At the end of January, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, together with the Dicastery for Culture and Education, released a document entitled Antiqua et nova: A Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence. While it was promulgated as a co-dicasterial collaboration with general papal approval, it unmistakably presents Pope Francis’s concerns with the state of society due to the misuse of technology in general and his growing concern with artificial intelligence (AI) in particular. With respect to AI, the Holy Father has at various times mentioned concerns,1 but his current emphasis on the matter seems to have begun with his address to those in attendance at the 2019 seminar The Common Good in the Digital Age, organized by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development.
Since that seminar, Francis has increased the frequency with which he voices his concerns over the grave consequences of unrestrained use and abuse of artificial intelligence.2 However, it would be a mistake to view his concerns as limited to artificial intelligence alone. Rather, he sees the recent rapid and surprising developments in generative AI as a pivotal moment for humanity—one that highlights his broader concern with the rise of the “technocratic paradigm” and its potential threat to human dignity and freedom.3
The New Evangelization in a Technocratic Age
From the outset of his pontificate, Pope Francis has championed evangelization in its manifold considerations.4 He continues St. John Paul II’s call for a new evangelization and Pope Benedict XVI’s continuation of the movement from his own perspective. Like his predecessors, Francis affirms the benefits of contemporary society and technology, provided they serve the authentic good of the person and the common good.
But he is likewise gravely concerned about post-modern, industrialized society’s destructive effects on man’s self-understanding as human and as a person, and so he fears for man’s prospects for his integral fulfillment.5
The “technocratic paradigm” is a serious error of contemporary thinking suppressing modern man’s awareness of life’s essential questions which open him to the only real answer to found in Jesus Christ.6 Francis believes modern man is increasingly unable to understand Jesus Christ to be the answer to his deepest longings because the technocratic paradigm blinds him to his situation and leaves him unable to find his way out of it.
This is the fundamental hermeneutic for understanding AN. The document carries out the Holy Father’s project to address the grave dangers he sees that the unmitigated use and abuse of AI will add to the catastrophic effects the technocratic paradigm continues to inflict on integral human flourishing, especially in terms of evangelization.
Francis, Evangelization, and the Technocratic Paradigm
In a 2023 university address, Pope Francis succinctly unveils his evangelical project through the lens of his concern over the technocratic paradigm.7 He begins with the thought of Father Romano Guardini, who is his primary influence on the relationship between technology and the human person.8 Guardini distinguishes between an authentic, human approach to knowing and mastering the world and a destructive Baconian approach that interrogates, dissects, seizes, and dominates the world.
The former masters the world by serving the person, while the latter subdues it by serving the machine.
Francis notes that Guardini does not demonize technology; rather, he appreciates technology that genuinely improves human life and communication. Yet, Guardini sees a threat when it causes man to lose contact with natural forms, depriving him of a sense of proportion and direction. Within such a mindset, man endangers himself because, rather than being guided by teleological and moral limits, he allows what is possible to dictate what is permissible or even obligatory.
According to Pope Francis, this paradigm shift leads to technologies that are not ordered to the person, authentic relationships, or the common good. Rather, they are used to satiate “the individual absorbed in his . . . needs” who becomes greedy for gain and power. Human bonds are eroded, and persons are alienated and isolated. People live a frenzied life, victimized in their isolated fragility by the technologies that serve the ruthless machine. It is no surprise that Guardini is Francis’s primary influence for defining the technocratic paradigm, given that he and his book, The End of the Modern World are cited eight times in this context throughout Laudato sí.
Francis goes on to explain in his university address the evangelical motivations behind his concerns about the technocratic paradigm. He tells the faculty that he often quotes Robert Hugh Benson’s The Lord of this World, a dystopian novel about the coming of the Antichrist. 9 Benson’s Antichrist is redolent of Vladimir Soloviev’s character in his A Short Story of the Anti-Christ, published only seven years prior to Benson’s work.10 Francis says that Benson’s novel was prophetic in terms of the domination of our contemporary society by technology.
