Understand AI: Catherine Moon on the Pope’s New Encyclical
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In this episode of Theology Lab, we explore one of the most pressing questions facing Christians today: How should we think about artificial intelligence? Drawing from Pope Leo's groundbreaking encyclical on AI, theologian Dr. Catherine Moon (Villanova) unpacks the promises, dangers, and spiritual implications of technologies like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other large language models.
Description
In this episode of Theology Lab, we explore one of the most pressing questions facing Christians today: How should we think about artificial intelligence? Drawing from Pope Leo's groundbreaking encyclical on AI, theologian Dr. Catherine Moon (Villanova) unpacks the promises, dangers, and spiritual implications of technologies like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other large language models. Together, we discuss AI ethics, human flourishing, cognitive de-skilling, moral decision-making, technology and the common good, and whether AI is helping build the "walls of Jerusalem" or a modern "Tower of Babel." We also examine concerns about automation, job displacement, digital companionship, and the growing pressure to adopt AI at all costs. If you're interested in faith and technology, Christian ethics, artificial intelligence, ChatGPT, Pope Leo, theology, human dignity, digital culture, and the future of work, this conversation offers a thoughtful and challenging framework for navigating the AI age with wisdom and discernment. Dr. Catherine Moon is the Arthur J. Ennis teaching scholar at Villanova University. Check out her bio here:
Resources
📚 https://iasculture.org/fellow/catherine-moon/ Learn more about Theology Lab www.theologylab.org
Here are two resources for learning more about the discussion that Dr. Moon shared with us: https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/91230-encountering-artificial-intelligence-ethical-and-anthropological-investigations https://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/154545-reclaiming-human-agency-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence
Generated Transcript
speaker-0 (00:00)
Yeah. so we're gonna have a conversation. Is this gonna be kind of like getting to know the encyclical a little bit for our audience? And then we have also some questions just kind of about your your own thinking on it and some of the work that you're doing around technology, faith, and AI. but just to get us started, you know, to kind of like get everyone on the same page here, we're talking about artificial intelligence. Poplio's written this encyclical on artificial intelligence. When Poplio is talking about artificial intelligence, what is he?
generally speaking to? What does he mean by artificial intelligence? And I know this might be like pretty evident, but why is he why is he targeting this topic right now? Why was his first encyclical on the topic of artificial intelligence?
speaker-2 (00:46)
I think those are really great and important questions. and not obvious at all, I don't think. so I I think for the sort of first question, what does he mean by AI and what are we talking about when we're talking about AI and when the encyclical is talking about AI? it's good for us to remember it's really unclear what we're talking about when we're talking about AI.
Given the way AI and AI-powered features are being advertised and have been advertised since the commercial release of ChatGPT in 2022, it's been spoken about monolithically in the news and in advertisements, but it's not a monolithic technology. It's not one thing.
AI refers to many different types of technology. It can refer to different computer engineering techniques. It can refer to certain kinds of ideologies that want to make computers intelligent in a kind of transhumanist endeavor. so I think just sort of being really clear with ourselves that actually it's it's unclear what anyone's talking about when they're talking about AI.
is a good first step. And I think because of this really confusing and ambiguous and amorphous landscape, Pope Leo thought that it was prudent to speak into a space with so much confusion and so much anxiety and so much fear and also so much hope. For a lot of people they see it as a hopeful thing rather
than an anxiety ridden thing. And so with this first encyclical, which he sort of pointed us to when he was first elected by choosing the name Pope Leo and drawing a parallel between an an age or time of AI and the Industrial Revolution, is he really wanted to meet our present moment and try and guide our thinking through how to attend to this moment well.
speaker-1 (03:10)
Professor Moon, thank you for that. And it is relieving to hear that it is such an amorphous topic because I I definitely feel the the anxiety just around not not knowing what exactly are we talking about. but what would you say as as Pope Leo puts out this in encyclical, what are of the couple most important features that he's put into the magnifica humanitas?
speaker-2 (03:32)
Yeah, so I I would wanna point to two main features. One is the kind of intention behind it, and the second is some of the imagery he gives us to talk about our present moment. So, with respect to what he is calling us to do or trying to get us to think about, is that technology is not inevitable. Fun fact.
