WASHINGTON (OSV News) -- Amid tech leaders saying the artificial intelligence industry needs to slow its race to an uncertain future that some warn may be apocalyptic, Georgetown University hosted a dialogue on "AI, Catholic Social Teaching, and Pope Leo's Invitation to Dialogue with the World."
And since the Sept. 9 event, sponsored by Georgetown's Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life, calls for slowing down AI development have only increased.
The Georgetown event drew on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical, released in May, titled "Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence."
Speakers emphasized that the pope's letter offered a clarion call for moral guidance and reflection among all stakeholders, including community members, on the best way to move forward with AI.
"Artificial intelligence is something completely new in the horizon of the history of our civilization," said Archbishop Gabriele G. Caccia, apostolic nuncio to the United States.
The nuncio said Pope Leo didn't pretend to have answers, but he put forward questions about AI "that we have to tackle together," with stakeholders around the table reflecting on technological, economic and political factors posed by advances in artificial intelligence.
The encyclical offers "an invitation for everyone to be part of the future that we have to build," Archbishop Caccia said, noting that the pope has said his encyclical was born from listening to scientists, engineers, public officials, and parents and teachers.
Eduardo Peñalver, the new president of Georgetown University, welcomed people to the dialogue, noting that in the previous week, Georgetown had launched a university-wide initiative focused on developing principles and practices guiding that community's engagement with artificial intelligence.
Kim Daniels, director of the Initiative on Catholic Social Thought and Public Life and dialogue moderator, said "Magnifica Humanitas" "begins a new chapter in the Church's ongoing dialogue with the world on what technological development means for work, for families, for public life and for human dignity. It asks us to consider who this technology is for, and who is being left behind."
The encyclical offers a Christian vision of hope in a fearful time, “and it also calls for a concrete response from us," she added.
Dialogue participant Anna Rowlands emphasized that Pope Leo's encyclical "promotes a rational conversation about the technologies" at a time when there is "magical thinking" that tech can solve all of its own problems, and when some of the discussion centers on transcending human limits.
Rowlands, the St. Hilda Chair in Catholic Social Thought and Practice at the University of Durham in England, is a member of the Vatican's Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development and spoke at the Vatican's launch of "Magnifica Humanitas."
"I think one of the most profound aspects of this encyclical is that human beings are made for and within a world of limits, and limits are something not simply to be overcome," said Rowlands, who underscored that the Catholic Church speaks "from a place of dialogue and accompaniment" when confronting issues like AI.
Noting that he comes at the issue as "a non-Catholic scholar and AI practitioner," participant Vilas Dhar said he appreciates that the encyclical is grounded in the perspective that "any conversation about AI or AI governance doesn't start from the capabilities of the technology. It comes from the worth and the dignity of the person, from the sense that our moral worth is established before we talk about our usefulness or our productivity."
Dhar, president of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, one of the world's foremost philanthropies advancing AI for public purposes, also praised Pope Leo's encyclical for its "moral humility" of recognizing the Church's own failures on the moral question of slavery.
Jasmine Sun, who covers the culture and politics of AI as a contributor at The Atlantic and on her Substack newsletter, noted that her reporting goes beyond Silicon Valley, saying she has traveled to Wisconsin and Michigan to get a ground-level view of the data center backlash in communities.
"We are in a moment now where even the AI industry and the AI ecosystem itself is asking itself these very hard questions about whether the work that they are doing is ethical, whether they are making the right decision by continuing to build a technology that they themselves wonder if it will herald the apocalypse," she said.
Two AI researchers have warned that the technology could lead to human extinction, and on Sept. 12, The Washington Post reported that Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei issued an essay calling for the AI industry to slow its pace, a stance that was supported by OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman and SpaceXAI founder Elon Musk.
Speaking at the Georgetown dialogue, Sun said, "Even in San Francisco, folks who are not necessarily Catholics, are looking again for true moral leadership, something that is guided not by the pursuit of profit and productivity and efficiency alone, but a deeper sense of values, and I think that's something that 'Magnifica Humanitas' offers."
Dialogue participant Molly Kinder joked that she personally had anticipated the encyclical "like an 11-year-old at midnight standing in front of a bookstore before the next Harry Potter installment was coming out."
Kinder, founding CEO of the Breakwater Initiative, a new organization building policy responses to AI's disruption of work, said that she appreciated how "Pope Leo unequivocally stated that work is fundamental to the human experience."
She said she believes Pope Leo's encyclical went viral after it was issued because "the entire public, it doesn't matter if you're Catholic or not, has been looking for some clear moral human-focused guidance on where this should be going, not where it could go. And I really do think that was the conversation that was started."
Stressing the importance of dialogue on AI, Rowlands said, "We need brokering spaces where we can have those conversations as parents, as educators, as people in those sectors, and as those who are made most vulnerable who are the victims of these systems, we have to be able to talk together."
When asked who should be at the table discussing AI and its future, Dhar said, "It's all of us." Those conversations, he said, "have to be informed by our institutions of faith, our institutions of philosophy, our institutions of humanitarianism."
He added, "I don't want the technology companies to design the tools that will destroy us. I want our institutions to build the world that will inspire us."
Kinder said that while the impact of AI on the labor market has been modest so far, the technology could have significant impacts on young workers coming out of college and early career workers.
Other workers whose jobs in the future may be at risk because of AI include "family sustaining jobs primarily for women without a college degree, in back offices, bookkeepers, clerical workers (and) customer service representatives," she said.
When asked what will happen to human expertise in an age of AI, Sun emphasized that "there's a lot of human knowledge that AI cannot access," and as a journalist working in the field and going to places and meeting and talking to people, she can write about "distinctly human qualities, (and) those distinctly human forms of knowledge."
In remarks closing the gathering, Archbishop Caccia emphasized the importance of bringing a moral perspective to the issue and remembering the value of human relationships when considering technological advances.
"Not everything which is possible to be done, should be done, not everything that technology offers should be taken," he said.
