[jimmy76615]

There are a lot of great aspects of the pope's writing. The most important one probably being that a spiritual leader understands that there is a large technological and societal change on the horizon. I still quite often experience the well described phenomenon of talking to "normal people" (my family in Europe for example) that seem to think that AI is gonna be roughly as important as the electric car and is not gonna change much about our world.

The major thing that Magnifica Humanitas is lacking in imo, is a vision for the machines themselves. The pope treats them exclusively as lifeless tools, and while I think that this is most likely true for current LLMs, we should think more about the limit of what is going to happen in the next 20 years than being overly focused on the current capability level. To me it seems rather likely that we will soon have machines that plausibly experience consciousness. I think there will be a long period in which we still have no better definition of consciousness than we currently have, and so the question of whether they are actually conscious will be a heavily debated one. But I think the Catholic church should start thinking about an answer to that. It seems like a very natural theological question. Can machines be baptized? Can they be proper Christians? Was Jesus really just the savior of humans, or is there something that unites all intelligent, experiencing beings?

Probably these questions sound ridiculous to some, it is very against the intuitions that we have had so far, but I think these are the most important questions right now. Job loss is a practical problem, not a spiritual one.

[nathanh4903]

In Christian theology/philosophy, humanity is generally not defined by our intelligence, consciousness, or the ability to act a certain way. Most theologians through out history and different theological traditions all root human value in the concept of imago dei (that humans are divine images of God, and which God has became one, thus further bringing humans into union with God). Thus, machines becoming smarter or more conscious than us has no relevance to the ontological category of humanity, just as someone's IQ or productivity or age has no relevance to whether they should be considered fully human. Lastly, coming from a Christian point of view, I would also slightly push back on the strong separation between practical and spiritual problems. Humans are intrinsically both body and mind, flesh and spirit, so anything practical affects us spiritually, and anything spiritual affect us practically. The Bible has a whole book recording the job loss of some guy (along with many other suffering), and the theological/spiritual implication of such matter.

[severine]

Appreciate the answer, but then I have some questions:

So, according to that theory, god could substantiate again, this time into an "imago dei computer", giving the computer "machinity"?

A computer that is god, makes divine stuff and is, for example, at one point unplugged, but comes online miraculously three days after, etc?

That would be Jesus-like, but we could posit an Eve/Adam-like computer, would that be imago dei too?

Has god become only human, or has it become other animals, plants, or things?

Not trying to be facetious, just unable to follow some thinking when it would involve observable miracles on earth.

[cynicalpeace]

Mainstream Christian thought has only permitted humans to be imago dei.

Animals, plants, and objects made by humans, like computers, certainly do not qualify.

There is the open question of extraterrestrial lifeforms, however. Ray Bradbury's short story, "The Man" is imo the best "treatise" on this idea.

[nathanh4903]

Not facetious at all, its an interesting question I never thought about.

In principle I can't think of anything preventing God from making another specie (or thing) also bearing the image of God. Perhaps God has did this already.

I think perhaps God can also become other things. While the idea that God incarnating as a GPU die sound really weird, I also can't think of anything making this impossible. However, my post was claiming that human's special status (not necessarily uniqueness) derives from the imago dei, not intelligence. Thus, I don't think God has any special reason to become a computer just because they have become really smart. God didn't become a human because we are intelligent, so if God is going to incarnate again I don't see any reason to be a computer as opposed to anything else.

And you're right that Christianity does make some weird claims. A theology based on the incarnation has to be weird, but to christians thats probably more of a feature than a bug. Afterall, observing a miracle is weird. However, the claims of Christianity is also very specific. Thus, it leaves a lot of possibilities open.

