"We need to ensure and safeguard a space for proper human control over the choices made by artificial intelligence programs: human dignity itself depends on it."
The Pope addressed the G7 for the first time on 14 June, to speak about the threats and opportunities of AI.
He discussed cyberwarfare, quantum computing, chatbots, educational AI, generative AI and the need for political consensus on governance, including technical detail supported by Vatican AI Expert Rev. Paolo Benanti (a trained engineer who coined the term “algorethics”).
For anyone interested in AI Ethics it is certainly worth reading. (Full speech in multiple translations is linked below.)
Highlights included:
We should start "from the observation that artificial intelligence is above all else a tool. And it goes without saying that the benefits or harm it will bring will depend on its use."
AI "makes a technical choice among several possibilities based either on well-defined criteria or on statistical inferences. Human beings, however, not only choose, but in their hearts are capable of deciding."
"To speak of technology is to speak of what it means to be human and thus of our singular status as beings who possess both freedom and responsibility. This means speaking about ethics."
“…the good use, at least of advanced forms of artificial intelligence, will not be fully under the control of either the users or the programmers who defined their original purposes at the time they were designed”
An algorithm "is neither objective nor neutral. Moreover, since it is based on algebra, it can only examine realities formalised in numerical terms."
"Whether sophisticated or not, the quality of the answers that artificial intelligence programs provide ultimately depends on the data they use and how they are structured."
"…so-called generative artificial intelligence is not really “generative”. [...] It does not develop new analyses or concepts, but repeats those that it finds, giving them an appealing form. Then, the more it finds a repeated notion or hypothesis, the more it considers it legitimate and valid."
"Rather than being “generative”, then, it is instead “reinforcing” in the sense that it rearranges existing content, helping to consolidate it, often without checking whether it contains errors or preconceptions."
"...we must remember that no innovation is neutral."
"In a more or less explicit way, [this] constitutive power dimension of technology always includes the worldview of those who invented and developed it."
"This is precisely where political action is urgently needed."
Whatever your religious views, the Pope’s speech gave a practical, detailed and interesting perspective on the technical and ethical dimensions of AI development, governance and regulation.
For anyone interested in AI ethics, it is certainly worth reading.