Technology makes everything “bland and uniform in the name of progress, and a new humanitarianism is proclaimed, cancelling diversity, suppressing the distinctiveness of peoples and abolishing religion, abolishing all differences.”11 This results in a homogenizing assimilation of peoples deprived of diverse languages and cultures, who accept an oppressive, imposed consensus of thought as the price for universal peace. He fears this is the fetid fruit of the prevailing contemporary ideological colonization, which he categorizes under the rubric of the technocratic paradigm. At times, Francis seems to imply that the world depicted in Lord of the World is emerging today, suggesting a sense of urgency in his pontificate.12
Francis argues that the fundamental corruption of this paradigm lies in its self-sufficient mindset that admits of no limits, which serves to quash the innate human appetite for seeking God. Theological hope and trust in Providence are supplanted by the technocratic presumption that progress will provide for every human need and fix every human problem. To forestall and turn back the prevailing technocratic paradigm, we must promote self-knowledge which reopens man’s search for truth, fostered in authentic culture. We must be intellectually free to pursue the only “Truth [which] will make you free,” Jesus Christ.13
The technocratic paradigm—with its diminishment of the human person and his freedom, its threat to world harmony, and the new evangelization—is the hermeneutic by which we can best interpret Francis’s writings and understand his pontificate. His concerns over the technocratic paradigm are evident in key documents such as Evangelii Gaudium, Laudato sí, Fratelli tutti, and Antiqua et nova.
The Theological Anthropology of AN and Implications for AI
Antiqua et nova (AN) contrasts artificial intelligence with human intelligence, declaring that AI is an artifact of human intelligence. Human intelligence, on the other hand, is a spiritual faculty capable of transcending the material order and is capable of divine inspiration. The document also treats human intelligence from the perspective of human nature and the human person. Man’s uniqueness in visible creation lies in his being made in the image of God. AN explains this dogma, beginning with the Thomist tradition’s emphasis on man’s nature with its composite nature (spirit and matter) and its spiritual faculties. In addition, AN highlights the relational dimension of human personhood alongside man’s composite nature.
This distinction between nature and person resonates with the personalism of both St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI. AN underscores the Trinitarian foundation of man’s relationality—central to St. John Paul II’s personalism—and suggests relationality to be the human person’s ontological being, affirmed by Benedict XVI. Consequently, man’s vocation to communion with God and other persons stands as the most important aspect of his fulfillment—a truth Francis warns will be undermined by the misuse and abuse of AI. True communion demands an authentic knowing of truth, which enables the freedom to choose the integral, common good. In other words, genuine love will only arise from truth. While the influences of rationalism and post-modernism have already eroded contemporary man’s grasp of truth and love, naïve employment and abuse of AI might ultimately “seal his fate.”
The threat that imprudent developments in artificial intelligence pose to genuine human fulfillment is manifold. It begins with confusing the character of human intelligence and artificial intelligence, the latter nothing more than a product of authentic intelligence, not intelligence itself. Genuine intelligence is integral to man’s nature and personhood, and it is a sine qua non for his fulfillment. The structure of human intelligence follows its divine archetype, and is “shaped by divine love, which is poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit . . .” (AN 29).
However, without philosophical and theological clarity, what is really an artifact can masquerade as authentic intelligence.14 Moreover, the abuse and misuse of AI will drive contemporary man deeper into intellectual impoverishment, rendering him increasingly incapable of much more than mere simple thought and ever more dependent upon “authorities” to dictate his beliefs. Unable to understand himself or his situation, he will be deprived of the ability to find his way to authentic fulfillment.
AI has the ability to perform many tasks that look very human, and it can do some of these much more quickly and accurately than any human being. But it will never be able to replace human intelligence. AN says that while human intelligence allows man to complete many functional tasks, it is capable of much more. Human intelligence is more than doing; it alone permits real understanding. There must be a real, spiritual subject—a person—to understand, to engage with the multiple dimensions of the real world, to be inspired (in both the natural and supernatural senses), and to know and love another.
AN is concerned that conflating artificial intelligence with human intelligence reduces, in contemporary man’s mind, the human intellect and so the human person to his functioning. This conflation risks reinforcing a reductionist view that reduces human value solely to economic function—a perspective that appears to be regaining traction today.
Artificial Intelligence and the Technocratic Paradigm
AN then looks at the potential positive contributions of the use of AI in 10 specific areas and then considers its risks and how they should be managed. These areas include its contributions to society at large, human relationships, the economy and labor, healthcare, education, problematic uses, privacy, environmental protection, warfare, and religion. These are areas which correlate with Francis’s previous writings and with those who have influenced him.