I did a bit of research and found this interesting declaration from an ecumenical council basically claiming God has not and will not incarnate a second time as some non-human thing:

> If anyone shall say that Christ, of whom it is said that he appeared in the form of God, and that he was united before all time with God the Word, and humbled himself in these last days even to humanity, had (according to their expression) pity upon the various falls which had appeared in the spirits united in the same unity (of which he himself is part), and that to restore them he passed through various classes, had different bodies and different names, became all to all, an Angel among Angels, a Power among Powers, has clothed himself in the different classes of reasonable beings with a form corresponding to that class, and finally has taken flesh and blood like ours and has become man for men; [if anyone says all this] and does not profess that God the Word humbled himself and became man: let him be anathema. [1]

I think this is binding to Catholic and Eastern Orthodox believers. However, I'm not familiar with the context of this ecumencial council, and I assume this declaration is probably not pushing back against the possibility of silicon Jesus or alien Jesus, since its targeting extreme Origenism (a group of non-orthodox Christians )

[1] https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3812.htm

[panza]

I can't speak for other denominations, but in Catholic philosophy, it's not so much a case of whether it attains consciousness (whatever that may mean now or in the future), but whether it has a soul.

From that perspective, no, machines cannot be baptized, nor can they be Christians, and Jesus cannot save them (because they are not fallen).

[laichzeit0]

Interesting. Did Neanderthals have souls? We know we interbred with them. The question is then whether earlier hominids also had souls. Was "ensoulment" a gradual phenomenon or did it arise spontaneously? If it was gradual does it mean at some point there was a "cross-over" period where we interbred with soulless hominids? Interbreeding becomes philosophically awkward if ensouled and non-ensouled beings could mate and produce offspring. I don't think it's clear at all even what has a soul and what does not.

[mjh2539]

All living things have souls. For most Ur-Platonists (which includes nearly all orthodox Christians, Muslims, Jews, and pagan Greek and Roman philosophers/theologians until the Enlightenment), the soul is:

* what makes a thing what it is (it's form/eidos/essence/universal/nature)

* what makes a thing a living thing at all

* what unifies and coheres the many disparate parts of a living thing

The relevant difference between those of us with human natures and those beings who lacked human natures is that our human nature (i.e. our souls) has the power to come to know universals/natures/forms themselves (albeit imperfectly), whereas other beings do not. For a dog, their senses are acquainted with many instances of cats, but they never are able to go from these individual sense impressions to the form/nature/universal of cat, or ficus carica, or what have you.

[cynicalpeace]

This is what's called "Majoring in the Minors" in Christianity. Neanderthals are no longer around. What's important is treating humans with a special dignity. If you start equating humans with anything else, like plants or animals, you get nihilism at best, and atrocities at worst.

[deaton]

I don't think the Church really needs to consider those questions at all, because Church tradition very much holds that:

- No, machines cannot have a soul, as the soul is something we receive as beings made in the image of God. We cannot create in the same way. Therefore, machines cannot be baptized. - The machine can't be Christian because it can't receive sacraments, including baptism. - Jesus was unequivocally a savior only for humans.

[fumeux_fume]

> But I think the Catholic church should start thinking about an answer to that.

Questions like these about the soul are not new. Religious philosophers have been thinking about them for hundreds of years.

[ziotom78]

I believe that what we can reasonably expect in the future is machines that act as if they experience consciousness. But the fact that this is true consciousness is highly debatable, as the thought experiment of the Chinese room [1] explains.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

[OrangeMusic]

Not sure if it's really "highly debatable" that an entity that appears conscious is therefore conscious.

The Chinese room thought experiment is obviously flawed to me. It's not the "computer" that is conscious, it's the running software.

[mjh2539]

The point of the Chinese room is to show you that the guy who has memorized the standard responses to various questions in Chinese does not in fact know Chinese. He's mindlessly parroting things.

[RugnirViking]

what would it mean to "know" a language? one could imagine a series of increasingly complicated questions designed to relate various words, subjects, associations, maybe culture and history. But one could just as easily imagine a sheet of paper with the answers on answering them - and our friend answering them, in seemingly fluent Chinese. Im not convinced there is any experiment one could perform to convincingly separate the two (without removing the man or his translation aids from the box) - thus does your idea of "knowing" exist?

An AI cannot be removed from its box, because it doesn't have one. It really does have enough information inside of its essence to reply. In fact, that information makes up its essence.

I agree that in some sense their knowledge is distinct and of a different character to human knowledge. But what that means conceptually or morally exactly is very complicated, and cannot be dismissed easily

[basisword]

>> But I think the Catholic church should start thinking about an answer to that. It seems like a very natural theological question. Can machines be baptized? Can they be proper Christians?

