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The CEO of a software testing company told a panel at Catholic University of America that AI will not create mass unemployment – though it could make people more stupid.
Will Wilson, CEO of reliability platform Antithesis, was part of the panel pondering how Christians should consider AI, the technology’s threats and the church’s role in the debate.
According to a report by the Catholic News Agency, Wilson rejected the idea of mass joblessness due to AI as "a very silly fear because human desires and human wants are infinite, and therefore, we always find new things for people to do."
What was a worry, he continued, was that even though AI was "not actually intelligent," people could use it as a substitute for human intelligence, losing their own in the process.
Also on the panel, Father Michael Baggot worried that "artificial intimacy is going to distract us from, and deter us from, the deep interpersonal bonds that are central to our happiness and our flourishing."
He called for guardrails on AI to stop it capturing individuals' "minds but … also our affections."
Fr Baggot cited the example of Magisterium AI, a Catholic chatbot. He sits on the scholarly advisory board for the service, and said its creators had worked to prevent it being "anthropomorphic" adding, "We do not want people having an intimate relationship with it."
He also said that when it came to the dangers of AI, "The Church is in a privileged position to leverage its incredible patrimony, its reflection on the human person, [and] human flourishing."
Of course, the Church has long experience when it comes to battling extra-human entities getting a grip on individuals' minds and affections. Not least its 1,000 strong cadre of exorcists, 300 of which met in Rome last week for the 15th International Gathering of the International Association of Exorcists.
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According to a press release, via Google translate, the closing keynote of the conference, by Beatrice Ugolini, a criminologist and advisor to the Gris Institute, addressed the relationship between the occult and AI.
AI, Ugolini argued, favoured "the emergence of new magical and operative instruments, the development of unprecedented divination techniques thanks to algorithms that allow the collection of personal data, and even new forms of necromancy and communication with the deceased."
So let's hope Wilson really is right about mass unemployment, otherwise the AI devil really will be making some pretty tricky work for idle hands. ®
