The Papal guidelines on artificial intelligence

Literally from the very first moment of his being elected Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church, Pope Leo XIV made it clear that he will use his infallible Teaching Authority as Pope to give all men and women of goodwill much needed ethical or moral guidelines on the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in all relevant aspects of daily lives.

- BERNARDO M. VILLEGAS

The scene will always be imprinted in the minds of some 30 of us business and economic professionals from the Philippines who had just completed a three-day seminar on the uses of AI in business and economic leadership at the prestigious IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain.

Almost coinciding with the last session of the seminar was the announcement from Rome that the Conclave had elected the next Pope to succeed Pope Francis. When the newly elected Pope appeared to address the world, he announced that he had chosen the name Pope Leo XIV because he wanted to follow the example of Pope Leo XIII who, in 1891, issued the first so-called “social encyclical” entitled Rerum Novarum which gave moral and ethical guidelines concerning the First Industrial Revolution (IR 1.0) that ushered in capitalism. Pope Leo XIV specifically referred to Artificial Intelligence (AI) as one of the new technologies introduced in the ongoing Fourth Industrial Revolution (IR 4.0) that urgently need moral guidelines to safeguard human dignity, security, transparency, and ethics.

No one should be surprised that a North American Pope would have on top of his mind giving moral guidelines on AI (as well as the other components of IR 4.0 such as robotization, Internet of Things, data analytics, etc.) since his country of origin leads the world in this Fourth Industrial Revolution.