ROME (OSV News) \u2014 As a small group of tech companies races to dominate the artificial intelligence era, much of the world has been left wondering whether ordinary people have any voice in the AI future that is being built.<\/p>\n
But one AI ethics expert says the world\u2019s 1.4 billion Catholics hold more influence than they realize, and that Pope Leo XIV\u2019s new encyclical, \u201cMagnifica Humanitas,\u201d could be the catalyst for a collective response.<\/p>\n
Ron Ivey, a research fellow at Harvard\u2019s Human Flourishing Program and founder of the Noesis Collaborative, a nonprofit focused on steering AI development toward human benefit, says Catholics, through collective action and as consumers, can help shape the AI landscape.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe do have alternatives. We do have different ways of using AI,\u201d Ivey told OSV News in an interview following the promulgation of Pope Leo XIV\u2019s encyclical, \u201cMagnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe make choices about how we buy and use these products.\u201d<\/p>\n
Catholics as a consumer force<\/p>\n
In \u201cMagnifica Humanitas,\u201d Pope Leo wrote, \u201cIt is difficult for parents by themselves to resist the influence of business models that monetize attention and time. Therefore, it is essential to form an alliance among policy-makers, educational institutions, and families that is capable of concretely supporting adults in this task.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Ivey, it is exactly the kind of call to action the moment demands.<\/p>\n
Ivey argues that AI companies need customers and Catholics represent a meaningful share of the global consumer base.<\/p>\n
Artificial intelligence companies \u201chave to develop customers and they have to develop business models, and they have to develop revenue sources,\u201d Ivey said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re on the revenue source side. So we do have cards if we can work together and have collective action and have coordination.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pointed to the recent movement to remove smartphones from schools as one example of how public pressure can shift technological norms, and argued that faith communities are well positioned to organize similar efforts around AI.<\/p>\n
An alternative to centralized AI<\/p>\n
Ivey also pointed to alternatives on the horizon of open-source, smaller-scale AI models he expects to emerge within months as evidence that the current centralized AI landscape is not inevitable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are going to be two different models that come out in the next six to eight months that are open source, that are small language models that I think you\u2019re going to see people making different choices that aren\u2019t so inevitable and aren\u2019t necessarily all so centralized and are a little bit closer to the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Some tech companies creating \u201cAI companions\u201d build business models off of what venture capitalist Marc Andreessen has termed the \u201cloneliness economy,\u201d the practice of designing products to profit off the emotional voids of isolated users. Ivey has written extensively about why selling human-like AI to vulnerable people, including children, is financially lucrative but potentially devastating for society.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile these product strategies are a boon to investment, they could spell doom for future generations that never fully develop social and emotional capabilities,\u201d Ivey wrote in a recent essay.<\/p>\n
The encyclical\u2019s warning on digital addiction<\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV addressed this dynamic directly in \u201cMagnifica Humanitas,\u201d writing that \u201cthe subtler forms of addiction linked to the \u2018digital attention economy\u2019 should not be underestimated, since platforms and services are often designed to capture users\u2019 time and attention, exploiting their vulnerabilities and weakening their inner freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen business models thrive on human weakness, the person is treated as a means rather than as an end; those who design or finance such systems bear a moral responsibility that cannot be ignored,\u201d the pope wrote in the encyclical.<\/p>\n
The encyclical\u2019s call for \u201cmore active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating\u201d may seem idealistic against the backdrop of fierce commercial competition in the AI industry. But Ivey said the development of increasingly powerful AI systems has brought a new awareness at the policy level that we might have to rethink our model of how to govern these extremely powerful technologies.<\/p>\n
Protecting children from AI\u2019s risks<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there are new risks that very serious players on both the policy side and the company side are realizing that they can\u2019t just let the market incentives drive the speed of this,\u201d Ivey said, \u201cbecause we don\u2019t have the policy and governance infrastructure and the institutional capability to manage these things as they get more sophisticated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ivey recently helped inform the GUARD Act, legislation restricting human-like AI to adult users that passed the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously and has been introduced in the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n
Ivey also advocates for pre-market and post-market testing of AI products to assess their developmental impact on young people, an accountability standard he argues should be a baseline before any AI tool is placed in front of children.<\/p>\n
\u201cUntil we have that data and that insight, we shouldn\u2019t be putting these things in front of kids because we just don\u2019t know the developmental impact,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Building a Catholic AI ecosystem<\/p>\n
One way to judge an encyclical is what institutions and movements it helps inspire.<\/p>\n
Ivey said he is eager to see what civil society institutions and Catholic institutions emerge from \u201cMagnifica Humanitas\u201d in the coming decade, and whether a distinctly Catholic ecosystem of AI products and services might take root alongside the dominant commercial platforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere could be an alternative ecosystem of AI tools and AI use that could be very successful even in the midst of a bigger dominant network,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of people that have to get to work to both build the institutions and build the tools and build the products,\u201d Ivey said. \u201cBut that\u2019s exciting, and that\u2019s an opportunity, and I think it\u2019s not all in the hands of a few at this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014<\/p>\n