A Voice for Humanity

May 1, 2025

An interview about artificial intelligence with Bishop Paul Tighe of the Dicastery for Culture and Education

May 1, 2025

This photo illustration visualizing themes of Antiqua et Nova, the Vatican’s recent “Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence” was generated by ChatGPT’s 4o Image Generation, a function released by OpenAI on March 25.

The rapidly growing usage of artificial intelligence (AI) in various areas of life has evoked a wide range of reaction and speculation — from optimistic visions of transhumanism to catastrophizing doomsday scenarios to everything in between. Recognizing the impact AI will have — and is already having — upon billions of people, the Catholic Church has sought to highlight both potential opportunities and dangers afforded by this new technology.

This past year, two Vatican dicasteries collaborated on the Holy See’s most comprehensive reflection on AI to date: Antiqua et Nova, a “Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence,” released Jan. 25. Among its four signatories was Bishop Paul Tighe, a native of Ireland and secretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Culture and Education, which co-published the document with the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith. Bishop Tighe recently spoke with Columbia editor Alton Pelowski about the main themes of Antiqua et Nova, which urges us to consider the promise and challenge of artificial intelligence “with wisdom both ancient and new.”

COLUMBIA: What interest does the Catholic Church have in artificial intelligence, and what led to the publication of Antiqua et Nova?

BISHOP PAUL TIGHE: Over the past several years, Pope Francis and others at the Holy See have reflected on AI. With Antiqua et Nova, we intended to give further context to these teachings by offering a holistic approach to AI and developing two things. First, to identify some of the ethical issues regarding the future of areas like work, health care and education. Second, to provide the context of an anthropological vision: What does it mean to be human, and what does it mean now to deal with technologies that can accomplish things we believed only human beings could?

Bishops’ conferences and other groups around the world have asked the Holy See to weigh in on AI. Therefore, while this document is not a papal teaching it offers an authoritative Catholic perspective on the issue. This is an area where the whole world is struggling for wisdom, for understanding, for approaches that will ensure that this technology — which has extraordinary potential — realizes that potential to do something good for humanity.

COLUMBIA: From the Church’s perspective, how are we to understand human intelligence and its relationship to these technological advancements?

BISHOP PAUL TIGHE: Through the brilliance of the human mind, technology — and science in general — has improved our world. That is a flourishing of God’s gift to us: our own human intelligence. AI is an extraordinary achievement in that context, and we realize that it has extraordinary potential. But we can’t just rely on technology to get us the right results; human agency must engage it fruitfully and ensure it is put at the service of all human beings.

Machines have extraordinary capacities to replicate certain forms of human intelligence, such as reasoning and processing of documents, memory, pattern forming. But so many elements of human intelligence go beyond that. That’s why much of the document, particularly early on, addresses more fundamental human questions: What does it mean to be human and have a worthwhile life? What is it that makes life good for individuals, for society and for the broader global community?

In talking about reasoning and intelligence, it’s trying to broaden that picture and remind us that human intelligence is embodied. It’s not just in the head up that we are intelligent; body and mind go together. We need to avoid any sort of dualism that sees intelligence as separable from the rest of the human.

AI is very powerful when working with the kind of materials that have been digitalized, but there are types of learning and types of human experiences and different cultural variations that have not been digitalized — or simply cannot be. We must avoid somehow excluding the richness and complexity of what it is to be human in that process.

The AI models have basically tried to incorporate all forms of digital materials they can find everywhere in the world, although not always with the consent of those who created them. This latter point will be a long-term issue because if AI is going to be, in a sense, almost parasitical on human creativity. How do we ensure that people’s human creativity is adequately compensated and rewarded? The next generation may say it no longer needs humans to be creative, but I don’t think a machine can ever achieve the originality and imaginative capacities of a true human artist.

Bishop Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Education and Culture, speaks during the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit held Feb. 10 at the Grand Palais in Paris. (CNS photo/courtesy of France Diplomatie – MEAE)

COLUMBIA: With such rapid advancements of technology, Pope Francis has observed we are experiencing an “epochal change,” and he has warned against a “technocratic paradigm.” What do these terms mean in relation to AI?

