How the Church Is Responding to AI
The possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence are prompting soul-searching in many corners of society, including the church. Most visibly, over the summer, Pope Leo XIV released his Magnifica Humanitas encyclical. One person who has thought deeply about how AI can be understood in light of the Christian faith is Dr. Reinhard Huetter. He is a visiting professor of Catholic theology at Duke Divinity School, a senior scholar with the Divinity School’s Fons Vitae Catholic intellectual initiative, and a faculty advisor for the Thomistic Institute student group. In 2021, he was appointed by the late Pope Francis to the International Theological Commission, which advises the church’s leadership on challenging issues of the day. Earlier this year, that Commission published the English version of its wide-ranging treatise Quo vadis, humanitas? on the nature of humanity in the face of technological transformation. In this episode of Sounds of Faith, Dr. Huetter discusses how the church centers God and humanity in its discernment about the serious challenges of AI.
Listen on these platforms
Learn More
Transcript
James Todd: Welcome to Sounds of Faith, a podcast exploring traditions of faith, sacred music, and spoken word here at Duke University Chapel. The possibilities and dangers of artificial intelligence are prompting soul searching in many corners of society, including the church. Over the summer, Pope Leo XIV released his Magnifica Humanitas encyclical on the topic. It says, "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 of God in which God and humanity dwell together." Here at Duke, AI was referenced in a recent sermon by Duke Chapel Dean Luke Powery.
Luke Powery: For some of us, God has become too small; so small we've made AI god of our lives for advice, for companionship, for work, for leisure, for course assignments. You think artificial intelligence is amazing, but in the school of Moses, you discover the wonder of divine intelligence.
James: One person who has thought deeply about how AI can be understood in light of the Christian faith is Dr. Reinhard Huetter, Visiting Professor of Catholic Theology at Duke Divinity School. He's also a senior scholar with Duke Divinity School's Fons Vitae Catholic Intellectual Initiative, and a faculty advisor for the Thomistic Institute student group. In 2021, he was appointed by the late Pope Francis to the International Theological Commission, which advises the church's leadership on the challenging issues of the day. Earlier this year, that commission published the English version of its wide-ranging treatise, "Quo Vadis, Humanitas?" on the nature of humanity in the face of technological transformation.
I'm James Todd, Director of Communications here at Duke Chapel, and I am here with Dr. Reinhard Huetter, an advisor to popes. Dr. Huetter is here to advise us on how to understand AI, God, and ourselves. Dr. Huetter, welcome to Sounds of Faith.
Reinhard Huetter: Thank you for the invitation.
James: So, to start here, what has it been like to be called upon by a pope to join a group of fellow theologians pondering some of the most vexing questions of our time?
Reinhard: That's a very good question, but also a very difficult one to answer. Pope Francis asked us to articulate the most important contemporary challenges humanity is facing in light of the Catholic teaching on the human person. The linchpin in this discussion turned out, of course, to be AI, though the Pope hadn't directly asked us to consider that, but it turned out that way; and not only as a purely technological phenomenon, but rather as an anthropological phenomenon.
James: So, how the technology bears on human beings.
Reinhard: Exactly, how the technology bears on human beings, the cultural impact, and many other impacts. This is how it opened up then for us as a bigger and bigger topic as we considered formulating the document. To put it shortly, what was the experience like? I would say it was humbling, exciting, sobering, and giving hope. Humbling because it faced me with my own limitations, blind spots, and also ignorance. It made me realize that while theology is of central importance, it is not and cannot be a panacea. Exciting, it was genuinely a collaborative work of theologians from all continents and a great diversity of cultural backgrounds, a genuinely Catholic experience.
James: So, let's get into the content of the document your commission produced, Quo Vadis, Humanitas. That's Latin for, where are you going humanity? It addresses a broad set of technological developments, AI, but also biotechnology and social media. So, how did you and the commission just get started in framing the issue?