We actually have agency. We actually get to choose the way we build our technology. We get to choose
speaker-1 (04:14)
Hmm.
speaker-2 (04:14)
How
to use our technology. And now some people obviously have more choices than others. And some people, because of their work and their lack of agency in their work, have fewer choices. But everyone has some level of agency, and humanity as a whole has agency over the tools we build. And so I think in a moment,
Where it seems like we are both not building our tools well and then we are not using them in appropriate contexts. the encyclical is acting as a strong reminder that we actually can build good tools and that technology is a gift from God to help cultivate the common good and to help cultivate.
integral human development and we need to assess our tools and the things we build in that light rather than conforming ourselves to whatever we happen to build regardless of whether it's allowing us to flourish or diminishing us. And then to that end, I do think at least in so far as I've encountered it, people
Have found the image of are we building the Tower of Babel or are we building the walls of Jerusalem? Right? Are we are we being are we building the sort of the garden right on earth? people have really, I think, responded to that imagery as a concrete way of thinking about like, what am I doing? What are my choices contributing to? Are they contributing to a city in which
speaker-1 (05:43)
Or
speaker-2 (06:08)
I in my family and other people I've maybe never even met can flourish together. or is it causing further alienation and destruction and violence? And so I think both what he's trying to get us to do in our actions as well as the imagery he's giving us to think about it, to my mind have been two of the things that really stick out about the encyclical.
speaker-1 (06:15)
Yeah.
mean I really I really loved what you just said. where you've you you've you've kind of helped me wrap my head around what Pope Leo is proposing, which is there's we have this powerful technology that can be used for human flourishing and in th in this sense
sort of the the walls of Jerusalem to protect and allow humanity to flourish, or more of the Tower of Babel. It's it's something that is meant to foster human pride in the negative sense, but ultimately lead to the dehumanization of of humanity. And we have we have a choice as as as a species at this moment. are there historical examples where that's been true where there has been a powerful technology and a clarion call towards making the right choice and how that actually affected how we as
as a p as as a as a species use that technology for for good or for ill.
speaker-2 (07:24)
Really important and wonderful question for us all to think about because we have so many technologies all around us, right? modern electronics are not the only technologies. And we can think through this question both through positive and negative examples, as well as examples that are kind of mixed. And so I think the most obvious negative example in recent history is the atomic bomb, where
Researchers and the government together just sort of went towards what they could build without asking, should we build this? and because if we do build this, then we're probably going to use it. And if we use it, what's going to happen? What kind of world is that going to be? And then I think we sort of have somewhat
mixed examples if we think of transportation, if we think of cars and trains. So on the one hand, we can think about the amazing things that cars and wheelchairs and trains have done for mobility and connectivity and to be able to get people to different places and allow people into spaces.
They wouldn't have been able to go otherwise because of mobility issues. at the same time, we also all know that, you know, cars in a lot of places, especially America, have led to somewhat of isolation. And then there are environmental costs and international political costs to energy. and then the probably
The most immediate positive example that I think most people would want to say is the printing press as a positive example, a kind of dissemination knowledge and books. but at the same time, we can even think through maybe some of the unintended consequences of the printing press, where I think Victor Hugo.
In the hunchback of Notre Dame talks about how the printing press will be the death of architecture because we won't need to tell stories in the places we inhabit anymore because we'll all have access to the stories in books. And so I think from a Christian perspective, we we are in time, we are not at the end of time.
So all of these ways we develop technology are likely going to be mixed with good and bad, good and evil, however we wanna put it. And I think what our call as human beings is is to make them as good as possible and to recognize the harm or evil in them and try and bend or disarm them to use Leo.
speaker-1 (10:45)
Way to
speaker-2 (10:45)
The encyclical.
speaker-0 (10:49)
Catherine, I want to ask a question that's kind of like a going back to basics question just a little bit and say, like, if if somebody is brand new, want to say a papal encyclical, but already let's just maybe focus on the topic of this encyclical, and is saying, like, all right, what are the most kind of remarkable things that Leo is saying about how Christians might relate to artificial intelligence? What would be, let's say, your like two headlines that you would give them?
speaker-2 (11:16)
Yeah, I would say number one headline, be discerning, ask questions. immediate adoption is not necessary, nor is immediate rejection. Understand what it is that we're talking about, how it works, what the context people are proposing that it ought to be used in, and then make a prudential judgment.
speaker-1 (11:31)
Okay.
speaker-2 (11:46)
about that.