For example, AN’s treatment of human relationships, healthcare, and economy and labor resonates deeply with Pope Francis’s teaching in Laudato sí. For instance, AN’s emphasis on ensuring that technology does not replace the warmth and authenticity of personal care mirrors the encyclical’s call to preserve human dignity in the face of technological excess (see Laudato sí, 66–69). Likewise, its focus on economic systems—particularly the risk of reducing human work to mere technical functions—echoes Francis’s critique of modern labor systems that ignore the intrinsic value of the human person (see Laudato sí, 129–131).
In addition, AN’s discussion of environmental protection through the lens of responsible innovation parallels the encyclical’s integrated vision that links ecological stewardship with social justice and care for man’s common home. However, AN also offers that AI itself, when considered rightly, can be employed to assist in identifying and overcoming proposed uses that negatively contribute to the technocratic paradigm. For example, AN proposes making AI a bulwark against the expansion of the technocratic paradigm in the area of labor and the economy.
Among the specific issues and proposed solutions that AN addresses are precisely the negative consequences of the technocratic paradigm resulting from the unrestrained and abuse of AI. In discussing AI and Society, AN points to concerns about the concentration of power which permits manipulation of consciences and democratic structures, especially because it can reduce man’s inquisitiveness, freedom and autonomy. Rather, AI should be employed to foster a more human progress, which increases these human characteristics and so serves the good of the person and the common good.
It discusses dangers in terms of AI and Human Relationships. In some ways, this area might represent the most fundamental danger in our present circumstances. AN emphasizes the dangers of masquerading as a human person not only when the intent is malicious, but even when the intent is benign or even salutary. A person can only be fulfilled by authentic human relationships, with God and with other persons. While AI certainly can simulate a person in increasingly effective ways, there is no person there. AN does not explicate the consequences, but I agree with the warning. Its effect is to turn the person in on himself, which opposes the person’s fulfillment. Rather, AI applications must actively avoid letting users anthropomorphize the app and should remind users of dangers of doing so while encouraging authentic human relationships, especially the relationship with God.
In discussing AI in the context of labor and the economy, AN applauds its potential for increasing process efficacy, efficiency, productivity, creativity, and innovation, creating new jobs, taking over mundane tasks, and freeing workers for more human tasks. It also warns about the dangers AI poses when the focus is not first on the good of the person. It can also eliminate jobs, de-skill workers, leave fewer opportunities for creative work, and reduce the perceived value of human work. Investments in AI must, AN says, be aimed at making it a safeguard against the negative consequences of the technocratic paradigm (see AN, 68).
AN’s treatment of education implicitly critiques modern pedagogical theory, explaining that authentic education is an end rather than a means. It is about the formation of the intellect, to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth and to grasp it (see AN 81, quoting John Henry Newman). It says AI can be helpful in education if it is designed to help develop authentic habits of thought.15 Yet, the current trend in applying this technology as a replacement for practiced research, true thinking, virtuous judgment, and deepened understanding threatens to make the use of AI in education more destructive than helpful.
The Goal of Antiqua et nova
The ultimate goal of AN is to show that, without a roadmap to guide the ethical development and implementation of AI applications, it is inevitable that it will hasten the dominance of the technocratic paradigm and the annihilation of man. The ethical guidelines can only be ethical if they are grounded in an authentic anthropology, and this is the particular expertise of the Catholic Church. AN reflects Francis’s openness to the benefits that AI can bring, and it is simultaneously very concerned about the current trends. The threats to the person and his integral flourishing are also threats to society and its harmony.
AI systems are already contributing to the undermining of man’s self-understanding, deadening his search for ultimate fulfillment, and leaving undeveloped the capabilities he requires for a successful search. The widespread quenching of man’s natural inquisitiveness, which begins in our industrialized education machine, leaves the new evangelization less likely to bear fruit. This and man’s increasingly darkened intellect makes it more challenging to convince him there is more to life than satisfying his sensual appetites. He is increasingly turned inward, unreceptive to his true fulfillment in relationships of communion with God and others. It increases the technocratic lie that his fulfillment is found in himself.
Despite these serious concerns, and following Pope Francis’s lead, AN does not advocate a Luddite rejection of the technology. Instead, it recognizes that we’ve already “opened Pandora’s box.” While we cannot return to a pre-AI age, the document remains hopeful that AI can contribute positively to man’s integral fulfillment if it is properly understood and managed. Consequently, the Church must collaborate with—and guide—society to minimize AI’s negative consequences. The path begins with a clear definition of AI and the human person, convincing others of an adequate anthropology that recognizes man’s genuine ends and culminates in a comprehensive understanding of AI’s dangers so that its use may be governed by ethical guidelines.
