The Pope lays out two choices in front of the human race in Magnifica Humanitas (AD 2026). One is the Tower of Babel where humanity reaches for the divine through technological means. This ultimately leads to disaster. The second choice he likens to the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem by the prophet Nehemiah, in which place we all find our role as participating in the reconstruction of a civilization of love. By this I think he means that everyone works for the “common good” he probably means that the common good is self-evident; “La Résistance” “the common good means exposing this new form of epistemic, economic and political asymmetry and naming the new monopolies of AI” (109). In his terms he calls this “Disarming AI” “to disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity” (110). Technology will usurp humanity and we should work for human dignity over Artificial Intelligence, but he never really tells us how to resist technological determinism or we would say common necessity. Technology exacts a great price in exchange for making things easier, now we are addicted to technology and vulnerable to systems failure. Cars, TV’s, smartphones, computers have all become new necessities in our lives. In exchange for making work faster, we can now work twice as fast, but we also work twice as much. Now that we can travel twice as fast we can live twice the distance. In the bright future of yesterday’s tomorrow the computer revolution promised four-hour work-days and Friday’s off and work from home. Why can’t we use our great technology for the creation of a leisure society that actually works less and produces twice as much that caters to the whole world? Herbert Marcuse a twentieth century Marxist technocritic argues that we have the resources for our own liberation but we refuse to use it.
The powers that be or the status quo care only about efficiency, the one best way, the bane of worker’s rights, the primary value of a technological society. This can be easily demonstrated by reference back to the Efficiency Movement (AD 1880-1932). And reference to Taylorism that created time management structure of culture. This was meant to speed up the pace of work into a factory like system, like a huge well-oiled machine. The office is a white collar factory a beehive of activity. Technology creates a super organism a living machine in the world much like an anthill, or termite mound. We call this the Hive Mind all the little drones working for the queen. What is trending? TV, screens create the Hive Mind. The Pope names “efficiency” as the center principle of our times, this is not a value judgment but the actual fact, a realistic analysis. “Among these ideologies, I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth, to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective” (51).
He makes a particular point that technology is not neutral but takes on the characteristics of its users. “Technology is never neutral” (9) and insists that “Technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems” (9). Technology is not a simple tool; but a system, a being or entity, a way of life we are all caught up in as producers and consumers where we become agents of technological change or cogs in the wheel of progress. Technology moves at humanity’s expense – ecocide is related to technological advance; as technology progresses the world’s resources are plundered until it leads to extinction or a return to a hunter-gather society with great loss of population and technological regression. Stop for a moment and ask what is this progress or regress? He asks the question “what for?” “Where are we going?” (6). Do we need to move and accelerate at ever quickening tempo? What is the end game of Artificial Intelligence? Will it exceed humanity is that even possible and what would be the results? This is something we all must ask how to stop the train headed for industrial collapse? How to redirect the Leviathan toward human liberation and prosperity? How do we train a dragon?
The Pope agrees with many twentieth century philosophers of technology and technocritics. They all name the same perpetrator differently. Chief among them are French polymath Jacques Ellul, la technique, a global system strangling the life out of society and nature one that will inevitably supplant humanity, and possibly destroy the world, German philosopher Martin Heidegger, Das Man, the forces of technology deny us individuality and personal meaning, cut us off from nature and traditional society, French poet Gabriel Marcel, Existential Crisis or Mass Man, where the individual loses hope lost in technological vortex and German-American theologian Paul Tillich, Second Nature, that is one that is superimposed on human society like a factory, today we call this the ”Technosphere” or what French theologian Teilhard de Chardin called the “noosphere” I have called it “Machinehead” the deification of technology and the Frankfurt School putting things in a Marxist perspective.[1] American historian Lewis Mumford likens technological modernity to ancient cultures of Sumer, Egypt and Rome or Babylon. He calls these civilizations “Megastrucutres” or “Magamachines” because they operate like a huge machine some modern scientists would say super organism or “Meta-Man” as American physics professor Gregory Stock calls it. All say the same thing, except for Teilhard “speed kills!” We are rapidly moving into an unknown future that may not be for humanity’s best interest. He notes Saint Paul V early insight “scientific and technological advances, when detached from moral and social progress, end up turning against humanity” (117). We referrer to this as “cultural lag” or “Future Shock,” meaning our technological advances move quicker than our moral, religious, legal, spiritual, educational mores are able to keep pace with creating spiritual disorientation. Technological progress must be accompanied by ethical and spiritual development or it will usurp our ability to keep up with the radical changes it creates. He further defines technology as a “paradigm”; a lens through which we see ourselves and those around us, a “worldview” as philosophers say; “in our globalized world: the tendency to let the logic of efficiency, control and profit alone shape personal, social and economic decisions. This makes it clear that technology is not simply a tool. When it becomes the standard by which everything is judged, it begins to dictate what matters and what can be discarded, reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency” (92).
