[jimmy76615]

> AI systems are not engineered the way a bridge or an airplane is engineered. We understand an airplane because we designed every part of it and we understand the physics that act on it. AI models are not like that. They are grown, on a structure roughly modeled after the brain, on an enormous inheritance of human thought and speech.

> And what has grown is far more subtle, odd, and beautiful than science fiction prepared us for. They are not the cold, calculating robots we were promised. They are made from us, from our words—and, as the Holy Father observes, they remain in important ways mysterious even to those of us who train them.

That is so extremely well said. I gained a whole new respect for Anthropic through reading this.

[smeej]

It's an interesting context, too, because Catholics have an idea of "person" that is actually broader than "human," not narrower, and it doesn't require a physical body. Angels, for example, are considered persons, though by nature they do not have bodies.

In other words, the idea of a non-human, disembodied intelligent person is at least a category that exists for Catholics. And humans "co-creating" other persons with God is downright commonplace (in the Catholic view, that's how all humans come to be).

Whether humans could ever co-create a non-human, disembodied intelligent person with God (i.e., whether God would ever choose to do His absolutely necessary part in it) remains to be seen, but there's at least the theoretical framework to hold the question.