AN’s foundational theme in this collaborative project is the shared commitment of all those involved in the development, use, and regulation of AI. This commitment ensures that every application of AI safeguards the dignity of the human person and promotes his freedom and capacity for decision making for the sake of his integral fulfillment and the common good. AN maintains that adherence to this guiding principle must be evaluated in light of the moral responsibility of every decision-maker involved, from the conception of an AI-related idea to its implementation, distribution, and use. In short, the use of AI must always ensure the freedom of human agency and be directed toward the promotion of integral human fulfillment.
Antiqua et nova’s message is both true and sobering. Generative artificial intelligence is a powerful new tool that we should use to enhance genuine, integral human flourishing. But its very potency and its breadth of potential application also make its unguarded use and abuse one of the most significant threats to the human person and society that technology has produced to date. Its greatest danger lies in accelerating the destructive consequences of the technocratic paradigm.
Imprudence in its design and employment will further reduce man’s self-understanding to being a creature whose value is found solely in his function and utility. Human dignity will be further eroded, undermining the interpersonal and social bonds that sustain genuine community. Its unchecked influence will further distort our understanding of human nature, weakening authentic relationships and undermining the harmonious order essential for a flourishing society.
More gravely, by obscuring the transformative encounter with divine truth, this paradigm imperils the openness required for evangelization, leaving souls less receptive to the light of the Gospel. Only by reaffirming the truth of Christ and restoring the centrality of what is authentically human can we counter these dehumanizing trends and foster a renewed spirit of evangelization for all. Catholics and all people of good will must take a leading role in fostering generative AI’s use for good, by understanding its negative effects and creatively overcoming them. The title of the document encapsulates Francis’s lodestar for his pontificate’s program for the new evangelization in an age dominated by the technocratic paradigm. We must be transformed by God’s wisdom as apprehended by man and revealed by Him—wisdom both ancient and new.
Endnotes:
1 For example, Letter of the Holy Father Francis to the Participants in the International Conference “From Popularum Progressio to Laudato Sí,” New Synod Hall, 23 November 2017, and Message of His Holiness Pope Francis to the Executive Chairman of the “World Economic Forum” on the Occasion of the Annual Gathering in Davos-Klosters, 12 January 2018.
2 Here, I will attribute to the Holy Father those documents and interventions directly from him or his curia. See for example, Pontifical Academy for Life, Rome Call for AI Ethics, Rome, 28 February 2020; Pope Francis General Audience, Catechesis on Christmas, 23 December 2020; Message of His Holiness Pope Francis To Mark the 150th Anniversary of the Proclamation of St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori Doctor Ecclesiae, 23 March 2021; Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to Participants in the “Rome Call” Meeting Promoted by the Renaissance Foundation, Clementine Hall, 10 January 2023; Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for the 57th World Day of Peace, Artificial Intelligence and Peace, 1 January 2024; Message of His Holiness Pope Francis for the 58th World Day of Social Communications, Artificial Intelligence and the Wisdom of the Heart: Towards a Fully Human Communication, 24 Jan 2024; Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to the G7 Session on Artificial Intelligence, Borgo Egnazia, Puglia, 14 June 2024; Message of the Holy Father to the World Economic Forum 2025, Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, 14 January, 2025.
3 Francis seems to have coined the term “technocratic paradigm” himself, first used throughout his encyclical Laudato sí (see especially, paragraphs 106-114). He means by it a way of thinking in which technology and empirical science are the exclusive means of addressing human individual and social problems, often reducing everything to objects of manipulation, and control, governed primarily by considerations of efficiency. It assumes that progress and innovation, particularly in technological and economic spheres, are inherently good and can solve all problems, including moral and existential ones. It treats nature as something to be dominated rather than cared for, reduces human relationships to functionality and utility, and rejects out of hand the relevance of wisdom, ethics, and the spiritual dimension of the human person.
4 I would go so far as to say that to understand and evaluate fairly his pontificate, Francis’s urgency as to the need for a renewed evangelization which addresses contemporary circumstances and challenges must be a primary lens by which one does so.
5 Attending to the distinction between nature and person is essential for effectively addressing the “technocratic paradigm.” I believe that Pope Francis and his collaborators are, to varying degrees, aware of the importance of this distinction.
