Heed Pope Leo's warning on AI dangers — and don't let Big Tech police itself
Pope Leo XIV was entirely right in his warning Saturday: The rise of AI poses 'new challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.'
Challenges that all of us need to consider; we'd be crazy to leave it all up to our tech overlords.
The new pope chose the name Leo in tribute to Leo XIII, who faced the moral challenges of the industrial revolution; the new tech revolution will be far more profound.
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Disturbing things like deepfakes, from porn to political deceptions, are the least of it; even Mark Zuckerberg's vision of everyone having a dozen AI 'friends' only scratches the surface.
The industrial revolution gave us machines that could perform physical tasks far beyond human ability; AI will do the same for mental work.
Using AI to cheat is already rampant among college and high-school students, but the 'cheaters' may see more clearly than the outraged old guard: What skills should any of us be developing for the future? Maybe writing papers has become makework.
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The World Economic Forum predicts that AI will result in the loss of 83 million jobs over the next five years alone, creating perhaps 69 million; over the next few decades the tech will make most of today's First World jobs obsolete.
No human will be the smartest one in the room anymore; machines will do virtually every mental task better — even if some human input is vital to success.
Fundamental questions are reopened: What is valuable in any person? What matters in each of us?
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And we can't leave answering those questions, or deciding how we'll deploy the tech, to the geniuses whose 'guidance' left much of the social-media world revolving around clickbait, trolls, 'influencers' and moronic TikTok 'challenges.'
We got widespread partisan censorship, addictive algorithms that poison the minds of kids and little-to-no accountability.
President Donald Trump named David Sacks, former PayPal COO, as America's AI czar: That may be good enough for government work, but these issues go far beyond the government's reach.
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The powers of Big Tech have only their own interests and competition in mind; we need to consider society, human development, individual rights and, as the pope put it, 'the defense of human dignity, justice and labor.'
That demands input and discussion involving not just church leaders, theologians and philosophers but deep thinkers from a vast range of fields.
Techies and politicians will inevitably play roles, but many different voices need to be in the room — and heard and heeded.
The future of AI will significantly shape the future of humanity; Pope Leo is entirely right to insist that humane leaders are deeply involved in charting the course ahead.
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