Thinking Out LoudWhat are we building?
Pope Leo, in his AI encyclical, fears we’re building a Tower of Babel where, dazzled by the possibilities of scientific development (‘we’re making sand think’, says one feverish techno-optimist), we’re rushing headlong into an uncritical embrace of AI that risks reducing humans to cogs in the machine.
But building isn’t Leo’s only fertile metaphor. Later, courtesy of Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, Leo offers another – cultivation:
It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.
The desire to ‘master all the tides of the world’ channels the Babel spirit to overcome human limitation. A noble desire, if relieving human suffering is the primary aim. Equally, an uneasy one, since good intentions can be corrupted, and efforts to relieve human suffering can easily blur into relieving us of the human condition.
Instead, a different kind of mastery is called for, one that looks more like wielding a plough rather than a ring on a finger, or an agentic AI that becomes the tool of tools.
Even if our work involves tapping at a keyboard rather than working the field, we can all aim for ‘clean earth to till’. Above all, this is a call to create culture. A word rich in agricultural associations, culture care invokes being engaged in the slow, patient, work of tending, of institution-building, of being human with other humans.
‘The sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity’ is where the Pope sees real progress – something in which we all have agency.
So, what are you cultivating today?
This Thinking Out Loud was first published on Facebook.