6 For more on this, see Keith Lemna and David H. Delaney, “Three Pathways into the Theological Mind of Pope Francis,” Nova et Vetera, English Edition, Vol. 12, No. 1 (2014): 25-56, and especially 44ff. For what it is worth, while I would today make some slight emendations to this article, more than a decade after its publication I still believe that it paints an accurate picture of Pope Francis’ project, illuminates what he has done, and gives us some insight into areas he may yet want his pontificate to pursue.
7 Pope Francis, “Address of His Holiness on Meeting with the Academic and Cultural World” to the Faculty of Information Technology and Bionics at the Catholic University “Péter Pázamány,” Budapest, Hungary, 30 April 2023.
8 In March of 1986, Jorge Bergoglio was sent by his Jesuit order to Munich, Germany to begin work on a doctorate on the topic of Father Romano Guardini. Alejandro Bermudez indicates that Bergoglio’s interest in Guardini was manifold, but especially his non-Hegelian, non-Marxist dialectical theory in which oppositions are lived in tension rather than being resolved in an assimilated or conflict-based synthesis (see Pope Francis: Our Brother, Our Friend, (San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2013).
9 Monsignor Robert Hugh Benson was the son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who converted to Catholicism in 1903 and was ordained a Catholic priest in 1904. He would die tragically young of pneumonia in 1914 at the age of 42. His conversion would influence Father Ronald Knox’s later conversion and both caused similar sensationalism, controversy and personal attacks. Benson was a fairly prolific author and novelist authoring over 50 works of fiction, devotional and apologetic works, plays, and articles. In addition to quoting the book, Francis also repeatedly recommends reading it, for example see his in-flight press conference from his apostolic journey to Marseille in September of 2023.
10 Even though it is chronologically possible, there appears to be no evidence that Benson read or was influenced by Soloviev’s novel. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that Soloviev uses this phrase “lord of the World” in his work in addition to the similarities in characteristics of the anti-Christs in each novel.
11 Francis, Address at Budapest, 30 April 2023.
12 This was the impression made on the late Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop of Chicago at the very start of Francis’ pontificate. In his last interview with John Allen in November of 2014, less than six months before he would die, the Cardinal revealed some questions that he would urgently like to ask Pope Francis if he lived long enough. Among these questions, he mentioned Francis’s references to Lord of the World, saying he would like to ask the Holy Father if he really believes that the events portrayed in the novel are what is happening today. I co-authored an article with a colleague on Pope Francis’s theological influences earlier that year, and from my research I agree that this appeared to be the case and would seem to be at least one source of his evangelical urgency (see Lemna and Delaney, “Three Pathways,” 2014).
13 Francis, Address at Budapest, 30 April 2023; citing John 8:32.
14 While it is certainly true that generative AI is an artifact of and not actual human intelligence, I would suggest that it also “participates” in a certain manner with human intelligence, which gives rise to its surprising effectiveness. I discuss this in an earlier 2-part CWR article found here: Part 1, Part 2.
15 In this context, AN uses the terms “critical thinking” and “skills,” terms I suspect are adopted rather naively rather than “habits of thought.” The distinctions are significant because these contemporary reductive concepts, particularly when conceived as ultimate ends of education, are at odds with an authentic anthropology and with John Henry Newman’s understanding of education, which AN cites as modeling authentic education. “Habits of thought” better reflects the Catholic intellectual tradition in which education is seen as the cultivation of a soul, to use Newman’s phrase. The concept of critical thinking begins with a faulty anthropology, neglecting the integral relationship between the intellect and the will as spiritual faculties. It overemphasizes the judgment of the subject, reduces thinking to logic and technique, and overlooks the indispensable role of first principles. In fact, these very errors are manifestations of the technocratic paradigm which Francis is so eager to overcome. Similarly, “skills” should be regarded not as the goal of education but as the natural fruit of cultivating robust intellectual habits. Such misconceptions about human nature and so the real character of education will inevitably lead to the misuse of AI, thereby further undermining human flourishing rather than promoting it.
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NAIVE
This article, and the text that it comments on, strike me as both being very naive.
Everyone knows that AI development is going to keep marching forward, at any ever-accelerating pace.
The people driving all this AI development (e.g., Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg) aren’t going to pay two cents of attention to what some office in the Vatican says about human dignity. Neither will any attention by paid by Congress, the President, the Pentagon, the CIA, and so on and so on.