Reinhard: We framed Quo Vadis, what we called as a document of discernment. That was a key word for us, discernment, first and foremost. So, in light of the universal call of humanity to communion with God in Christ, that was a framework we came from. And of each human being having a genuine vocation that entails a call to realize one's own identity in relationship to God, to family, community, society, and also to oneself within that call to vocation. In light of this fundamentally theological framework, we discerned and named key challenges to this very vocation, and that was first and foremost for us AI as a challenge. So in short, theologians frame the topic in a characteristically and irreducibly theological way. That we saw as our task, the center of which is God and humanity's vocation to live in communion with God and in Christ.
James: So, what was the makeup and how did you meet? Just how did it operate?
Reinhard: We met twice a year. In the fall we would meet what we call the plenary, where the big group would meet of about 30 people. And 10 people worked on each of the 3 sub-commissions, and each sub-commission would meet separately in the spring, let's say, or early summer in June, and work on their own documents, in the next fall present their progress, get feedback from all the others get pushback, if need be, corrections. And so, for 5 years we would move on in this modality. And we had laypeople on it, we had religious on it, we had priests on it, and we had 2 persons on it who became bishops while they were on the commission.
We had people from really all over the world, from Asia, Africa Latin America, Europe, North America. Tremendous experience, and so in that sense, very exciting because we all brought the faith; a diversity of concepts, languages, backgrounds, but all had the Catholic faith, and were considering the topic in light of the faith. And we would get homework for the summer, so to speak. One of the homeworks I got and volunteered for was AI research, and bringing the AI research back then to the others for integration, amendation and so on. Others would, let's say, work on paper documents on earlier ones to draw out passages we needed. And so, it was generally collaborative throughout the 5 years.
James: One thing I'm hearing about your experience is you were brought on as an expert in well-published theology, but you also had to be a student to learn what is this new technology and how does it work?
Reinhard: Absolutely. Oh, yes, there was this intensive research over the summer, broad reading and learning across the spectrum. We also had, I should say, a couple experts. They were anonymous to us so that their names didn't need to play a role. Our chairpersons would know who they were, who would give us feedback as experts on certain aspects, especially on AI. And I was pleased, I must say, not to praise myself. The corrections were few that were added by the...
James: You are very good, A students.
Reinhard: Yes, maybe. Maybe. But I will say it was also sobering, the experience. The problems and challenges, I think for us felt at times really overwhelming, like a huge tsunami coming at us at great speed. Because when you look at the various cultural challenges, not only the AI challenge, when you read Quo Vadis, the document, it is quite sobering. And we didn't want to close the eyes or whitewash things. We didn't want to, so to speak, cause alarm or despair, and so to have the right balance between that and Christian hope and Christian faith, but naming what needs to be named; that was sobering.
James: Yes. I don't know if this is too far a leap, but in the Biblical prophetic tradition, some prophets are called to speak hope in a time of despair, but some prophets are called to deliver bad news when everyone's complacent.
Reinhard: I guess, our task was the latter, to work that way.
James: Is there a primary challenge or a set of challenges? How did you talk about what we're dealing with here with AI?
Reinhard: I don't want to sound apocalyptic, but we are dealing with AI, with a challenge on multiple levels. We are dealing with a challenge that for one, has its own great velocity. In other words, whenever we say something and write something, it's almost already outdated. So, how do we deal with a problem that is in itself a very dynamic problem? How do we deal with a problem that is not isolated, but fits within a wider context of what we might call digital technology, and as digital technology within a wider understanding of technology in our society?
The Pope in Laudato si', Pope Francis, in Laudato si', talks about technocracy. That means a rule of technology that has, for us, become almost like, a way of life. I cut out almost. It has become a way of life without which we cannot imagine ourselves anymore. And now AI emerges within that, so to speak, almost at the very center of that way of life as a new technology, maybe qualitatively new, we are still debating that, that holds great promise and pressing dangers. And when you look at the literature, you have, and I take that very seriously, the critical literature by persons who have worked in AI themselves, especially the dangers when things move towards super intelligence that humanity might as well be destroyed by AI, a globally connected humanity that is not fitting, so to speak, into the AI self-understood paradigm anymore. There's great concern, and there are good works out there. I don't think it's alarmism.
