Moral guidelines from Pope Leo XIV about AI: ‘Do not renounce your ability to think’

(Part 2)

The Center for Research and Communication (CRC) — the precursor of the University of Asia and the Pacific (UA&P) — was founded in 1967 by professionals in the fields of education, economics and media. The lead personalities were Dr. Jesus Estanislao, the main Founder, a professional economist who was then working for the Government in a planning agency attached to the Office of the President of the Philippines, called the Program Implementation Agency (PIA); myself, primarily an educator who was at that time the Head of the Economics Department and Dean of the Graduate School of Business of De La Salle University in Manila; and Jose Romero, Jr., Business Editor of Manila Bulletin. One can say, therefore, that very much in the DNA of UA&P are these three fields, whatever other specializations we have added to our curricula.

The present leadership of UA&P — a new generation in their forties — is determined to make our “boutique” university the best among our fellow tertiary educational institutions in the fields of economics (especially applied to business); media and social communications; and liberal arts education. Although I am also practicing my profession as an economist (I have a Ph.D. in Economics), my lifelong work has been to instill in all the college students whom I mentor critical thinking skills, effective communication, and the ability to relate the human disciplines to one another. For this I am a strong believer of the greatest importance of a liberal arts education as a preparation for any professional or technical skill. I strongly believe that our educational officials should give complete freedom to Philippine colleges and universities to include in their respective general education curricula as many “liberalizing” subjects as they consider necessary.

Given the current rage revolving around the revolutionary impact on all human disciplines, professions, and occupations of Artificial Intelligence (AI), I am very happy that the Supreme Pontiff, Pope Leo XIV, is determined to give educators, economists, and media practitioners principles for reflection, criteria for judgment, and directives for action about this very topic of AI.

I have read over and over again his “Message for the 60^th World Day of Social Communications” which he issued on Jan. 24. We should celebrate even more the good news that just came from the Vatican: that the Pope published on May 25 his first encyclical entitled “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity) on preserving humanity in the AI age. Breaking with precedent, the pope presented the document himself with Anthropic’s co-founder, Dario Amodel. I promise my readers that I will help them reflect on the principles found in this new social encyclical in my future columns. Right now, my intention is to comment on his previous message to social communicators.

Before I continue reflecting on what he wrote in his earlier messages, let me just cite a column from one of the leading international publications, the Financial Times, about how critical thinking (what I want to cultivate among my students more than technical skills or professional knowledge) is even more important in the field of Finance than AI.

A leading columnist of the Financial Times, Gillian Tett, reported how a New York financier just experienced employing summer interns who were “the first AI natives I have seen.” That meant that these young college students had grown up not only with digital tech, but also AI. What the financial executive said about these AI wizards was not complimentary: “While those wannabe masters of the universe initially seemed wildly impressive, when senior financiers later probed their ideas, they found them alarmingly shallow.”

Because of this disappointing experience with those “AI wizards,” the finance company is now focusing less on graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and more on Humanities students instead. I can say the same thing about UA&P’s most successful industrial and business economics graduates who now are very prominent economists working for banks and business conglomerates: what make them stand out are not their quantitative skills (which they have more than enough of) but their critical thinking ability, their superior ability to communicate both in speech and writing, and their multidisciplinary knowledge (a product of a liberal arts education).

In his message to social communicators, Pope Leo XIV exhorted them “Do not renounce your ability to think.” He reminded them that “There has long been abundant evidence that algorithms designed to maximize engagement in social media — which is profitable for platforms — reward quickly emotions and penalize more time-consuming human responses such as the effort required to understand and reflect. By grouping people into bubbles of easy consensus and easy outrage, these algorithms reduce our ability to listen and think critically, and increase social polarization.”

As a regular writer for both local and international media for several decades, I am taking to heart the advice given by the Pope Leo XIV not to have a naïve and unquestioning reliance on AI as an omniscient “friend,” a source of all knowledge, an archive of every memory, an “oracle” of all advice. I make it a point to always distinguish between syntax and semantics. In fact, I never ask ChatGPT a question on matters of which I am completely ignorant. I make it a point to ask questions the answers to which I have some knowledge about, but which require verification of some facts that my deteriorating memory is finding harder to recall. I am always wary about what ChatGPT tells me on a topic of which I am totally ignorant because I have learned of enough cases when ChatGPT invents answers.

Two recent articles in the Financial Times gave very clear warning signs about AI. The first is precisely about not trusting that chatbots like ChatGPT will always tell the truth. In his regular column entitled “Undercover Economist” (May 9), Tim Harford asked rhetorically “Chatbots lie, why do we believe them?” The short answer he gave is that we are overwhelmingly impressed with what it is capable of. He warns us that there is a difference between capability and impressiveness: “The capabilities of AI are impressive. But what determines whether we use it is not the capability, but the impressiveness. They are correlated but they are not the same thing.”

Another regular columnist, Edward Luce (May 13), comments on “How dread of AI unites Americans.” He categorically writes that “It is rare for the US public to agree on anything these days. Fear of AI is as close to a national consensus as it gets. A clear majority say that AI will do more harm than good. In one recent NBC poll, AI’s net negative rating ranked below ICE, the disliked immigration enforcement agency. A sizable share of both Democrats and Republicans oppose new data centers. Even strong voter preferences, however, are little match for the lobbying clout of America’s tech giants, especially with Donald Trump behind them.”

This reality makes it even more urgent that the powerful big business sector should seriously consider what Elon Musk is fighting for, whether or not based on sincere convictions: that AI not be subject to the pure logic of the free market but should be in the hands of social entrepreneurs who, while making reasonable returns on their investments, are mainly motivated to promote the common good of society. AI in the hands of a Gordon Gekko (the main character the Hollywood movie about unbridled capitalism) would be disastrous.

Pope Leo XIV in his message to social communicators has cogently given these very concrete moral guidelines:

“The creators and developers of AI models are invited to practice transparency and social responsibility in regard to the design principles and moderation system underlying their algorithms and the models they develop, in order to promote informed consent on the part of users… The same responsibility is also required of national legislators and supranational regulators, whose task it is to ensure respect for human dignity. Appropriate regulation can protect individuals from forming emotional attachments to chatbots and curb the spread of false, manipulative or misleading content, safeguarding the integrity of the information as opposed to its deceptive simulation.”

My readers can expect many more articles reflecting on Pope Leo XIV’s recently published social encyclical “Magnifica Humanitas.”

Bernardo M. Villegas has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, is professor emeritus at the University of Asia and the Pacific, and a visiting professor at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. He was a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.

[e-mail]