Magnifica Humanitas: Doin’ the Vatican RAG

The Catholic Church is actively responding to the challenges posed by artificial intelligence through various teachings, but the main event is Pope Leo’s new Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. It’s the product of the wonderfully named Interdicasterial Commission on Artificial Intelligence which convened in response to a rescript signed by Cardinal Michael Czerny, Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development This is a video from the Vatican to promote it. It is quite astonishing. The document was signed by the Pope on May 10 and published on May 25 as the current Pope’s first Encyclical, and it’s a biggie, at 42,000 words. It addresses the issue of “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence” and it doesn’t pull any punches, beginning by telling us that “humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together.” That…