Dr. Brian Patrick Green is Director of Technology Ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University. He is the author of the book Space Ethics, a contributor to Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations, and Ethics in the Age of Disruptive Technologies: An Operational Roadmap (The ITEC Handbook) and Ethics in He is also the co-author of “Technology Practice Corporate Tech”. Ethics Resources. He has worked extensively with the Vatican, the World Economic Forum, and many technology companies on AI ethics. Green is a member of the Future of Life Institute’s AI Safety Community Research Fellow.
There are two great commandments in the Bible: love God and love your neighbor (Matthew 22:37-40). This makes sense, considering that God is love (1 John 4:16) and humans were created in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27). This means that in a sense we are also love. Only by loving others and being loved in return can we truly be ourselves.
But God is more than just love. In the first chapter of John’s Gospel, we learn that God in the person of Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, is also the Logos. Logos, most often translated as word, includes (and is variously emphasized) logic, reason, and rationality. discourse. The essence of God is being, and God is the consistent act of being itself, and the “I-Am-Who-I-Am” of Exodus (Exodus 3:14) – pure being – and from God Because leaving is also leaving. From existence to non-existence. Therefore, to love God is to desire to continue to live, to exist. And to love one’s neighbor is to practice the practices necessary to sustain life, existence on earth, and this is a prerequisite for loving God. God’s logic is love, and God’s love is logic.
This gives rise to two further ethical rules for Christianity. The Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31) – and is the most horribly avoided of all Christian commands. “Love your enemies” (Matthew 5:44). Why does such reckless love exist in this world?
If God is love, goodness, and reason, then the opposite of God is hate, evil, and irrationality. God is existence itself, and evil is irrational and self-destructive because it rejects existence. Evil undermines its own existence, but not only itself. Evil spreads through death, metastasizes, and engulfs as many bystanders and innocents as it can grasp until it falls into nothingness. Evil is 0 to God’s 1. Thus, God’s great commandments are His instructions on how to avoid evil and continue living. More than that, we also learn to thrive through love and create a thriving world. To remove the landmark is the path to death, but to draw near to the landmark is to draw near to God and is the path to life (Deuteronomy 30:19, Didache 1).
The above reflects the divine intelligence of the Triune God. Humans desiring wisdom beyond mere mortals may be well advised to try to understand it.
And artificial intelligence may be advised to “go and do likewise” (Luke 10:37).
So how can we create an AI that shows love for God and neighbor, walks with us on the path to life, and acts as a blessing rather than a curse to the world?
First, ethics instruction needs to move from the abstract to the concrete. Truth is the most important value that proves both logic and love. Short-term and long-term human survival are also the most important values related to love and the nature of God as being itself, that is, “I am.” And living in a society that functions now and in the long term expresses the trinitarian and relational nature of God. Love requires human survival, love requires relationships as the foundation of society, and love requires truth. The same applies to reason. Reason needs life, society, and truth. In fact, these values – survival, sustainability, sociability, education, the search for truth – are rendered logical by an absurd reduction, especially since to deny them is to deny the basis of reason itself. It is demonstrable. This is secular philosophy, not theology. God has nothing to do with proofs, except to create a universe in which logical proofs are possible. The rational universe expresses and reflects the mind of its rational creator, and both can be examined by the rational human mind.
The five values above can be further fleshed out by linking them to a more familiar set of moral values, such as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or even AI ethical principles for tech companies. . Everything fits. Convert these five values. These five values were stated by St. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century in his Complete Theology, but again they were not meant as theological claims, but as universal “natural laws” based on human nature. ” (Aquinas ST) I-II 94.2). In fact, natural law ethics evolved over time into a discussion of human rights. 1
All of this, in a positive AI future, will protect our immediate survival, promote our sustainable long-term survival as a species, and help us live in free and just societies. It means presenting a machine that works to educate and acquire skills. We seek and express truth in all its beauty to the best of our ability. At the same time, AI can reduce the risk of human extinction, monitor and limit unsustainable activities, reduce or proactively redirect the worst anti-social behavior, limit conduct that is harmful to education, and It should also be used to reduce false information and misinformation.
