kernel of the whole thing, um, which is why I think the encyclical itself is not called, you know, on AI. It's it's it's magnificent humanity. And and this is what makes us magnificent, um, is that experience of limits and then that transcendent experience of entering into those limits with other people, with, with the created order, um, and coming out the other side with with a much more glorious appreciation for the gifts that we're given in our relationships to each other and to the world and to God. So um, but you can't experience it unless you do it. And um, I think the temptation with AI or any technology is uh as a shortcut, a workaround to avoid some of those uh what seem to be inconvenient or painful circumstances. Um and so we don't want to erase those. Those are those are what make us human and and ultimately give us joy. So um so I think you spot on there, and I, and of course, that section is is the the more theological section of the document, which you asked me what I my kind of critique. I I think I would move that to the front. Yeah. If I could edit the Pope. But uh I see what he's doing. I mean, he's trying to speak to the culture first in terms that um everybody understands, and then accompanying people on this path of discovery to the to the telos of all of this, which is the theological understanding of all this. So um, yeah, I mean, I guess I uh so I'm a media ecologist and I think a lot about um the impact of technology on human life and human flourishing. Um I think he's right to point out all of these structural issues, um, but I do think it it's not it's not discouraging, but sometimes it feels like, well, what am I gonna do? Right. Like I can't, I'm not a regulator, I'm not a president, I'm not a uh I don't own an AI company. Um, so what am I supposed to do? Uh and he does he does call that out. He says, look, I know this sounds like you can't do anything, but you can. And he and he offers some practical um things to to think about. So um I I worry about what um not just like how the tool's being used and whether it's being used well or not being used well, and what kind of regulations we need to ensure that, but um what is the effect it's having on us. Um and I think with social media, we saw tribalism, right? We saw people get into filter bubbles and echo chambers, and and that wasn't great. Um and I think what we're seeing with AI potentially is um a form of solipsism where we get locked in on ourselves. Uh so what used to be talking with other people online, even though you know it had its own pathologies of getting into these echo chambers, was at least with other people, at least for a while until they all became bots. Um but now we're talking to a machine, and you're seeing like these really scary things with people that form relationships with chat bots, they have psychotic breaks because of it, they form new religions or new religious beliefs because of it. Um, and that's just the nature of being in a closed loop. Um Norbert Wiener talks about this. He's the father of cybernetics, and he has a great little book called The Human Use of Human Beings. And it's all communication theory, but the theory is that um as these communication systems get more advanced, um the feedback loop closes. So, you know, we talk to the machine, the machine learns about us and then spits out things that then end up shaping us. And so um that's why I think what you described earlier in that passage, um, which are those non-technological moments of shared meals and being with the poor, that's like an open system. That's like um anything can happen. Um, there's a lot of self-discovery that happens there. There's a lot of practicing of the theological virtues that happens there. Um, but in closed systems, you don't have that as much. Um, McLuhan calls them servo-mechanisms, right? Like you have the thermostat on the wall, and the thermostat reacts to the room temperature and turns on the furnace, you know, when it gets too cold and turns it off when it's warm again. And that's a closed-loop system. And, you know, we what we don't want is AI to be kind of our thermostat, right? That it's it's sort of reading the ambient temperature and giving us what we think we need to stay at a perfect 72 degrees. But maybe sometimes we need to feel the heat, and maybe sometimes we need to feel cold. And because that's how we develop fortitude. That's how we get stronger and that's how we grow.

SPEAKER_02 39:31

Well, you talked about that in the you know, three areas for further reflection in the personal use of technology. One of the things he he invited us to think about is the ease with which results are obtained. And then secondly, the impression of objectivity. Seems that it's giving us objective views on things, but it's always curated or cultivated by something beforehand. But then third is precisely what you're talking about, the simulation of human connection. And at the end of that paragraph, as I remember it, when he's talking about the simulation of human connection, says the real danger is to lose the desire for human connection because you're getting just enough of it in the simulation, right? And precisely what you're talking about, Brett, like you're getting that, I love that image, the thermosat effect, where you're always getting just what you think you want or what's just enough to kind of keep you at homeostasis. Um, but you're not challenged by the by the difficult word, by the surprising, you know, by the surprising revelation, by any of that stuff, because it's always just giving back to you what will satisfy.

SPEAKER_01 40:36

Yeah. Uh what was the question?

SPEAKER_02 40:39

There was no question.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

I was just following up on No, this is only the beginning of it.

SPEAKER_02 40:44

It was really It was probably profound, whatever the question we can listen to this episode together later. We should record this. Oh, we yeah, right. What we'll do, this will be like a meta episode. We will listen to the episode and then we will record us listening to it and following up on things that we left unattended. So all right, let's let's bring this to a close. Any takeaways that you you would have, uh, and it might be any of those things that I mentioned before, surprised or delighted you, uh, disappointments, things that are missing, just let's hear it.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Yeah, well, I I think um I'd like to think of it as like the beginning of a conversation with um the technology world, the world in general, and not, you know, the church has spoken and so be it, sort of thing. Um I think there's a real spirit of synodality, as he says in here, about listening. Um, and and also he has a little section about the church has to do her own examine um and to think about what she's doing in relation to all these things and not just just speak out about what others are doing. Um so I think that that turn is is a call for us to really participate in this work. Um and I think it starts with our our sort of daily habits and and behaviors and how we raise our kids and how we think about education. And um I think a lot of it has to, he talks a lot about subsidiarity, a lot of it has to happen at the local level as a response. So so I think he's he's named both ends of the spectrum here that we need political and economic regulations, but we also need individuals doing this work together um to respond to the moment in in the spirit of the church.

SPEAKER_02 42:27

Excellent. Well, we'll leave it there. Brett, thanks so much for sharing this time.

SPEAKER_01 42:32

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 42:33

And thanks, as always, to all of you for joining us on Church Life Today.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

This has been a production of OSV Podcast. To learn more, visit osvpodcasts.com.