This Vatican document, “Antiqua et Nova” (Ancient and New) it its “Concluding Reflections,” says:
“…it is crucial to know how to evaluate individual applications of AI in particular contexts to determine whether its use promotes human dignity, the vocation of the human person, and the common good.”
Why are those Vatican officials deluding themselves, and deluding us, that anyone of importance is listening to them?
After the invention of the nuclear bomb, many people foresaw the incredible dangers of an atomic arms race, and as a result, in the late 1940s and early 1950s all sorts of efforts were made by well-meaning people to put all-existing atomic energy technology under some sort of international supervision and control. All sorts of international commissions were formed, and meetings were held.
But it all came to nothing.
In 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world came to a hair’s breathe of being blown to pieces with atomic bombs.
Now the nuclear weapons are much more powerful and plentiful.
The U.S. has absolutely no military defense against a full-on nuclear attack. Any suicidal, delusional, or desperate foreign national leader with a huge nuclear stockpile can permanently terminate the U.S. anytime he wishes.
There will be no regulation of or constraints on the development of AI. Most AI development will be done in secret by both corporations and governments. The gov’t regulators won’t ever know about it.
The power of AI will soon be so great that no major nation will be able to be set it aside or limit itself, if only for purposes of self-defense.
Billionaires will use AI against other billionaires who threaten them, and against the any democratically organized segment of the masses.
The AI arms race is already well underway.
We can pray, however.
Do you see any point in all the grandiose Pollyana posturing that the so often seems to typify the Vatican? Maybe some of these people should just get real jobs?
So AI will become as dangerous as threat to humanity as nuclear weapons 🙄. Right.
Real jobs? Will there be any?
We read: “The ultimate goal of AN [Antiqua et nova] is to show that, without a roadmap to guide the ethical development and implementation of AI applications, it is inevitable that it will hasten the dominance of the technocratic paradigm and the annihilation of man. The ethical guidelines can only be ethical if they are grounded in an authentic anthropology, and this is the particular expertise of the Catholic Church.”
“Expertise”, yes…
…but even before this–and with the poet William Blake–the implied, inborn, and primordial ability and intentionality—to “see THROUGH the eyes, and not only with the eyes.” In the Epilogue to his autobiography, the Quaker and ex-communist Whittaker Chambers reveals the simple and direct way he lifted his own son above the deceptions of collectivist untruth—or now under any AI data-dump and flat-earth cosmos:
“What little I know of the stars I have passed on to my son over the years [….] Sometimes I draw my son’s eye to the constellation Hercules, especially to the great nebula dimly visible about the middle of the group. Now and again, I remind him that what we can just make out as a faint haze is another universe—the radiance of fifty thousand suns whose light had left its source thirty-four thousand years before it brushes the miracle of our straining sight.
“Those are THE ONLY STATISTICS that I shall ever trouble my son with.
“I want him to have a STANDARD as simple as stepping into the dark and raising his eyes whereby to measure what he is and what he is not against the order of REALITY. I want him to SEE for himself upon the scale of the universes that God, the soul, faith, are NOT simple matters . . . .I want him to REMEMBER that God Who is a God of Love is also the God of a world that includes the atom bomb and virus [and AI], the minds that contrived and use or those that suffer them, AND that the problem of good and evil [!] is NOT more simple than the immensity of worlds [….]
“I want him to know that it is his SOUL, and his soul alone, that makes it possible for him to bear, without dying of his own mortality, the faint light of Hercules’ fifty thousand suns (“Witness”, 1952, CAPS added).
(cited in the conclusion to Beaulieu, “A Generation Abandoned,” Rowman & Littlefield/Hamilton Books, 2017). The last three chapters deal with today’s default religions of the Dawkins’ meaningless universe, Evolution-ism…and Technocracy: https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2018/03/29/a-generation-abandoned-why-whatever-is-not-enough/
“The former masters the world by serving the person, while the latter subdues it by serving the machine” (on thought of Guardini). Pope Francis was perceptive in leaning on Romano Guardini’s critique of high tech. Man surrenders his place in the nature of things allowing technology to dictate. Dehumanization of Man trapped in the web of his own creation is a commonly understood theme.
Deacon Delaney offers us his research on the approach of Francis to AI and modern tech in general, and the latter’s focus on the “technocratic paradigm” and the means of humanizing a dehumanizing science. Some may suspect some devious intent from our pontiff never acknowledging anything creditable. That may be understood as the antipathetic paradigm.