We need to risk human unpleasantness rather than retreat to mechanized simplicity. Perhaps the first step is acknowledging that it often isn't very easy.
If there is one thing Pope Leo XIV really wants Catholics to do in the face of the artificial intelligence revolution, it’s to choose human beings over machines, even when it’s hard, even when it doesn’t seem as if it matters.
“The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization,” he writes in Magnifica Humanitas (No. 213).
It’s easier said than done.
None of us would say we prefer machines to human beings. But we choose them anyway.
One close friend of mine made a principled decision never to use the automatic checkout machines at the local grocery store. She was going to choose humanity over convenience, on principle. For years, she waited in lines rather than submit.
But recently, she said she has had to stop. It started when she was in a hurry and the cashiers were engrossed in conversation with each other and absent from their stations. Then she had to go to the store multiple times in the same week. Now it’s a habit.
Leo specifically asks us to “lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity … which no machine can ever replace” (No. 15). And we want to. But we all have our tipping point.
People I work with use AI tools to assist with some routine tasks, and when it was pointed out to them that there is a “Work” setting that would keep the AI from peppering them with compliments, they refused to use it. “I like the way it praises me!” admitted one coworker.
So, some of us have gone from automated checkouts to feeling flattered by a computer program.
Others have slid further and have embraced AI romance.
Women who are tired of dealing with real men are starting to prefer AI boyfriends. They do more than flatter you: They listen with full attention to everything you say, remember the little things you ask, without fail, and are never unaccountably absent when you really need them.
Meanwhile, AI girlfriends are making a tough dating scene even harder. AI girlfriends are drama-free; you never risk rejection from them; and they greet you cheerfully, every time.
Pope Leo reminds us, however, that “No computational system, however sophisticated, can create a heart that gives itself” (No. 233). And that is true precisely as they offer love without the cross.
Could it be true that the real reason AI will dominate us is that we can’t say No?
In case after case, our small capitulations add up to bigger failures.
A company will begin by saying, “We can’t provide tech support for all these people without AI” — and all too often it will soon be saying, “We can't be bothered to help these people,” to the detriment of both its customers and its business.
Or, in our private lives, what starts as “There’s no time to visit Grandma. I'll text,” becomes, “I always forget to text. But AI companions don’t forget.”
The question is less about technology, Pope Leo says, than about our own hearts.
“The primary choice is not between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence” (No. 9)
To do that requires choosing what is human over what is mechanical — we need to risk human unpleasantness rather than retreat to mechanized simplicity.
Because what we most stand to lose from AI is not our jobs, but our souls.
As I wrote in the Evangelization & Culture Journal, what we most need to fear from AI is what we need to fear from every technology: loneliness.
In Civilization and Its Discontents, Sigmund Freud noticed the same thing during the technological revolution at the turn of the 20th century. He wrote:
“If there had been no railway to conquer distances, my child would never have left his native town and I should need no telephone to hear his voice. If traveling across the ocean by ship had not been introduced, my friend would not have embarked on his sea-voyage and I should not need a cable to relieve my anxiety about him.”
All technology distances us from others to some degree — advanced technology distances us more. So, In Leo’s words, “It is imperative to cultivate hearts that love the truth, prefer what is right despite the most appealing content and pursue wisdom rather than immediate results” (No. 237).
That might be the hardest thing of all.