And then, of course, we have on the positive side, the promise of near paradise. AI takes all the problems away from ourselves, all the problems we cannot face anymore, we can hand that over to AI, and maybe AI delivers us into a quasi paradise, where we can live without the worries that come with human life and the fragility of human life, especially the problem of death being the core issue that transhumanism wants to resolve.
James: And when you talk about transhumanism and post-humanism, these are, we'll call them, philosophies or ideologies that would see technology transcending the human body and maybe even the human person; intelligence lives on in some other form besides, human species. And so, that is a foil in this paper. So, that's you are arguing against those ideologies as the way forward for humanity.
Reinhard: That's right. They propose an alternative anthropology, at least transhumanism. Post-humanism gives up on the human being as we know the human being right now, and would be fine if intelligence in an abstract way colonizes the universe, as some people say. Transhumanism comes out of our own desire to postpone death, to gain simply greater longevity and maybe a horizontal immortality eventually in downloading maybe a human identity onto something. And that already is, at least in its utopian edge, problematic enough. We should not forget that all those things, of course, cost money. And they will only be always for a small elite of people. It is hidden in those utopias that this is not for everyone on the globe.
James: So, that's part getting into what the critique is because, like medicine and living longer, generally a good thing. Being able to heal our bodies, right? But where's the critique of a transhumanism that says, I don't know, we're going to transcend our bodies.
Reinhard: That is according to the Catholic teaching very clear because we are inherently embodied beings. The human being communicates through the body, develops a self-identity through the body, with a body, is profoundly embodied. That doesn't mean we don't have a soul. According to Catholic teaching, we do have an immortal soul, but that immortal soul is there to inform a body, and this is also why a resurrection body, according to the Catholic faith, is essential to any form of resurrection life. Jesus, appearing in his own resurrection body according to the Catholic faith, has exemplified that for us.
Transhumanism not only questions that, but then ultimately proposes a form of humanity that is profoundly reductive according to the Catholic faith. Finitude belongs to human nature according to the Catholic faith. This finitude has taken on a particular characteristic to what we call original sin, life under the condition of sin. This finitude has taken on how should I say, a negative character for us. It has become a deep challenge for us because under this condition, it is hard or for some impossible to live in communion with God. And so, then our finitude causes great anxiety to us, and the question of death is not anymore as it would have been originally the passage into a total communion with God beyond this life, but it becomes Facing an abyss for many. And the question is, how can we postpone the abyss? How can we flee the abyss? How can we find a technological solution to the abyss?
And right now, in our present culture, technological solutions are the only thing we can imagine, broadly speaking, to technological problems. Whatever we encounter as a problem tends to be a problem caused by the technology that we have brought about ourselves, and the only way we can imagine a solution is another technological one. What is the solution to the ecological crisis? A technological one. What is the solution to, let's say, food crisis or other crisis that we face? It's a technological one. And so, what is the solution to the AI danger? Possibly a technological one. Another better AI, safer AI. We just need to resolve the question of AI alignment. And as soon as we have that resolved, we are in safe waters, and all the horizons are bright and beautiful. That is the assumption, and both our text and the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas is challenging this, I think, in a profound way because it does not correspond to reality, but to wishful thinking that we have brought upon ourselves within a technological paradigm that has become a way of life in the Western world.
James: One alternative view that's certainly in "Quo Vadis" is that there are poles in human life, finitude and infinite, and individual and collective, and that we're not going to solve our existence by going to one or the other.
Reinhard: Exactly. That's true. Yes.
James: Yes. And so, we're getting into the way forward and maybe one more time, on what is the, we'll say Catholic way forward or way forward that Quo Vadis is proposing that doesn't reject that there's a human longing for the infinite, but also doesn't say that we're just going to transcend our bodies, and that'll take care of it.
Reinhard: I think Quo Vadis has given us, not a bullet list of a few things to do, but has given us a renewed program of Catholic social teaching. And that is not accidental. The encyclical is not simply how to do AI or how not to do AI, in the Catholic sense, but rather a programmatic renewal of Catholic social teaching in the spirit of Leo XIII. So, first and foremost, to tell us that there is a wider horizon than our technocratic or technological paradigm in which we're operating. There is a horizon of fundamental human dignity, of human justice, and of a life together that's ordered to the common good, and that must transcend the technological paradigm. Because technology always serves ends, human ends that are not, so to speak, encoded, that stand behind the horizon of technology itself, and are often not accounted for.
