Confronted with eye-watering technological developments Catholics have an important role to play, writes David Mullins
On May 3, 1983, some 247 Catholic bishops of the United States gathered in Chicago to issue their pastoral letter on war and peace and the use of nuclear technology. The immediate context was the ongoing nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union.
That letter is now considered to be one of the most insightful moral assessments ever published on the dangers that can emerge when the use of powerful technology becomes untethered from basic human goods.
The letter is also notable for the way it which it incisively and pragmatically applied fundamental insights from the Catholic ethical tradition to a pressing issue of enormous global concern.
Now, 37 years on, something similar has also occurred with respect to the dangers and potentialities within another scientific and technological arena-that of Artificial Intelligence (AI).
I am referring specifically to the signing last month of a Vatican-inspired declaration that has been named the ‘Rome Call for AI (Artificial Intelligence) Ethics.’
Among the first signatories were the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, along with Microsoft president Brad Smith and IBM executive vice-president John Kelly.
Of course, the immediate geo-political and military context of the Rome Call declaration is nothing like the explicitly apocalyptic one that formed the backdrop to the US bishops meeting in 1983.
Attention
Nevertheless, it has drawn considerable attention from the media and the wider AI industry-not least because of the apparent novelty and incongruity in witnessing the Vatican and two of the world’s largest computer technology firms embark on such a collaboration.
Microsoft’s Brad Smith hinted as much when he acknowledged that at least on the face of it the collaborators made “strange bedfellows”.
This initiative is being enthusiastically supported by Pope Francis; who has repeatedly voiced concerns around how an unjust application of technology may widen the gap between rich and poor, increase online exploitation and lead to the violation of the ecological integrity of the earth.
In fact, during an address to participants in the congress on child dignity in the digital world last November, Francis spoke of how “the ethical development of algorithms” or more simply “algor-ethics” could be used to identify and eliminate illegal and harmful images from circulation on the internet.
The declaration itself proposes six key principles, which it says should shape the application of artificial intelligence and the development of ‘algor-ethics’:
- Transparency;
- Inclusion;
- Responsibility;
- Impartiality;
- Reliability;
- Security and privacy
While there is limited space here to provide a broader outline of how the declaration understands these terms, the following is a key paragraph from the text that fairly summarises the basic rationale and the motivation in prioritising them: “Now more than ever, we must guarantee an outlook in which AI is developed with a focus not on technology, but rather for the good of humanity and of the environment, of our common and shared home and of its human inhabitants, who are inextricably connected. In other words, a vision in which human beings and nature are at the heart of how digital innovation is developed, supported rather than gradually replaced by technologies that behave like rational actors but are in no way human.”
For those who keep a close eye on these matters, the ‘Rome Call’ is perfectly consistent with a number of other actions that the Church and in particular, the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Union (COMECE) has initiated within this sphere in the last number of years.
A fairly recent example is the publication by COMECE in 2019 of its reflection, Robotisation of Life – Ethics in view of new challenges.
That specific document also set out to reaffirm the primacy of the human person while promoting “a rights-based and person-centred approach in reviewing the main principles that define the relationship between human persons and robots”.
So, between the ethical vision of the COMECE document and the Rome Call declaration there is significant common ground.
The document has consolidated the ethical leadership that the Church has demonstrated”
That being said there also significant differences.
For while documents like the US bishops’ 1983 pastoral letter, and the COMECE document both situate the human person within a distinctly Christian anthropology, the Rome Call declaration makes no mention of God or Creation whatsoever.
On the one hand this is perfectly understandable given that the intention is not to sign up the likes of Microsoft and IBM (or even Facebook) to a distinctly ‘religious’ ethical charter. The point is to lay down clear ethical parameters for the development of AI that can enjoy the widest possible consensus and garner the greatest level of ‘industry’ support.
On the other hand, we can also accept that at a deeper level the very language of person-centred rights and human dignity, which the Rome Call’s declaration is steeped in, are concepts that are dependent on the Catholic philosophical tradition for their coherence.
Indeed, acknowledgement of the debt which the western ethical tradition and modern-day human rights discourse owes to Christianity and to Catholicism in particular is enjoying something of a renaissance lately.
This is especially clear in the historical and scholarly work of people like Tom Holland and Larry Siedentop.
The Rome Call for AI Ethics can be seen then as but the latest example of how the application of science and technology can be shaped and informed by the vast historical richness of the Catholic intellectual tradition, while losing nothing of their own legitimate autonomy.
Through such a process all sides can emerge enriched and rejuvenated.
It can only be lamented therefore, that this point, which has been clearly grasped as almost self-evident by the likes of Microsoft and IBM, would doubtless receive a distinctly frostier reception in the current intellectual environment of ‘modern Ireland.’
Ultimately, however, The Rome Call for AI Ethics has consolidated the pioneering ethical leadership that the Church has demonstrated in this field over the last number of years.
We should celebrate this ongoing contribution as an exciting adventure in the moral and ethical imagination of humankind.
David Mullins is a bioethicist.