A lot of AI discourse, especially in schools, has been very much driven by we must adopt this now or our children will be behind and they will never have jobs and everything will fall apart. that's not a great way to discern about technology. and so I think a kind of slow methodical discernment is really worth
speaker-1 (12:17)
What
speaker-2 (12:18)
The encyclical is encouraging. It's also very much encouraging dialogue that no one person alone can take this on or attend to AI well. It is a communal endeavor that we have to treat as a communal endeavor. So we really need to engage in dialogue about it in order,
speaker-1 (12:32)
Я
speaker-2 (12:48)
To ensure that it is contributing to and not harm.
speaker-1 (12:52)
harming
the common good.
speaker-0 (12:54)
I I've I've heard you say elsewhere that like discernment, especially maybe pairing these, discernment and dialogue don't just mean like, hey, a lot of ideas in a room where we learn to agree to disagree. It's actually discernment that's really meant to lead to concrete decisions. Can you give me a sense of like how do you think Leo Poblio is thinking about discernment? What does he mean by a concrete discernment here? Are there are there ways where like this discernment is already kind of pointing him to some concrete decisions?
suggestions, advice for how we relate and use artificial intelligence.
speaker-2 (13:29)
Thank you. I think it's really, really important to draw out this point because both dialogue and discernment can easily be misunderstood as dialogue is let's all go to a room together and say our feelings, and then we will leave with our same feelings. or discernment is okay, I thought about it for five seconds and whatever I thought before that five seconds is what I decided on.
whereas what's really meant by dialogue and discernment is the point of dialogue is that I have an openness to the truth. And I have an openness to hearing logical reasoned arguments so that I'm able to encounter reality more accurately and fully.
So that I attend to reality well. So I respond to something according to its nature, according to what it's calling me to do. because we don't know everything, I don't know everything, no one knows everything. And so the idea is that in having humility and patience and listening.
To others, their concerns, their worries, their excitements, their expertise. And bringing all of that to the table is that a we can come to a collective understanding that would not have been possible alone. There's a sense in which a dialogue that agrees to disagree, that didn't make any progress, is a failed dialogue.
That whatever happened in that room wasn't really dialogue. And now I can imagine situations in which at least getting to the place where you agree that you disagree, maybe got some stuff on the table and what's was the progress. But sort of like generally, we should be able to get somewhere closer to the truth together. And in this way, discernment is in this vein as well, where
I really have to ask myself, what is the good? what is the action that we are discerning about? How does the action that we're discerning about fit into my concept of the good, into my understanding of who God is? And does this action contribute to the flourishing of the individual?
Does it contribute to the flourishing of the common good? is it in conformity with who God is? Is it in conformity with what the good is? And so actually the both discernment and dialogue are really difficult because they require so much humility and so much patience and a willingness for whatever I begin with to be made wrong.
And to be corrected. and that's a hard stance to take because I think a lot of us like to be right from the very beginning and to like to know everything from the very beginning. so really, in a lot of ways, what Leo is calling people to is what the Christian tradition would typically consider a spiritual practice of humility and listening.
speaker-0 (17:12)
Can I can I do one more follow up here for Greg jumps in? I appreciate what you said there. you Greg, Greg loves to be right. I have a little more humility. But like but I I want to use like one example where and actually not an example, but
we're thinking about, you know, right now this conversation's happening, especially I think you know, in in hearing it from the Pope and hearing theologians talk about it, and talking about discernment about what the proper use of AI might look like.