BISHOP PAUL TIGHE: AI is changing a lot of things. As others have said, it could even be an anthropological disruption, making us think about what we understand it is to be human. I think the Holy Father is using “epochal” in that sense. “Technocratic paradigm” has its own history, but the pope uses it in a somewhat original way. In the past, we may have said AI is morally neutral, since it can be used for good and bad. But Pope Francis is saying the technologies are born out of a certain worldview influenced by commercial and political considerations, and those considerations will affect our thinking about the technology.

Hopefully, we’ve learned from social media, which we welcomed initially as something with enormous potential to strengthen the human family and facilitate instant communication across geographic and language barriers. But it became corrupted by the commercial logic of the attention economy. Many people realized the best way to control the attention of others was to give them lots of material they agree with and keep them trapped somewhat in a silo of their own opinions, leading to toxic, divisive behavior that is so prevalent today. This deformation of social media’s potential was led by algorithms that exacerbated those problems.

It’s important to recognize the extraordinary capacity of the potential of this technology, but not to be naive in presuming it will automatically benefit everybody. We should ensure that AI will be used to address issues that are important for our world, not those of simple commercial interests. As Pope Francis has asked: Will we use AI for things that benefit all, or for the projects of the few? How do we ensure that those who are working with AI will be accountable to a global community?

COLUMBIA: The document talks about the human person as not only rational but also a fundamentally relational being. How should we approach challenges such as the tendency to “anthropomorphize” this technology and the blurring of authentic and simulated interactions?

BISHOP PAUL TIGHE: If an AI doesn’t deliver what I want, fine. But we can’t take that attitude into our dealings with other human beings, who don’t exist simply to meet another person’s needs or wants. One reads stories about people who have AI friends, but these “friends” have no autonomy. They don’t challenge us, whereas part of being in relationship with another person is that we learn to respect the autonomy, the essence and even the mystery of the other person.

One of the concerns about anthropomorphization was expressed by UNESCO, which observed that children were arriving to school with an expectation that teachers would behave as their tablet behaves. Again, what is lost is the sense of the originality of the other person. It’s another reason that people who develop and benefit from AI need a sense of responsibility toward others — to create technology that honors our social nature as humans.

An AI-generated image depicts the iconic Hollywood sign surrounded by flames. Similar fabricated images and videos showing the century-old sign flooded social media in early January, in the context of the wildfires that engulfed parts of Los Angeles.

COLUMBIA: The challenge seems to go both directions: When you anthropomorphize a machine that simulates human behaviors and emotions, you are tempted to treat that machine as a human being, and conversely, you treat human beings as machines.

BISHOP PAUL TIGHE: Exactly. It changes your way of interacting. It comes back to the concern for human dignity, one of the areas that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has been most focused on regarding AI. What you can measure about humans — their physical, economic and intellectual capacities — can be used by AI, with all the preconceived biases of its creator, to make judgments on a person.

AI is already being used in sentencing and parole hearings, where it crunches the information to tell you who’s more likely to re-offend, who might be in danger, etc. But what about the immeasurable? Are people only as good as their previous measurable behavior? Or do we believe in the possibility of transformation, grace, conversion, mercy? We must avoid a transactional world where everything is measured or we think everything can be predicted if we just have enough information.

COLUMBIA: Another theme of the document is moral responsibility. What does it mean to have shared responsibility for these technological advancements, and why is this important from the Church’s perspective?

BISHOP PAUL TIGHE: If a machine does something wrong, who is responsible? If somebody inputs wrong and biased information, or if a company has released a model that hasn’t been fully tested, there’s a responsibility. We have to move away from any tendency to blame the machine, realizing the complexity of the environments in which we live and the underlying moral responsibilities.

Users of AI should ask themselves, “What am I using AI for? By using this technology, what am I inadvertently, or uncritically, buying into or licensing?” Developers should make similar assessments. And it gives me hope that there are individuals contributing at the actual development stages who refuse to work on certain projects that they see them as inappropriate as morally questionable.

We want all of these developments to be somehow accountable to the whole of humanity. Therefore, the Church is trying to create a dialog and a debate so more people can influence the bigger debates related to AI, especially the voices of those who are less fortunate. It’s not something that should be left exclusively to the “experts.”

