Pope Francis watches a video at the Vatican with a delegation of representatives from the Fabbrica di San Pietro, Microsoft and other organisations involved in creating a “digital twin” of St Peter’s Basilica using AI software. Photo: CNS/Vatican Media Rohith Kinattukara
You are excited. Finally you are at the Apple store to get the latest MacBook, one might say, everyone’s dream computer. You get back home and unbox your brand-new machine in all its glory and start typing away, sending emails, watching Netflix and maybe even doing some creative writing. Little do you know, Apple has a new AI system integrated inside the computer called ‘Apple Intelligence’. Yes, they claimed that name as well, a very Apple move.
What is Apple Intelligence? It’s the new AI model that is found in the latest iOS and MacOS updates, however, only the iPhone 15 pro and above, iPads with the A17 pro chip and above, and the MacBook’s which have the Apple silicon chip (M-series) are eligible to use the latest AI model. The AI model uses something called ‘private cloud compute’ which also means, AI that doesn’t need any cloud or internet access to generate different AI tools within the system. This means a very robust and privacy driven AI system that won’t take your data
Confusing
This all seems very confusing. Let’s take an example of a scenario where you will be using these tools Apple has provided. You are writing an email to a company for a horrible service they provided. Naturally, we would be so angry that our emotions would end up being literal words that come on writing. Maybe you finished writing the email, and you realise it’s too harsh and you don’t know how to make it polite and want to share the same frustration. That’s where Apple intelligence comes into play. By just simply clicking the writing tools option, it gives you a set of tools that include proof reading, summarise, and rewrite with different tone of writing.
Here is the problem though, this is a scary start when it comes to technological advancement. AI like the one apple has introduced, could possibly alter human minds to think for themselves. Everyone would start to just right click and make AI generate a Shakespeare styled email or text and it would come to a point where one might not understand the truth or reality. Pope Francis recently came out to say, “protect human dignity in this new era of machines.” God has created us humans to have a mind of our own, to create great things with the mind He has provided while creating the universe. As Catholics, we shouldn’t forget the purpose of why God has put us on this planet he created for us, and we should build innovations that will benefit us rather than destroy us.
However, AI taking over tasks would be far stretched in today’s world. Yes, AI can do many things like doing analytics search, creating spreadsheets, helping programmers to solve problems within minutes and so on. In these scenarios, AI is a friend and not the enemy. It saves a lot of time and money for companies to get solutions done quickly.
There would be times that you suddenly have a question before sleeping for example, and AI tools like ‘Catholic AI’ will definitely help”
The ‘Catholic AI’ App, which can be found on the AppStore (Apple) and the google playstore (Android) is a revolutionary AI tool that helps Catholics to understand the Bible better by asking question on that particular verse and additionally ask any questions regarding faith with their AI chat bot while also creating bible images to help picturise the scenario for easier understanding. Apps like this can help children who are curious about faith, learn more about Catholicism, and parents can integrate it to teach them on how to grow as a good catholic. There would be times that you suddenly have a question before sleeping for example, and AI tools like ‘Catholic AI’ will definitely help.
Another sector that needs to start accepting AI assistance is education. Ai could alter brain thinking and promote laziness, but if educational institutes could start monitoring, training and educating students on AI tools, it will make students understand what is right and what is wrong and allow them to use it as tools rather than some gateway escape. When AI like the Apple Intelligence is inside the system, there isn’t an escaping anymore for educational institutions, like how they were reluctant to introduce the internet back in the early days of the internet boom.
Beyond
AI has come far and beyond than what people expected it to be. The prediction is said to be almost 10 years in advanced, which is a great feat when it comes to innovation and progress. Companies like Apple, who were pure heart hardware-based companies, are now turning their heads to AI and software, which comes to show, software innovations are the next big thing. Churches can use software to help promote Catholic churches to use Artificial Intelligence and virtual reality to showcase different historical visuals of the Church and events in the Bible or have virtual assistance (like chatbots) around the Church to help answer different questions for example.
A slight recommendation, a great start to have a better understanding on how to make maximum use of AI tools would be starting a course on prompt engineering. It teaches you how to write prompts, which would help the AI models to understand and learn along the way what exactly is required by you.
Rohith Kinattukara is a Catholic student from Griffith College Dublin studying MSc in Procurement and Supply Chain Management who loves to write and breathes tech.