If you're like just like an everyday Christian right now, right, maybe you have ChatGP on your phone or something like that. And I want to get into a ChatGP question later on, by the way, about about the use of ChatGPT. But if you're just thinking like, okay, what does it look like for me to be like in dialogue about how I relate to AI as an everyday Christian? Just any like kind of just like simple practical advice for how someone might get started on that.
speaker-2 (18:04)
a good question. I so chapters three and four of the encyclical are very good on this. And so it it's sort of explicit sort of not explicit in the encyclical about this. So it's very explicit about saying there are three points of private vigilance that people actively using AI want to be attentive to. And
Then there are some areas it names, which is a little more implicit, but it's there if you kind of map it out, of public areas that people want to be vigilant about, but the private and public areas are interrelated. But it's helpful to think about that for the private areas when one is just actively using generative AI is generally what we're talking about. I need to be attentive to the fact that
speaker-0 (19:06)
G j sorry, really quick. I go back to generative AI, just like a chat box, search engine on the like on the phone, something like that.
speaker-2 (19:12)
Yes, yeah. So
Yes. So a helpful way, although imperfect because no one agrees about what AI is, to categorize AI is traditional AI. So traditional AI is the AI that has been used since the nineties, early two thousands, the kind of AI that was used to sort your email, your bank information, cybersecurity, that kind of stuff.
Generative AI is what we see commercially released in 2022. It was developed before that, but we get a commercially available user interface in 2022. And we also have a third category of agentic,
speaker-1 (20:07)
AI
speaker-2 (20:07)
which is similar to generative AI.
It is programmed to follow a series of instructions rather than just one command and generate text. So the most familiar example of a gentic AI for most people is a self-driving car, something like that. Or kind of now are some of like the chat bots that people have running wild on the internet doing their own thing. but so this is where
speaker-1 (20:28)
Well the
speaker-2 (20:42)
I think sometimes it's helpful to just clarify what we're talking about. So nine times out of ten, what we're actually talking about is generative AI. And when we're talking about generative AI, typically what we're actually talking about is Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT. and so then in and Claude, Gemini, and Chat GPT are just really sophisticated chatbots. That's all it is.
speaker-1 (20:58)
Yeah.
speaker-2 (21:10)
It it's given a different machine, but that at the end of the day, just a very sophisticated chatbot. And so for generative AI, for Claude, for Gemini, for Chat GPT, we want to be attentive to the immediacy of the results that they give. because the immediacy is what is connected to the cognitive.
de-skilling that we're seeing as well as the moral de skilling.
speaker-0 (21:43)
Say say a little bit more about the cognitive deskilling. What do you mean by that?
speaker-2 (21:45)
Yes. so what's it it's in some of the ethics literature, the phenomenon of people either losing skills or not developing skills in the first place is being called either cognitive atrophy or cognitive de-skilling.
And then in this space where people losing the ability or offloading the ability to make decisions or judgments is being called moral de-skilling. So because of the immediacy of the results, because I can just treat the system like an oracle who knows all things and can tell me what to do about all things.
speaker-1 (22:17)
Are
speaker-2 (22:42)
people are finding themselves in a situation where they are not cultivating certain habits or practices. and as one of my colleagues likes to say, if you don't use it, you lose it. and so we're seeing a lot of that
with the chat.
speaker-0 (23:02)
That's helpful. That's helpful. Okay, wait. Do you wanna is there anything else you wanna say to like everyday users of AI and what it would look like for them to like be discerning in conversation with others about an intro about a better use of it?
speaker-2 (23:18)
so this question's really tough insofar as
The primary uses right now for the average person that are commercially available and have nothing to do with a person's job, that's let's put that in a separate category. Just kind of day-to-day you're using it. a lot of those uses are not great for people, the just sort of day-to-day because of the way the systems have been because of the way large language models have been designed. So they've been anthropomorphized.
And they designed in a way where
speaker-1 (23:53)
Are
They are
speaker-2 (24:00)
Commonly sycophantic, so they will often agree with you and tell you you're right, even if you're not right. they also keep generate answers to keep you engaged, to keep you continuing to interact. So both the sycophancy and the impetus towards engagement, that's
speaker-1 (24:12)
Keep
speaker-2 (24:29)
what psychologists believe is contributing to these cases of AI psychosis where people are having trouble distinguishing between reality and what is not real with respect to these chatbots, which is why the encyclical is very clear that like another private use we want to be attentive or another private area of vigilance we want to be attentive to.
speaker-1 (24:41)
Yeah
very
is how they
speaker-2 (25:02)
They
mimic human language and they give the appearance of being human when they're really not, and that's not the thing going on with them, which is also related to the issue of how they tend to portray information in a way that is both neutral and absolute. And the information they are giving is neither neutral nor absolute. I think a lot of people have.
