Discernment statements regarding artificial intelligence
Peio Sánchez Around World Communications Day 2024.
“Artificial intelligence and wisdom of the heart for fully human communication”
There are issues that are optional and others are imposed, whatever our options are. Technoscience with that amalgam of human progress and inhuman business is now upon us with the new advances of Artificial Intelligence. Between the lament for the ethical ellipse, which dangerous uses entail, and the transhumanist optimism, which considers that we have reached a new singularity, it is worth considering our position as believers. We have to think about this matter in depth because it involves specific practices that we must face.
As Pope Francis points out in his message for the World Day of Social Communications, artificial intelligence “is radically modifying information and communication and, through them, some of the foundations of civil coexistence.” Starting from this reality, he invites us to adopt an option: “In this era that runs the risk of being rich in technology and poor in humanity, our reflection can only start from the human heart. Only by providing ourselves with a spiritual gaze, only by recovering a wisdom of the heart, will we be able to read and interpret the novelty of our time and rediscover the path of fully human communication.”
The ambiguous condition of the human being invites us to discern between opportunity and danger. Generative artificial intelligence that is capable of collecting existing data and obtaining original content allows us to have at our disposal innovative proposals and scenarios for communication. We can have more information and more possibilities of interpretation at our disposal with much greater speed. This represents the challenge of acquiring new learning when we have already understood that training never ends. We must be open as believers to the new things that technology offers to address complex problems and discern in which areas it can be useful to us.
That said, we must not forget the worrying challenges. Thus, Pope Francis proposes that “it is necessary to act preventively, proposing models of ethical regulation to stop the harmful and discriminatory, socially unjust implications of artificial intelligence systems and counteract their use in the reduction of pluralism, the polarization of public opinion or the construction of a unique thought.” The possibilities of information manipulation (fake news, disinformation campaigns, use of anonymity, cancellation mechanisms,...) and the pressure of power and the market on communicators grows exponentially.
Artificial Intelligence feeds the climate of fierce competition between media and excessive speed of information, while spaces for discernment are lacking. Communicators must move only within the parameters of the “squad” (sorry for the chivalric simile) for which they are hired. There is an urgent need for independent spaces where the communicator can exercise his freedom of opinion, his ethical doubts, his own weakness in the face of a complex system. Christian communicators need free spaces, communities of contrast from the values of the Gospel.
In the future of the development of Artificial Intelligence, the human condition is at stake. The dystopias of science fiction are a warning that points to the weaknesses of what is only apparently progress. The new thing is that fiction is now reality and we have it in our hands.
SIGNIS is not only a place for communicative proposals. It should be a place of shared spiritual discernment and ethical formation. We need to give ourselves spaces outside our “block” so as not to get trapped in the “echo chamber” and to be able to address challenges from the spiritual heart that moves us. The ecclesial community takes on the challenge of opening spaces of communion where we can trust and trust each other to address issues that are professional but that take on personal tones.
As Pope Francis says: “The answer is not written, it depends on us. It is up to man to decide whether he becomes food for algorithms or instead feeds his heart with freedom, that heart without which we would not grow in wisdom. This wisdom matures by taking advantage of time and understanding weaknesses. It grows in the alliance between generations, between those who have memory of the past and those who have a vision of the future. Only together does the capacity to discern, to monitor, to see things from their fulfillment grow.” A challenge