THE STRONG and clear challenge posed by Pope Leo XIV in his first encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity),” is declaring the sacred value of every human life. It’s a strong statement of moral value that asserts the dignity and rights of every person. It comes at a time when people, especially women and children, are being deprived of their humanity and treated as objects to be exploited and abused, their rights eroded or denied.
Human lives are damaged almost beyond repair by a new kind of tyrant. Not the human one that maims and kills, but a powerful, electronic one that has begun invading the mobile phones — and by extension, the hearts and minds — of thousands of children and other vulnerable people. It is called artificial intelligence (AI).
AI can be a great tool for education, research, programming machines, and computers, but it’s also a dangerous one that can be used to harm, exploit and oppress people. In the hands of unscrupulous tycoons and pedophiles, it can be abused for mass digital manipulation and exploitation, and for making child-abuse materials.
It can also be used to program drones and other aircraft, as well as lethal weapons in autonomous warfare. Pope Leo makes clear the dangers inherent in AI abuse.
Government agencies around the world use AI algorithms to discriminate against some people. These algorithms can be designed to identify and systematically eliminate or block certain people from gaining access to education, employment, loans and health care.
AI programs can discriminate based on a person’s color, race, social status, and educational or ethnic background. This is what is behind the social justice crisis that Pope Leo talks about in his encyclical. It puts people, and their dignity and rights, before digital power and challenges the tycoons who use AI without control or constraint to earn billions of dollars.
The AI-based decisions made on the data collected from people are “tainted by prejudice and injustice,” the pope says.
What Pope Leo is saying is that the tech tycoons have a monopoly of powerful technology programs, and billions of people are now dependent on them. These tycoons are in control of the content that people read, listen to and experience. Many have been manipulated and exploited by these AI programs. This is what Pope Leo is denouncing.
The AI-driven algorithms used by the tycoons are gathering personal data and working like secret law enforcers, treating people’s private lives as raw material to be exploited, owned, and monetized without their participation or consent. Pope Leo considers this massive collection of personal information a digital form of imperialism, calling it “digital neocolonialism.”
Using the AI capabilities of their search engines, these tech companies acquire, through their platforms, the personal health records, genetic data, and demographic information of millions of people, especially in politically weaker or developing nations like the Philippines, where users are unaware they are being digitally exploited every time they open their computers or mobile phones. Their data is used to train predictive AI models that expand this exploitation and generate profit for corporations through advertising, and even political manipulations to influence elections.
Connectivity between people through their social media platforms may be helpful, but they do not, in general, serve humanity. (To be continued)/PN