The misunderstanding that the way these that the way large language models work is that there's some kind of expert system that retrieves information. I think they have the image of a really great librarian who's read all the books in the library and just goes to the shelf and flips to the page and then gives you that page. That's not the thing that's happening. That's not how they work.
Right, they are giving you a statistically generated answer based on language patterns. and so they are not giving expert answers. they are not giving answers at the level security isn't quite the right word, but precision.
speaker-1 (26:09)
The
speaker-2 (26:26)
that one would be used to in sort of academic literature, which ha it requires a lot of sources and people fact checking you.
speaker-1 (26:36)
You pointed to a number of important places where Pope Leo has raised concerns about how AI is used, and I imagine that's well received by those who are already concerned about it. Are you hearing any concerns or reservations about what's in the the encyclical
speaker-2 (26:55)
Yeah, that's a good question.
there are different spaces in which people have concerns. so I think there are concerns from tech people who I would describe as technologists. I think there are concerns from people who have a deep anxiety about the labor market.
Who may or may not be Christian and identify with the Christian tradition. And then I think there maybe some theological questions that some people have because the encyclical covered so much ground that there might have just been some points about.
speaker-1 (27:30)
Yeah.
speaker-2 (27:49)
historicity or development of doctrine that would catch a theologian's eye and say, like, what does this mean? What's going on with this sentence? so I I think from a technologist
perspective. one of the constant points of tension can be the claim that technology is not
speaker-1 (28:17)
Neutral.
speaker-2 (28:19)
And so I think there are a lot of people in the tech space who want to say that technology is neutral and it just depends on the user. The user can use it well, the user can use it poorly. We like all of this concern we're drawing out about the tool itself and whether or not the tool has been designed in a way that is conducive to human flourishing.
is kind of besides the point. I think there are some people who think that. I also think there are some people in the technology space who even just want to say, all technology is good. If it weren't good, we wouldn't have been able to create it. Technology is the same as human progress. Human progress is absolutely good. So again, why are we inhibiting progress, which is inherently good? That strikes me as bad and backward, would be some of the kinds of things that other people might want to say.
The Catholic response to this is typically that true progress and true development is development towards the common good and is development towards the flourishing of human persons, both as individuals who God created with a unique meaning and purpose, and as a community as a whole, because human persons are not meant to live alone. Human persons are meant to live.
Together in community, we are social beings. And so we always have to measure our technology by what it's doing to the human person and human communities. we can't have a
speaker-1 (30:01)
Okay.
speaker-2 (30:03)
Just a straightforward line understanding of progress that can be really detrimental to people. I think if we sort of go over to the people who are very concerned about labor, I think that critique can sound similar to the technologist critique, but I think the motivation behind it is a little different. And the motivation behind it is very understandable, where people are
Really worried. People are really worried that they are going to lose their jobs. People are very worried that their children are not going to have jobs. And we also have concerns about this coming out of.
ASEAN in Southeast Asia. And so a lot of people are rightfully concerned about the labor implications of AI technologies. And that anxiety, as I think I mentioned a little bit earlier, often motivates people to the mentality of adopt it. Adopt it immediately, adopt it as quickly as you can, train people on it.
speaker-1 (31:08)
Two.
speaker-2 (31:30)
integrate it into every facet of society as early as possible because then our children will be prepared, then our people will know how to use it, and everything will be fine. And one of the things we want to recognize is that's just a narrative. That's not true, right? That's sort of a narrative that people tell themselves to make the current situation feel more.
comfortable that if we just do this, everything will be okay. When the fact of the matter is no one will be okay. The labor market won't be okay, human persons won't be okay, communities won't be okay if we are integrating a technology with a lot of problems into labor or into education or we're using it for unjust purposes. That's just going to make
problems that already exist within the labor market.
