Catholic theologians and priests on artificial intelligence

The Journal of Moral Theology’s spring issue is a special issue on the topic of artificial intelligence. It includes dialogues and essays by Catholic theologians and priests on topics ranging from economic impacts of near-term AI and autonomous weapons, to personhood of AI systems and superintelligence.

I think it’s interesting to see discussion of these issues from a group of thoughtful people with a radically different perspective and background than is usual.

The articles are all open access. The epilogue both summarizes the articles in the issue and discusses some of your classic transhumanist themes (mind uploading, personhood of AI, and so on). In some ways the author has a perspective that would resonate with EAs (“Good is to be done and we are the ones to do it”) -- but in other ways it will seem extremely alien.

An interview with a relatively high-ranking Vatican official may also be interesting: it describes how various institutions in the Vatican are thinking about ethical problems around AI, in response to interactions with Silicon Valley people and others. I was surprised by how positive he was on the idea of using technology to improve human capabilities, as long as it is done in a wise and ethical way—he’s willing to entertain that it might be good “to flip that traditional idea that you cannot play God”.