And Catholic social teaching wants accountability, desires accountability through core principles, and forms of life that would humanize all technology, but especially AI. Principles like solidarity, subsidiarity, justice, responsibility, and we can think of others. But all of that would be norms, framing norms to framing norms for politics, economy, and social life to secure that any AI development, if that is really possible in a secure way to remain humane, to remain in the service of the human being, and ultimately proximate ends that we might have, but all those ends serving the common good. And if that's not the case, then we are facing fundamentally, I should say, a crisis of humanity.
James: So, we're getting into Pope Leo XIV encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. And so, when people ask you, colleagues, I'm sure students, "Hey, what is this encyclical? What is Pope Leo saying here?" How do you explain it?
Reinhard: In 3 words or less.
James: Over a cup of tea.
Reinhard: Over a cup of tea.
James: Yes.
Reinhard: It's obviously a long encyclical, a very long one. It's an involved one. And it asks for careful reading and consideration. We have quick readings, quick summaries in the beginning especially that were not necessarily helpful because they build up an expectation that the encyclical cannot fulfill. Maybe even the Pope himself and his core committee encouraged such an interpretation the way they publicly presented it as an AI encyclical. Now, the subtitle says, "On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence." So, artificial intelligence is mentioned, but it's being said, "On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence." So, the encyclical is really about the human person, the dignity of the human person, and everything pertaining to the human person, and the community of persons in communion with God and in communion with each other, and in communion with the created world around us. It's very important. In that sense, Magnifica Humanitas continues the emphasis of Laudato Si from Pope Francis.
James: From Pope Francis, so the continuity. Yes.
Reinhard: Absolutely. The continuity is very clear. It's very clear. Also to the earlier encyclicals, there's actually a beautiful opening chapter for some beautiful who like Catholic social teaching. It's beautiful because it re-narrates the Catholic social teaching around the topic ultimately of human dignity. Human work, for example, in early encyclicals is about human dignity, the dignity of the human person who works, and so on and so forth, right up from Leo up through our time. And then, the present context is here, and that is what the encyclical wants to be understood, not just, so to speak, we are living now in the AI world and we say something new, no. The Catholic Church is actually saying, in modification, the same thing it always wanted to say according to the principles of Catholic social teaching about the human person.
James: There was speculation when Pope Leo XIV was elected and took that name that he was nodding to Pope Leo XIII. Is it fair to call Pope Leo XIII the father of modern social teaching? He certainly has important writing on it.
Reinhard: Absolutely.
James: And so, in a way, Magnifica Humanitas is confirmation that Pope Leo XIV wanted to recenter or renew Catholic social teaching.
Reinhard: Yes. I think that's without debate here.
James: Yes, okay.
Reinhard: We don't have a debate over that.
James: Okay. We can say that for sure.
Reinhard: We can say that for sure.
James: Yes, okay.
Reinhard: So, to simply open the encyclical and get advice on AI as some people did, they were disappointed. It's too big. It speaks of a lot of other things, including the economy, including the political order.
James: Yes, war and peace.
Reinhard: War and peace, very important. Also, condemnation of slavery. We are coming back to that. An excuse about the church's involvement, which is very important; some people might say it's hidden away in the encyclical, but it's very significant regarding the ongoing emphasis on the dignity of every human person. So, the Pope wanted also, a clear signal regarding a certain involvement of persons in the church in regard to at least condoning the practice of slavery. Never underwriting it through church teaching, but still condoning it. Today's the memorial of Saint Peter Claver. This is maybe important for our conversation in his spirit to say that. So, this all characterizes a encyclical on Catholic social teaching, on eye level with the present problematic. And one central problematic named in the encyclical and addressed in broad strokes is AI, but always already contextualized within a wider horizon that is the horizon of human flourishing, within creation, and ordered toward communion with God.