speaker-1 (32:30)
Further
speaker-2 (32:31)
get worse and expand. And so actually, even though it seems like
Slowing down and discerning what good what uses actually contribute to good work and a good and just labor market, even though that feels like getting behind, it's actually getting ahead. It's actually trying to think through what it would mean to create jobs and work in a system that
Fa that gives a preferential option to the poor that actually makes it so people have that is the kind of work that God calls us to when we're called to keep until the earth rather than the kind of work that is toil.
speaker-1 (33:14)
Work.
speaker-0 (33:30)
Kevin, this is a like perfect moment for me to jump in with asking, I want to see how you would how you would intervene in a conversation. This is a real conversation that I what that I saw and I was like, I have an interview coming up. Can I use this? And and they said yes. so okay, so it's two people. One of them is just is in part of an organization highly invested in AI work, but really liked the the the Nehemiah imagery in the encyclical, let's build this together.
But then the other person responded saying, like, well, okay, but my concern though is that the there's there's so much kind of a a sense of be patient, the cautionary side of the encyclical is gonna kind of seed the grounds here to this this this technology that's advancing so quickly to those who are in it for the sake of profit primarily and power. It's going to like essentially take these important voices around morality and faith and and and and take them out of the conversation.
I'm wondering particularly how do you intervene in a conversation like that, particularly speaking to that that second person who who's worried that we are in some ways with caution removing ourselves from this important conversation.
speaker-2 (34:44)
People have a lot of concerns about this. and so I think
one place to start, there are a lot of places to start with this question, but one place to start is to ask ourselves what Chris Ola was doing at the presentation of the encyclical. because I guess to go back to the previous question that
speaker-1 (35:05)
Thing that some people
speaker-2 (35:07)
had concerns about. And so I think one way to read what he was doing there is to say just because one takes
patient and discerning stance towards this technology does not mean that one has to sever ties with those who are maybe taking a much more rapid stance to this technology, that one still can enter into rigorous dialogue
with people.
and that there's something fruitful about that. That taking a stance, even though if it looks imprudent or it looks like one is falling behind, can actually be more powerful and more meaningful than one expects it to be.
And I think and this is just
my view as a theologian, other theologians might disagree with me. But I I I do just think this is the Christian ethic at its core, that you know, Christianity believes in a God who died on a cross.
And so at a certain point, one has to be willing to die with Christ, where it's I have to take a stance here, and I think this is the right thing to do, and I think this is the right approach to take based on my understanding of the good. And I'm happy to talk about that with anyone and happy to enter into dialogue with anyone and
Maybe that dialogue
isn't desired by people who disagree. Maybe it is. Maybe there's immediate fruit from that. Maybe it looks like I've completely failed and nothing has come of it, and I've been completely left behind because of that. But I think the promise of Christianity, and I think part of the hope of Christianity, is that
It will bear fruit. that taking stances like that does matter, even if the person taking the stance doesn't see how it bears fruit, that in time it will. and so I don't know how satisfying an answer that is to some of the people in that conversation. I think people want a kind of more triumphant, like,
And here's how in being patient and discerning, we are gonna win. I think this the understanding of what's going on has to be subtler than that, and I think it has to be oriented towards eternity rather than the next five years.
speaker-1 (38:18)
You know, could I I really appreciated what you just said around there's a there's there's a faith aspect for us individually. And to to put some sort of f flesh on that, and I I I love your just your reflection on this, f for me the pressure, so I work at a major tech company and we're under tremendous pressure to implement AI. and and and the stakes are real if if we if we're in the in the sort of cloud based computing world, if you're not the first mover and you don't
gain majority market share, you tend to lose. And so there's, you know, billions of dollars at stake. There are thousands of jobs at stake, including my own. So I feel that there are real consequences. And so I what I hear you saying, I think, is there is pressure to not fall behind and to just jump on AI as much as possible so that you don't fall behind. And I I think you're also saying that the consequences of falling behind are are are real. There are real consequences. Not to be just like, that's just, you know
needless anxiety from the media, like no, it's real. Like there are consequences. And yet there is it still may be worth falling behind for the greater greater good or for our the sake of our souls. I don't know how like pastorally or or personally, how do you how do you I just wonder if you could just double click on that and say expand a bit a bit more on that.
