According to one of my Franciscan brothers, when farmers discovered that artificial fertilizer does more for the harvest than a priest’s blessing of the fields, the crisis of faith characteristic of the modern age began. Seeing a technology’s results changes one’s outlook. But once we understand why artificial fertilizer works and what it does to fields and harvest, we should ask next why some of us continue to turn to God in prayer in anticipation of the harvest. The same question now applies to AI. Why does it work? What does it do for us? And how does our understanding and use of it lead us closer to understanding what God asks of us?

I was once a chemist. I consider artificial fertilizer, the result of turning the nitrogen of the air into nitrogen compounds that can be taken up by plants, the greatest invention of the modern age. It made food readily available for everyone, and what could be more important than this? When someone dies of hunger today, it is no longer because occasional harvest failure is an inescapable part of our human lot. People die of hunger when war causes the breakdown of the civic order. We wish we knew how we could have prevented it. We cannot help but feel responsible. But how can we make the civic order more robust and less likely to break down? This is harder to do than making artificial fertilizer. We turn to God in the hope that he gives us the wisdom to use well what is now given to us so easily.

This week, I began to read Pope Leo’s first encyclical about the Church’s social teaching in an age of AI. He writes that all technology must be placed in the service of the common good, including AI.  He writes further that “working together for the common good means having a shared vision” (62).

There’s much to understand and develop in the Holy Father’s first encyclical, but this makes for a good start. How do we build a shared vision regarding the good, both as the good of each one of us and the common good?

I appreciate greatly what the Holy Father writes, and most importantly, I appreciate that it seems entirely free of naiveté regarding the use of technology. This naiveté comes in two forms. We can make too much or too little of the risks of the unknown. We can try to stand still, or we can charge forward recklessly. That’s a false choice, as the pope recognizes very well.

All technology is ultimately grounded in understanding what God has created, both as nature in general and human nature, including the specific human capacity for understanding the nature of what is good. Therefore, technology is good at its core. We just have to understand how it is good so that we can apply it best. When it comes to AI, understanding its goodness is not that it mimics human intelligence and can become its substitute. Not in the least. But it aids intelligent humans in synthesizing insights from a wide range of diverse fields. Since the largest challenge is the loss of a shared vision of what it means to work for the common good, I am hoping that AI will aid scholars in building a synthesis of the various ways we understand the good. Of course, this cannot be done without faith in the absolute goodness of God and the presence of the risen Christ in our midst. The pope begins with this and reminds us of it throughout this text.