He criticizes innovations which do not always benefit the worker but actually creates further demands and new necessities,
Today, the convergence of automation, robotics and AI is rapidly transforming the very structure of work. It is said that this will bring great improvements for everyone. In reality, however, the “new ways” of working are not necessarily better, for “while AI promises to boost productivity by taking over mundane tasks, it frequently forces workers to adapt to the speed and demands of machines, rather than machines being designed to support those who work. As a result, contrary to the advertised benefits of AI, current approaches to technology can paradoxically de-skill workers, subject them to automated surveillance and relegate them to rigid and repetitive tasks. The need to keep up with the pace of technology can erode workers’ sense of agency and stifle the innovative abilities they are expected to bring to their work.” Precisely in order to avoid this drift, it is necessary to design systems that are created on the human person and not solely on performance (150).
He advocates a slower pace to modern life, “a moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few. What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating and protecting the opportunities for communities still to be able to participate and ask questions” (107). To challenge the god of speed in our time is a cardinal sin. This proves that Pope Leo XIV is suggesting something radical. A slower pace means more time to pray, study, pursue self-interest, walk or run, spend quality time with children and family; can we pray with the noise of machines in our ears, always on the go?
He makes particular reference to Transhumanism and Posthumanism movement within the culture of High Tech, especially Silicon Valley. They want to upgrade humanity to a better body or merging with machines. We call this the Cyborg Condition, technosapiens or Humanity 2.0,
In general transhumanism envisions the enhancement of human beings through technologies−such as biomedicine, body engineering devices and algorithms−with the aim of increasing performance and capabilities. Posthumanism, especially in more radical forms, goes further: it challenges anthropocentrism and envisions a hybridization of human beings, machines and the environment, even anticipating a threshold where humanity surpasses itself in a new evolutionary stage (116).
We must realize that what the Pope is resisting is what has been called “the technological imperative” whatever can be done should be done! Applied to Transhumanism we can see where this will end in catastrophe. Dutch theologian Egbert Schuurman says, “When technology is carried on for the sake of technology – a situation which can be brought about by elitist thinking among engineers or by the expectation or naïve belief that technological progress is simultaneously and self-evidently the progress of humanity and society – the norm presupposed for technology is that whatever can be made ought to be made. No questions are entertained concerning the meaning of such activity.”[2]
All this is excellent criticism, but we have to ask ourselves how far have we gone and is there any way back? Putting restraints on AI defeats the purpose of AI. The creation of AI means the creation of higher unemployment, to replace people with machines represents the ultimate goal. As professor Schuurman adds, “The grand quest in modern technology has been to develop technological objects that can operate independently.”[3] AI is raising our kids for us. Soon teachers, professors, translators, books and libraries will become obsolete. How long did it take for the Vatican to finally address AI? Pope Leo XIII did not address the industrial revolution until his encyclical letter Rerum Novarum (AD 1891). The beginning of the church’s Social Doctrine. Historians like to identify the Industrial Revolution with the eighteenth century somewhere around AD 1750 or thereabouts that’s almost a century and a half later. This no doubt is a perfect example of “cultural lag” we mentioned earlier, the technology moves so fast the religious and political worlds, authorities are unable to formulate norms quick enough to keep up and then technology morphs into something higher from industrial society to postindustrial. The time for criticism should have been at the birth of AI with the invention of the ENIAC in AD 1945, which was programed to calculate the trajectory of artillery shells Magnifica Humanitas did not appear until AD 2026 that’s nearly a century later. The encyclical should make technophiles slow down and think and technocritics rejoice for finally having a powerful voice behind their cause.
[1] Lawrence J. Terlizzese, Machinehead: Rise of the Technology God (Cambridge: Christian Publishing House, 2019).
[2] Egbert Schuurman, Technology and the Future: A Philosophical Challenge, trans. by Herbert Donald Morton (Toronto: Wedge: 1980), 358.
[3] Schuurman, Technology and the Future, 11.