Pope Francis, in Chapter 6 of his encyclical Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All) develops what he calls a culture of encounter, where we try to learn from each other within the human community (215). How do we ensure that these products are human-centric? We want them to be for the human good, for the good of society, for the good of all.

The Church has theological and spiritual insights to bring to that table. We need to ensure that all the voices are heard. Scientists and technologists have a very particular way of understanding the world, which is very valuable, but it’s not the only way of understanding the world. And many scientists themselves are the first to raise these issues.

I also think we need to recover the sense of human rights being ultimately rooted in human dignity, not human creations. They’re born with us and expressive of our dignity. It’s important to ensure the protection of human rights — not only privacy rights and personal rights, but also the social and political rights that are part of what makes us human.

Panelists participate in a United Nations conference titled “Can Moral and Ethical Boundaries be Applied to Artificial Intelligence?” The Feb. 6 event in New York was sponsored by the Knights of Malta and supported by the Knights of Columbus. (Photo courtesy of the Mission of the Sovereign Order of Malta to the United Nations)

COLUMBIA: What role does education play in helping people, especially Catholics and particularly children, become more aware and responsible in how they engage with AI?

BISHOP PAUL TIGHE: Simply put, we need education with, about and for AI. We need to consider how AI works with our education environments now. We can’t ignore the platforms or the tools that are available — and increasingly so. How should we educate with AI, not to replace the teacher, but to potentiate the teacher’s capacity.

AI is more likely to be used for subjects that are easily measurable, such as science, technology, engineering and math. You can develop programs that will teach you those; but other skills — critical and creative skills, such as literature, won’t be so easily dealt with by AI. We want to ensure they don’t get abandoned simply because they’re not easily reduced to an AI platform.

Education isn’t just the imparting of skills. It’s the formation of a person. We don’t want to lose something of the mystery that education, in the end, is the human activity. In this regard, I think the role of the teacher is something we want to preserve.

At the same time, we need to have education about AI. How do we teach people the critical skills to realize that AI is, at a simplistic level, dependent on databases and dependent on algorithms? From there, we can ask how reliable or dependable the databases are. Whose opinions will shape the information? People can then look at the technology critically and understand its biases and limits.

Finally, in a world where AI is going to change the nature of work, or the types of work that humans engage with, we need education for AI. What is the bigger call of education in that system? Within our Catholic tradition, we always want education to be about the formation of people; about giving them a vision, purpose and meaning in life, rather than simply giving them skills for economic advantage.

COLUMBIA: Do you have advice for members of the Knights of Columbus and their families so they can navigate a world increasingly shaped by AI, and approach this technology in a healthy way?

BISHOP PAUL TIGHE: On the one hand, I think people shouldn’t be afraid to test out some of the platforms and see how they work. As increasingly more and more of our services go online — digitalization in general — it is worth ensuring that people are not excluded from becoming more digitally capable, so that they can partake in the technology and be informed.

On the other hand, in a world increasingly shaped by AI, we should approach things with caution and a healthy degree of skepticism. If I’m resharing information on social media, for example, I need to ask: Am I certain this information is correct, and have I ensured that I’m not just sharing something because it reinforces my prejudices? With AI, let’s be even more cautious, because photos and videos can easily be manipulated. A certain critical attentiveness to not allow myself to be manipulated is essential.

What worries me is where social media is taking us, and how AI has the potential to take us, even further, into a world of polarization. How do I try to authentically listen to somebody who’s saying something that I don’t necessarily like, or who is coming from a different side of a political divide? How can I open myself up to always keeping alive a sense of the humanity of the other? There is a risk of seeing those whom we might be inclined to label as competition or a threat as an enemy. But no, this is a human being with dignity and worth who has different ways of expression his or her views. So, how do we protect that common humanity?

In a world in which AI could threaten the richness of our basic humanity, let’s open ourselves up to the uniqueness of every individual, over and above that which can be measured and easily categorized.

LeRoy Jackson makes a catch for an 85-yard touchdown against the Baltimore Colts on Dec. 8, 1962.

A Voice for Humanity

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