Magnifica Humanitas

Unsplash Photo Credit: Jean Wimmerlin

Perhaps you've heard the Dr. Theodore Woodward quote before: "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." The saying came when instructing med school students to consider the most common diagnoses before jumping to more exotic ones. Perhaps that message should be relayed to the servers running the ever-present...AI.

Allow me to set the stage for you.

A friend and I went to Badger for a morning hike, and we noticed some movement in the grass. Mind you, this happened during a conversation about the downfalls of AI and Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. We were pondering the upsides and downsides of using AI as a tool, and I was prepared to use it for the good when we noticed a striped bird hopping through the grass. I was curious to know what kind of bird it was, so I took a picture and asked the AI platform on my phone, "what kind of bird is this?"

This was the response:

My friend and I laughed upon seeing this response because not for one second did we believe that this was a horse. (Nor did we believe that the grass was tall on Badger Mountain, but that's beyond the point.) Our point was proven. Although AI can be more accurate than this incident showed, it cannot take the place of a human being in front of the live situation. I've known this to be true ever since I went hiking in Georgia and one of the women with me said, "God is an artist...You just can't see all these different shades of green through a screen."

I'm about halfway through reading Pope XIV's encyclical, and my first reaction is that reducing it to an encyclical about AI downplays its significance. There are two points that I'm especially appreciating so far:

1. "...the pervasive technocratic paradigm in which we are immersed, and that is amplified by the digital revolution and AI, threatens to normalize an anti-human vision. In that vision, the fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty and exerting total control. When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion.(MH, 112)

I'm a learner. I enjoy the process of taking in information, breaking things down, understanding how they work, and passing that knowledge on to someone else. I'm a teacher. I enjoy watching the lightbulb go on over my students' heads when they "get it." AI threatens that process for the sake of efficiency, and that's a travesty. The journey is just as valuable (if not more valuable) as the end point.

2. The entire sections on The limit, the heart and the grandeur of the human person and The authentic “more than human”: grace and Christian humanism are phenomenal.

Pope Leo XIV says, "Finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us to recognizing the face of God and others. Indeed, precisely because we experience limits — vulnerability, suffering and failure — we can recognize the inviolable dignity of every person, both our own and that of others." If I could do everything on my own (or ask a device to do everything for me), I would never have to encounter another human being again - and I think that's incredibly sad. In some twisted, unexpected way, I think it's my limits that make me lovable. My limits are what call me into community. Whether I need a colleague to help me deal with an unruly student or a friend because the grief feels big today, I am grateful that I'm not meant to carry the load of humanity on my own. I'm happier when I know my limits because my limits remind me that there is Someone bigger than me Who is in control so I don't have to be.

I asked high school students last week if they thought AI was moral or immoral. Most of them said it's a combination of both. One response especially stood out. One of the young women in class said, "As young people, our brains aren't fully developed yet, so we have to be careful with what we're consuming. So in that way, AI can be bad." I was impressed with her astute response, and it made me realize that if anything, we have to embrace our humanness (the good, the bad, the ugly) even more, not just for our sake but for the sake of the young people in our lives.

I end with Pope Leo XIV's quotation of his predecessor, Pope Francis: “We become fully human when we become more than human, when we let God bring us beyond ourselves in order to attain the fullest truth of our being.” So, my friends, let's let GOD, not a machine, bring us beyond ourselves to be who we are truly meant to be: Magnificent Humans.