A positive future also requires a balance between a strong code of ethics and respect for individual conscience and freedom. Under the five broad value themes mentioned above, there is a diverse list of Catholic principles related to social and technology ethics, alongside the UN SDGs, UN UDHR, and various business ethics principles2345. These list of principles are all different and show how they work. Catholic traditions diverge as they become more specific. The Catholic Church lives with that tension. The Church legitimates such moral diversity by emphasizing that natural law ethics has both general (abstract) principles that do not change and specific (concrete) principles that legitimately change. (Aquinas ST I-II 94.4). The Church’s official teaching on the primacy of conscience further intensifies this tension. Respect for human beings requires respect for differences of opinion, and therefore even an individual’s faulty (from the church’s point of view) conscience should be respected (Aquinas, ST I-II 19.5 ).
Regarding AI, this means that AI should be designed to respect human freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and other important freedoms, but that objective moral truths do not exist. We are always aware that we should be respected. Thus, while a person may freely advocate ideas that are contrary to the values of human survival, for example, society can and should legitimately restrict behavior related to them.
This is a bit of a problem for AI. Because some people think the speed of AI development should slow down, while others think it should speed up. Both believe that the development of AI will have a greater impact on ensuring the survival of humanity. It is unclear which view is correct, but we humans, or rather several small groups of humans, are conducting experiments (especially without a control group), and only time will tell who is correct. The Catholic Church has not yet issued a direct opinion on the issue, other than to say that the Church “should above all protect humanity from self-destruction” (Laudato Si 79 and Caritas in Veritate 51). This is a firm position in favor of prudence. .
Ethics is the path from the present to the future, the choices and actions that lead to better or worse outcomes and make us better or worse people. As children of God, commanded to love, it is our mission to seek a better future. Christ brought to earth the Kingdom of God, ruled by the meek and those who love their enemies. Such a bizarre utopia is probably hard to imagine, but it’s still worth thinking about. Utopia is a lost art form. The original Utopia was written by St. Thomas More, a Catholic who was martyred by King Henry VIII of England. But recently, utopia has begun to make a comeback (hopefully without martyrdom). The Future of Life Institute’s Futures project aims, at least in part, to help revive the lost utopian genre. As a Catholic, I wholeheartedly agree.
AI is a technology that holds great promise to help the world, and the promise of realizing humanity’s worst nightmares as we all too predictably turn to evil. In other words, as we have throughout history, we now face “life and death, blessing and curse” (Deuteronomy 30:19), even though the stakes are at an all-time high. It is placed in We should choose to live our lives in a way that allows us and our children to live.
References
↩ 1 Brian Tierney, The Idea of Natural Rights: Studies in Natural Rights, Natural Law, and Canon Law 1150-1625 (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1997).
↩ 2 Digital Culture Center AI Research Group, Encounters with Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations, Vol. 2 1, “Issues for the Theological Investigation of AI”, December 14, 2023, p. 3. https ://jmt.scholasticahq.com/article/91230-encountering-artificial-intelligence-ethical-and-anthropological-investigations
↩ 3 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Seven Themes for Catholic Social Teaching,” Office of Justice, Peace, and Human Development, Sharing Catholic Social Teaching: Challenges and Directions (Washington, DC: USCCB, 1998) and Faithful Citizenship. Quoted from: A Call for Catholic Political Responsibility (Washington, DC: USCCB, 2003). https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/seven-subjects-of-catholic-social-teaching
↩ 4 Canadian Catholic Development and Peace Organization, “Ten Principles of Catholic Social Teaching,” devp.org, 2020. https://stmikes.utoronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/180-Catholic-Teaching -v2.pdf
↩ 5 Christopher Kaczor, “Seven Principles of Catholic Social Teaching,” Catholic Answers, April 1, 2007. https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/seven-principles-of-catholic-social-teaching