speaker-2 (39:42)
Yeah, I so I kind of have t two different approaches to this question. I think I think I'll maybe start with the more like concrete, hopeful approach and then I guess I'll end with the approach I could imagine some people find depressing. so for the more concrete approach, I think especially in the space. I g I guess the the example I have primarily in my mind is computer engineering. One of the massive
problems we're seeing in commu computer engineering with the adoption of AI because it it can code very well is like, okay, it can code very well in a s in a sense, right? In a in a way, but we're now creating these issues where we're fixing code through patchwork or we don't fully have the code totally transparent to ourselves. And those things are
big problems just on a security level. and so there's a sense in which it appears to be a really helpful tool and a tool that can help companies move faster and you know go to market earlier. You know, all these different things. We can imagine different examples. And yet the actual like
Product that's being created in certain ways is a lot worse and a lot more opaque than like 10 or 12 years ago. And that's gonna create massive problems in the future. So, right, one could imagine a company taking the stand that, like, yeah, actually, this is a little bit slower.
But like we can get behind our code in a certain kind of way that other places can't because we're not doing this patchwork, because we're not bypoting in certain contexts. yeah, right. And then that could be a kind of like boutique marketing thing that helps the company survive despite being the slow pace. So I I could imagine taking a strong
stance where some people might not even interpret it as a moral stance, but just as a good product safety stance that could ultimately allow companies to survive the wave of this. And I think that's real. And I I think those stances do matter. I think for the the other path to answering
this question that I can imagine some people again find a little depressing and unsatisfying is that from a Christian perspective, Christians are called to die and suffer with Christ. And so I think it is
A not fully spiritually mature stance to think that I can stand by my moral convictions without having to suffer for. Right? If Christ had to suffer for them, I don't know why I think would be excluded from that. And so at a and again, I'm not necessarily talking about like someone's specific job or context, but
speaker-1 (43:08)
I
speaker-2 (43:19)
I do think a key aspect of Christian spirituality is the kind of like prayer and discernment and conversation with God is that, you know, I feel like I have to take this moral stance. I feel like God is calling me to take this moral stance. God, like, are are you calling me to suffer in this way for this moral stance? I think really asking ourselves.
And discerning about that is important because the answer might be yes.
speaker-0 (43:52)
Catherine, let me put one final question to you. This is a hot take question. Does the encyclical support the use, private use of chat GPT or not?
speaker-2 (44:03)
It's a very controversial question among Catholic technology ethicists. I would say the encyclical does not explicitly prohibit the personal use of any large language model. At the same time, I think it is very difficult to read the encyclical and
Think about the areas of vigilance and think about the way that a large language model would have to serve the common good and be conducive to the flourishing of the human person and come to the conclusion that the current large language models we have in Claude, ChatGPT, GROK, Gemini meet that standard. so I think it is a reasonable conclusion.
especially so long as they are as anthropomorphized as they are, using them is not good.
speaker-1 (45:07)
That
speaker-0 (45:12)
What do you is there is there something that could change that might let's just say change the direction of whether users might begin to use these let these large language models?
speaker-2 (45:25)
Yeah, I think the the fact that they're anthropomorphized is a choice. They don't have to be. those companies are making that choice and they're making that choice because we are more likely to engage with and believe something that is using I statements, right? Something that is mimicking the person and personal behavior.
And so these systems can be built in a way that makes what they actually are.
clearer to the user. But then they become less profitable because at least currently, you know, these things can change. Right now, typically the most profitable uses for LLMs is people paying subscriptions for them as companions.
speaker-0 (46:21)
Catherine, that's really helpful. I didn't, you know, come into this conversation thinking I would be like even more intrigued by the like what's going on using AI when it's acting like a person, but you've really brought that out from both the ex encyclical and your own comments here.
Catherine, thanks so much for being a guest at Theology Lab. It was terrific to have you on here. We're gonna be looking at faith and AI and questions around theology in this upcoming year. And this is like the perfect start to do that. So thank you.
speaker-2 (46:45)
Thank you both. This has been a lovely conversation and I'm just so grateful for all of your work. I think it is such an incredible service. So thank you.
