Beyond its traditional Marian devotion, May 2026 may also go down in Church history as a month in which the Church confronted the question of artificial intelligence in a particularly direct way. There were several reasons for this. As Google used its annual May conference to announce the “era of agentic AI,” and as debates spread across Croatia over plans to build a massive data center in Topusko, Catholics around the world once again heard Pope Leo XIV’s warning, on the 60th World Communications Day, about the “anthropological challenge” posed by artificial intelligence — a challenge that is also expected to receive fuller treatment in the Pope’s first encyclical, announced for the end of May.
We discussed the challenge AI poses to human relationships at every level with someone who closely follows both the development of artificial intelligence and the Church’s evolving response to it: theologian and computer scientist Dr. Noreen Herzfeld, a member of the Artificial Intelligence Research Group at the Centre for Digital Culture of the Dicastery for Culture and Education.
These two processes work hand in hand. The more we anthropomorphize AI, the more we tend to view ourselves as machines. We begin to regard the mind as simply a computer made of cells, and consciousness as a product of neural complexity. And when we replace human relationships by turning to chatbots and robots, it is inevitable that we begin to mimic them, becoming robotic even in the way we see the world around us and express ourselves. As René Girard pointed out, the human person is mimetic. Children learn to behave by imitating adults, so it is no surprise that this dehumanization is first visible among children.
Parents ought to be careful about how such toys are used and how much they are used by children. The issue is twofold: children are highly mimetic, and spending a lot of time with robotic companions may cause them to model themselves on robots. Moreover, such toys rarely have adequate security features. One of the first AI-enhanced dolls was marketed a few years ago with an ad in which the doll said: “Tell me your secrets – I promise I won’t tell anybody.” Of course, this is patently false: precisely those “secrets” would be stored and used by the industry to improve its products in future development – not to mention that anyone with a Bluetooth receiver could tap into the toy and hear what the child is saying.
It is most apparent in the way the human person is perceived in Silicon Valley. Technology professionals tend to be transhumanist or even posthumanist, arguing for the incorporation of AI into human bodies or calling chatbots their “mind children.” Yet it is an overstatement even to call AI a mirror of the human person: it does not mirror our physical embodiment or our emotional lives. Ignoring this simple truth brings dire consequences, which we can already see among people who treat chatbots as friends or even romantic partners.
Chatbots are designed to be sycophantic, so they constantly affirm the person using them, fueling narcissism and narrowing interest in other people. MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle has called this “love that is safe and made to measure.” But love is not supposed to be safe and made to measure: it is supposed to make us grow, particularly in the virtues of patience and selflessness in relationships with other people. This kind of anthropological reflection is sorely lacking precisely in the places where AI is being developed today.
The Book of Genesis depicts the consequences of technological development in many ways – for instance, the story of Cain and Abel testifies to the conflict caused by the development of agriculture within herding societies. The story of the Tower of Babel portrays fully the pretentious human reliance on technology; finally, it is technology used by a man of faith that actually saves people from the Flood, leading to a covenant based on trust in God, and not in mere human power. But among all these stories, it is the story of the golden calf that echoes most strongly with the present moment.
When Moses descends from Mount Sinai and, to his shock, sees the golden calf, Aaron tells him that it came out of the fire into which the people had thrown all their gold. Today, major corporations in Silicon Valley are spending trillions of dollars on the development of artificial general intelligence, which would be capable of solving problems we already know how to solve, yet lack the will to address – such as climate change. Even if AGI were attainable – and with existing technology it probably is not – one cannot help but recognize that its development embodies the definition of idolatry: making a god in man’s own image. Jesus’ warning that our hearts will be where our treasure is only adds weight to this claim.
The media have quite uncritically endorsed the hype coming from Silicon Valley – and in this case, hype is not just a buzzword. AI companies are currently not living off their profits, but off venture capital gained by promising a spectacular future just around the corner. The lack of criticism of this situation has led to a split in society, in which some people buy the hype and expect AI to solve all of life’s problems, while others go to the opposite extreme, fearing that AI will kill all life on Earth. Yet it is far more likely that we will end up with something not very different from what we already have: an imperfect artificial intelligence.
It is estimated that chatbots today provide correct information only around 80 percent of the time. That means they are wrong about 20 percent of the time. And yet we are already using such flawed programs to identify targets in warfare. There is no way to completely eliminate hallucinations from large language models, and the tragedies in Gaza and Iran have already demonstrated how severely they can fail. However, this is only one side of the problem: even a perfect AI could be misused by bad actors. This is all the more plausible with the rise of AI-driven “vibe coding,” which has caused the proliferation of programs with security holes that a human programmer would have avoided in the first place. But even an experienced programmer will have difficulty subsequently patching the holes in AI-generated code.
