A hammer can be used to build a church. It can also be used to break a window.
Fr. Ricky Manalo, CSP, speaks during “Magnifica Humanitas: Human Dignity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” Aug. 12 at the Dehon Study Center in Hales Corners. (Photo by Colleen Jurkiewicz)
Dr. Khalid Tannir offered this analogy regarding artificial intelligence at the first session of “Magnifica Humanitas: Human Dignity in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,” hosted Aug. 12 by the Dehon Study Center in Hales Corners.
“It is a tool, and it will carry the intention of the person using this tool,” said Dr. Tannir, an expert in artificial intelligence who teaches at McGill University’s School of Continuing Studies. “This is the question the Holy Father takes up in ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ — that technology is never neutral. It will carry the intention of the human who is using it.”
Few technological developments have gripped the modern world like artificial intelligence. Pope Leo XIV addressed the moral questions surrounding the emerging technology in the first encyclical of his papacy, “Magnifica Humanitas,” published in May.
It was a natural topic for the Dehon Study Center to explore in its next colloquium, said the center’s director, Fr. Joseph Mukuna, SCR. The Dehon Study Center, an apostolate of the Priests of the Sacred Heart, encourages scholarly engagement with Dehonian spirituality, the works of the order’s founder, Venerable Fr. Leo John Dehon, and major Church documents.
“AI is rapidly transforming society and raising fundamental questions about human dignity, responsibility and the common good,” said Fr. Mukuna. “We are convinced that, were Fr. Dehon alive today, he would engage this emerging social question with the same passion and pastoral concern that he brought to the challenges of the Industrial Revolution in the twentieth century.”
The three-part colloquium will continue with sessions in March and August. Its first installment featured two presentations exploring AI’s functions, possibilities and threats to human dignity in light of Catholic teaching and Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical.
Dr. Tannir’s address covered the fundamentals of artificial intelligence — what it is, what it is not and why it has become such a pressing ethical concern for Christians and non-Christians alike.
Intelligence, Dr. Tannir explained, describes the process of receiving information, making sense of it and then acting upon it. People do it all day, every day. A machine can also be trained to do it. That’s what AI is.
What it is not, he said, is an autonomous being capable of original thought and feeling.
“As a human we can have experiences, we can adapt to a situation, we learn, we can enjoy, we have feelings, where the machine does not,” he said. “The machine has only data. Everything is data.”
AI may work in the same way that human intelligence works when it comes to receiving, interpreting and acting upon data, said Dr. Tannir. But it can never mimic the human ability to factor in feeling, emotion and belief systems. “It has no inner truth,” he said, adding that the most important question artificial intelligence raises is not a technical one, but a philosophical one: What makes us human?
Dr. Tannir’s presentation was followed by Fr. Ricky Manalo, CSP, a theologian and AI expert whose forthcoming book, “The Catholic Handbook on AI: Promise, Prudence, and Pastoral Wisdom,” will be published by Liturgical Press in 2027.
Artificial intelligence “has a lot of perils, but it has a lot of promises,” said Fr. Manalo, who began his remarks by highlighting the fact that Pope Leo signed “Magnifica Humanitas” on the 135th anniversary of “Rerum Novarum,” the encyclical of Pope Leo XIII that defined Catholic social doctrine in the post-industrial age.
He also described the history the Catholic Church has of engaging with the topic of artificial intelligence and with those who develop this technology, citing the “Minerva Dialogues,” which have brought together Vatican officials and tech executives in Rome each year since 2016. The meetings allow Church leaders and those shaping AI technology to discuss its moral implications.
“(It’s the Church saying) we’re not the technological experts here, but you’re not the moral experts here; let’s have a conversation … let’s discern this together,” he said.
Drawing on material from his forthcoming book, Fr. Manalo shared five discernment frameworks that can help Catholics navigate ethical quandaries raised by use of artificial intelligence.
“No use of AI can be judged by a single measure,” he said. “A technology may protect one genuine good while placing another at risk. It may save time while weakening a human capacity. It may widen access while transferring hidden costs to another community.”
After all: “The AI model doesn’t have to stand before God,” said Fr. Manalo. “We do.”
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For more information on the Dehon Study Center and the next installments of the colloquium, visit dehoniansusa.org. All presentations from the colloquium are available on the DehoniansUSA YouTube channel.
