2024-02-13 11:02:25
The Pontifical Academy of Life Sciences held a plenary session from February 12 to 14 to reflect on how to coordinate the diversity of disciplines while avoiding “the hegemony of technology.” Pope Francis received the participants on the opening day of the conference.
(Vatican News Network) On the morning of February 12, Pope Francis met with members attending the General Assembly of the Pontifical Academy of Life Sciences and reflected on the theme of this conference “Humanity: Meaning and Challenges.” The Pope pointed out that in the era of artificial intelligence, people are worried that algorithms will become the universal criterion for measuring human affairs, so it is necessary to re-understand the relationship between humans and machines. This requires understanding “what is used to judge human beings”, that is, human beings’ deepest nature.
Enter a broader perspective
The Pope first pointed out that it is not “suitable” to distinguish between “natural processes and artificial processes”. Such a distinction considers the former to be “real human beings”, while the latter is “irrelevant or even diametrically opposed to human beings”. “. “What needs to be done,” the Pope said, “is to place scientific and technological knowledge in a broader context, thereby avoiding the hegemony of technological supremacy.”
The Pope said that this deviation, that is, the belief that one can “reproduce humanity using technological tools and thinking,” can already be seen in the ancient Biblical account of the Tower of Babel. In this story, God’s intervention is not a “destructive punishment” as people think, but a “targeted blessing.”
“Indeed, God appears to be trying to correct the drift towards a ‘single mind’ through the diversity of languages. In this way, human beings are exposed to limitations and fragility, and must therefore respect differences and care for one another.”
“Responsible” creativity
The Pope pointed out that there is an “insidious temptation” in today’s super-technical people who build “talking machines”. They “feel that they are the masters of an act of creation” similar to God’s act of creation. Therefore, we “must discern how to responsibly exercise man’s own creative power.” This requires “developing a culture that integrates the resources of science and technology so that it can recognize and promote the unrepeatable characteristics of human beings.”
Get rid of the shackles of “unchanged”
To advance this “cultural mission,” the Pope emphasizes two models. The first model is based on “interdisciplinary communication”, a “cultural laboratory” based on “mutual exchange”, re-understanding and overcoming “the juxtaposition of knowledge” through “mutual listening and critical reflection”. The second model is evident in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ “Come Together Process”.
“This is a demanding way of study,” the Pope noted, “because it requires concentration and spiritual freedom, an openness to change on paths yet unexplored and unknown, free from all kinds of unfruitful ‘sameness’ Bondage.”
The Pope concluded by saying that “Christianity has always made an important contribution by absorbing meaningful traditions from the various cultures with which it comes into contact” and “using the language and language present in the individual context, in accordance with the relationship with the Lord revealed in the Gospel. conceptual resources to reinterpret these traditions”.
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