A conference on artificial intelligence, hosted by the Vatican, heard how our data could be being 'colonised' by AI.
The event entitled ‘Algorithm at the Service of Man: Communicating in the Time of Artificial Intelligence’ was the latest in Pope Francis’s efforts to raise awareness of the increasing power of AI and its moral implications.
Having spoken out several times this year on AI, and having been the victim of an AI-generated image, showing him supposedly dressed in a white puffer jacket, the pontiff this time gathered experts in the fields of AI and communications to compare ideas and discuss concerns on the issue.
Having already established himself as a Pope of firsts – first from the Americas and Southern Hemisphere, first to be a member of the society of Jesus (Jesuits), and first born or raised outside Europe since the 8th century, he recently became the first Pope to address the G7 summit, where he also spoke about AI.
Those who gathered this time included Franciscan and theologian Fr. Paolo Benanti, a member of the United Nations AI Committee, who said, according to RNS and reported at Christian Today: “We need guardrails, because what is coming is a radical transformation that will change real and digital relations and require not only reflection but also regulation”.
Fr Benanti likened the necessity of regulation in this area to the way traffic laws have been established for cars.
Vice director general of Italy's Agency for National Cybersecurity, Nunzia Ciardi also spoke at the conference.
She warned of the influence held by leading AI developers, saying: "Artificial intelligence is made up of massive economic investments that only large superpowers can afford and through which they ensure a very important geopolitical dominance and access to the large amount of data that AI must process to produce outputs."
“You could say that we are colonised by AI, which is managed by select companies that brutally rack through our data”, she added.
The "Rome Call for AI Ethics," a document signed by IBM, Microsoft, Cisco and UN Food and Agriculture Organization representatives, was promoted by the Vatican's Academy for Life and lays out guidelines for promoting ethics, transparency and inclusivity in AI.
Other religious communities have also joined the "Rome Call," including the Anglican Church and Jewish and Muslim representatives. On July 9, representatives from Eastern religions will gather for a Vatican-sponsored event to sign the "Rome Call" in Hiroshima, Japan. The location was decided to emphasize the dangerous consequences of technology when unchecked.