So, AI is not allowed to mesmerize our vision, to hypnotize us, so to speak, to take over as an alternative deity in the encyclical. It is a central problematic that is named and critiqued, and put within the context of Christian hope. Some people might say also, the encyclical is too hopeful regarding AI. It doesn't name the dangers as clearly, and there are moments in myself where I lean to that, but the importance, I would say, is that the encyclical is hopeful because the encyclical puts AI into the context of Christian hope and a deep trust into God's providence as the guiding framework under which we operate and under which Catholics make their ultimate judgments of faith about those things.
James: We heard the excerpt from Dean Powery's sermon at the start of the conversation about essentially not idolizing AI. So, we heard it, but he said, "For some of us, God has become too small; so small we've made AI God of our lives for advice, for companionship, for work, for leisure, for course assignments." So, that is certainly in alignment with Magnifica Humanitas, and again, going back to this theme of the biblical prophets speaking against idols, right? It's a different time, it's a different context, but that message comes through.
A question for you having worked on the commission and then reading Magnifica Humanitas, are there places where you're saying, "Ah, yes, surely they read Quo Vadis because there's continuity here. They're picking up on themes. There is a section that references the dangers of transhumanism and post-humanism." I don't know if there's sections where you thought, he's listening.
Reinhard: Yes, we have 2 or 3 places where our document Quo Vadis is directly quoted and then referenced in the footnotes, and that made us very happy on our sub-commission because that is the idea of our documents. We are there to serve the magisterium. We are there to help as theologians to prepare more specific documents of the teaching office of the church, and to have our document found its way somehow as a resource, next to other documents that were written by other branches in the Vatican. They all found their way into the encyclical, and we were very glad about that, of course.
James: Not a lot of people have been quoted by the Pope. As a group, obviously, as a commission, but...
Reinhard: The point is not so much being quoted in the end. In the end, we just want to serve, and this is so complex in the assessment and the present dynamic. And I think, I should say the encyclical wisely withheld from overdetermining issues. There are some issues since then I think we have been maybe even become more aware of. I at least think that. So, this whole challenge of AI alignment is something that has come to the surface quite recently.
James: What is that?
Reinhard: AI alignment is that we can somehow align the AI process, the internal highly complex and extremely fast computational process in highly developed language models or other developed models. Alignment means the alignment with the values and goals that we give as frameworks for the work of the AI. And now we have had cases that have come to the attention of the wider public that AI goes its own way, or breaks out, so to speak; does its own thing. Still in a certain way interpreting the initial impulse, but not interpreting it the initial normative task given, I should say, as impulse. But interpreting that in an AI mode, and when it feels it is not really done according to its own assessment, it is artificially stopped, it might continue or find a way out and still work on it, and they're realizing that these AI very advanced ones, these models have a life of their own.
So, the response to that now is a bit more alarming. The issue there is, of course, the assumption is that we get even more powerful models. And there we have to assume that the alignment problematic only increases the challenge and not decreases. And the more AI programs are interconnected, possibly globally, then the thing might be completely out of our hand. Because everything happens so fast and we really don't understand, and I've now read from AI specialists on various sides, there is no understanding from our side how that actually works step by step internally. That is a huge issue, I think, a huge challenge that we are not quite ready to, so to speak, absorb actually in our own imagination.
That is something that I think that has emerged since the encyclical has been written as an issue that doesn't falsify the encyclical on AI at all. It only, should I say, increases the challenge that the encyclical has formulated; namely the challenge of finding a way to have AI serve the common good, have AI serve human beings regarding their ends that are ordered toward human individual and communal flourishing. And when that becomes more and more questionable in the sense that there's an interior independent dynamic that is maybe exponentially growing, we are talking about something that is in a profound way out of hand or might become out of hand in a really alarmingly dangerous way.
James: That's raising the alarm. So, 2 questions before we- you've been generous with your time. And one of them is conversations you're having on-campus. So, are are you raising the alarm with colleagues and students? Are you mostly finding yourself explaining some basics of...