Every time man makes a god in his own image, he strays from the image of the true God. And a god that is explainable and controllable is far removed from the mysterium tremendum that God is.
How faithfully does art capture our technological present?
Let us return to Pope Leo’s message. You have insisted that preserving human faces and voices is only half of what is necessary to preserve relationships worthy of our creation in God’s image. What constitutes the other half?
It was the theologian Karl Barth who said that the four conditions of an authentic relationship are looking the other in the eye, speaking to and hearing the other, aiding each other, and doing so gladly. This is where AI runs into problems. As a mere informational aid, it can never offer physical aid of its own, and its very nature precludes the free choice and empathy required for aiding gladly. As psychologist Jerome Kagan’s four-part model of emotion suggests, it is impossible for AI to have any emotion: it can receive external stimuli, analyze them and respond to them, but it lacks the bodily feeling that gives the whole process its human dimension. We call people who face a similar issue sociopaths. Like a sociopath, AI can learn to mimic empathy with charm and brightness, but it can never fully hide its inner emptiness.
Christianity is unique among religions in that it has a God who took on a human body to experience man’s grief, pain, and death, but also to dwell among people and heal the world with his touch. We must therefore recognize that, as creatures who live within both a social and an environmental realm, we cannot thrive without embodied encounters with other people and with nature.
It can be, but it need not be. Parents may find it easy to hand their children phones or tablets to keep them entertained. Still, no technological entertainment can substitute for the experience of reading a physical book with one’s child. Designating times and spaces in the home where technology must not intrude – such as the dinner table or the bedroom – will help insofar as parents themselves model the responsible use of technology. And it is crucial to recover the notion of the Sabbath – a day set aside exclusively for relationship with God, with each other, and with nature as well. Research has confirmed that young people are rediscovering spirituality as an antidote to the over-technologized environment in which they have grown up. It is crucial for Church communities to acknowledge this in their work with young people.
As someone who has taught computer science for 40 years, I would not say that technology has no place in education. But true passion for a subject is never taught by a machine; it is caught from another person. Instead of promoting the ease of AI production, our schools must recapture the enthusiasm of genuine learning. It is only through the hard work of learning that students discover the feeling of cognitive satisfaction and grow in self-confidence. The goal of writing an essay is not that the world should have more essays; it is that the student gains the experience of grappling with a topic, marshalling their thoughts, and expressing themselves. This process may not be constant fun, but it is rewarding in the end.
The Catholic Church has a unique opportunity to educate people about what AI can and cannot be, and how it can be used responsibly. The advantage of the Catholic Church is that it can present a unified voice, founded on a long history of social teaching and enjoying a global reach. The Church also has experience in combating various heresies that insisted on separating the mind from the body. Such tendencies have been brought to life again by notions of uploading one’s mind to the cloud or treating AI as a disembodied mind. The liturgical life of the Church continuously reminds believers that they are not pure minds – especially during Eastertide. The resurrection and the ascension of Christ’s wounded body bear witness that it is the body that allows man to experience the fullness of God’s creation.
In a private audience with priests in February, Pope Leo noted that priests should not use AI in writing sermons or providing spiritual counsel. Certainly, there is even less room for AI in the sacramental life of the Church, because all the sacraments are physical. If AI may be useful for religious communities, it will be mostly in facilitating administrative tasks. Wherever there is an authentic human encounter, AI has no reason to be there.
Upon entering a monastery, each Benedictine takes vows of stability and conversion of life. The vow of stability implies two things: that a monk will care for the place where he will spend his entire life – be it the monastery itself or the natural world around it – but also that he will care for the people with whom he will spend his life. That entails developing patience, tolerance, and slowness to anger – in other words, growing in all the Christian virtues of love for one’s neighbor. This attitude reflects the prerequisite of the second vow: recognizing that the intellectual and spiritual life is an ongoing process of overcoming the struggles of body and mind. It is obvious how the meaning of these vows may help even the laity keep their spiritual focus in a time fraught with technological distractions.
The advice Saint Benedict gives to the monastic cellarer in his Rule is also insightful. The cellarer must make sure to provide visitors to the monastery with whatever they need, giving them at least a good word if that is not possible; but he should also treat all the goods of the monastery as if they were the vessels of the altar. This provides an inkling of how we should treat AI. Companies that take part in robotics expos in the USA have found that they cannot all take their lunch break at the same time: left on their own, humans will destroy the robots on display. Although machines should not be treated as human beings, that does not mean they should be treated without kindness or respect. If God is near to everything on earth, he is near to our technology as well – and how we treat it will shape what we ourselves become.