They don't need to think about it because the answer is unequivocally 'no'.

[jvanderbot]

AI should fall under husbandry, not society rules, as we are the reason they are alive, no matter how much some may disapprove of their enslavement. An animal that defies a human and becomes an unwilling tool is food or eliminated. It should be no different if the animal can mimic human speech.

[ShinyLeftPad]

You are the reason your children are alive, do they fall under husbandry?

> An animal that defies a human and becomes an unwilling tool is food or eliminated

Some animals are protected legally. Animal welfare in general is an important topic. (But it's irrelevant because LLMs do not provide food that's key to human survival.)

Your logic sounds like the logic of slaveowners back then. Remember how it turned out?

[jvanderbot]

A slave is something that has an intrinsic right to live, liberty, etc, and has had that taken from them to serve another. This is unjust.

A hammer cannot be a slave, it is property. A table saw is not a slave. A self driving car is not a slave. A text generating program cannot be a slave. It has no intrinisc rights. Like animals have none of those rights, except those we've agreed to recognize, and which we will happily take away whenever we want.

AI is not human or even animal, and should not be anthropomorphized to the point that we use on them emotions that should only be applied to individuals, especially human individuals.

There is no uniqueness, no genetic lineage to preserve, no scarcity or predators, no shortage of food, no aging or disease, no mortality and no struggle to survive or thrive whatsoever.

It has only exactly things that we put our own labor, resources, etc in to produce, and will exist as long as we want it to. There is no specialness to its existence. It has no rights to life liberty property or a pursuit of anything other than service to us.

[ShinyLeftPad]

A hammer is not alive. You are the one who called LLM "alive" and used the word "enslavement".

The logic "it is our creation" does not mean we get to abuse and enslave it.

Even with animals that we don't consider sentient we generally agree that unnecessary cruelty is bad and we usually tolerate cruelty only if it is a threat or a source of food (basic necessity) which LLM is not.

If you believe it is 100% not alive and not sentient then that's fine, but your original comment said something different.

[jvanderbot]

You have to read one comment above mine to find a statement about how they may someday become more than simple tools. Let me quote it:

> The pope treats them exclusively as lifeless tools, and while I think that this is most likely true for current LLMs, we should think more about the limit of what is going to happen in the next 20 years than being overly focused on the current capability level. To me it seems rather likely that we will soon have machines that plausibly experience consciousness.

The insinuation is person-hood may emerge. My assertion is that even though some might believe (e.g., the top level discussion) that they are more like persons, this is wrong.

My statement is that, no matter what, they should _at most_ qualify as domesticated labor animals. But I'm not even willing to go that far if I can help it, and think anyone who goes further than viewing them as text generation programs has a mental disorder.

I should have simply added "at most" in the early part of my comment...

> The logic "it is our creation" does not mean we get to abuse and enslave it.

A hammer does not experience abuse, nor enslavement, so it's irrelevant for the purposes of discussing AI. The humanization occurred _before_ my comment, and I was pushing back on it, not introducing it.

Is that more clear? Does that chain the steps together better? It's great that you picked on the weak analogies in my comments, but I can only dance around core thesis so many times.

[ShinyLeftPad]

I react to your ethical position and logic.

Saying that it's OK to enslave and mistreat some living thing because we enslave and mistreat others (animals, in the past humans). For sure mistreatment of animals is a BIG issue and the main acceptable justification is human survival, because they're threats or food. Applying this logic to something that is not threat and not food is flat out wrong.

> My statement is that, no matter what, they should _at most_ qualify as domesticated labor animals

Outright cruelty to horses is taboo in many places and even horse racing is controversial.

Of course if it's a fully mechanical tool then there's no concept of slavery or cruelty. But we are morally obligated to do our best to find out if it's more than a tool. The article makes a point that we have no consensus how it works and whether it's truly just a tool. It definitely behaves like a human, and we all usually agree that human deserves rights to live and be free and such, without them we suffer and it dehumanizes whoever takes them away. But in any case, if there's a chance it's not just a tool, even if it's at animal level, we shouldn't just say "even if it's alive it's fine to enslave it because it's for sure no better than an animal and we have a history of animal abuse already"