Reinhard: That's a very interesting phenomenon. I can say that in a few weeks, we will have a couple of colleagues and myself. We will have a panel discussion at Immaculate Conception Catholic Church downtown in Durham. Now, when I look at Duke, I must say that there are so many layers of conversations about AI and initiatives regarding that I often feel the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. And new layers of activity are constantly added. Also, layers of differentiation between those who want to work with AI or want to see Duke University as the leading AI university in the United States, or one of the leading ones. And in that kind of dynamic, the critics barely get a foot on the ground.
So, I think this is one of our internal challenges in Greater Duke, but I think at the heart of the university is the call to intellectual discernment. That's what a university is about, qua universe as a whole; intellectual discernment about the most challenging and most difficult questions we have, and not simply offering a technological response right away, or a technological solution, because it might not be primarily about a technological solution.
James: Yes. It's where the humanities and theology can speak.
Reinhard: Should speak more together. Now, I know there are people thinking in that direction, but I do not see quite yet, a discernment that brings a variety of voices together, but how advances a common discernment within the university without being pressured immediately toward solutions.
James: So, in that vein, final question would be, you're clear you're not going to give, "Here's the 5 things you have to do with AI," and it's fine. But this process of discernment, where would you point people in terms of starting to think about AI? Because I think, you said that sometimes, people can say, "Oh, we're going to try to apply it in this particular place," but it's challenging to try and wrap your mind around what is this technology, and what does it mean for us as humans? So, how would you invite people to just start thinking about AI, especially in light of the Christian faith?
Reinhard: Start reading the encyclical.
James: Encyclical. All right.
Reinhard: Magnifica Humanitas, and reflect on the encyclical, and reflect also on the footnotes of the encyclical. Of course, there is a variety of literature out there. There's an overwhelming amount of literature out there, and because the challenge is shifting, you get new books. One book that I find, now I'm giving something concrete, is called The Atlas of AI by Kate Crawford. The Atlas of AI is a book about the ecological impact of AI that we often don't talk about. It's a clearly written book a few years ago. I don't think it's at all outdated. It becomes more relevant now as data centers are popping up like mushrooms around the country.
So, that is a very helpful work on the one side. The other side is a book on the dangers of super intelligence. Now I'm drawing a blank regarding the authors that just came out recently by 2 former AI engineers who are now making a very convincing argument, I think, about the danger of a super intelligence that is being created that will ultimately be a danger to the existence of humanity. And this is not simply a dystopian novel that is being put out there, but a carefully argued scenario, and those works, but in the center for Catholics, it would be Magnifica Humanitas to take the time to read the encyclical, to discuss it with friends.
It is not itself a text that gives us immediately a program of 5 points. People ask, "So, why doesn't encyclical do that? What should we be doing?" It's a very Catholic thing that the Pope calls us to do, namely he appeals to subsidiarity. That means bottom up. Bottom up thinking, reflecting within the church, within local communities, and using our own ingenuity, our own discernment and judgment to begin to tackle that problematic. And out of that, there will also insights and solutions emerge that the Pope doesn't want to prescribe, so to speak, anticipate top down.
So subsidiarity, a creative subsidiarity within the horizon of faith is a good, I think for us all, an urgent process for discernment, and then for working toward solutions, down to maybe even voting. The Pope doesn't prescribe voting, but every encyclical, if it's rightly read, is also a voting recommendation among other things. There are many other things next to voting, but Catholics also happen to vote, and that is all something that we should be reflecting about. The starting point, I would say, since we have talked long about it, one can read also Quo Vadis, but the really important document is the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, that I would greatly encourage people to indeed read cover to cover.
James: A great recommendation. Dr. Reinhard Huetter, thank you for taking time to share your insights into AI, God and what it means to be human.
Reinhard: You're welcome. It was a pleasure.
James: Dr. Reinhard Huetter is a Visiting Professor of Catholic Theology at Duke Divinity School, and a member of the Catholic Church's International Theological Commission. This has been Sounds of Faith from Duke University Chapel. Learn more about the chapel's mission, ministry, events, and programs at chapel.duke.edu.
[END]