Artificial Intelligence: Time of Change or Changing of Time?
- 15 hours ago
- 5 min read
by H.E. Rex Andrew C. Alarcon, Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Caceres and
Chairman of the CBCP Episcopal Commission on Social Communications
The beginning of Lent, with the imposition of ashes on Ash Wednesday, signals a change of season in the Calendar of the Church. It is a change of time, which is also a time of change, a time for conversion.
In the movie 'AlphaGo,' available on YouTube, there is an interesting scene in which the human player, Lee Sedol, a 9th Dan Go World Champion, plays against the computer program AlphaGo. Lee Sedol was full of emotion, but his opponent had none, as it was a machine. There was drama in the human player, but not in the machine. The computer AlphaGo defeated Lee in four games, while Lee won only one.
This new scientific-technological breakthrough signals a new period in history. It opens the door to an entirely new period, quite different from the previous agricultural, industrial, and information periods. At the dawn of each period, there were turning points in history that led to radical changes in people's lives.
The Agricultural Period, from the early civilizations to the 18th century, is the period when man learned to farm and cultivate land. During this time, man planted seeds and prayed to God or the gods to allow the land to bear fruit. However, when man discovered artificial fertilizers, he discovered power in his mind and hands. The belief in the power of prayer and religion diminished. Man learned to control nature for survival.
The Industrial Period includes the 1st and 2nd Industrial Revolutions.
The First Industrial Revolution (c. 1760-1840) was the transition from hand-production methods to machine manufacturing, powered primarily by the invention of the steam engine and the rise of the factory system. It fundamentally transformed society by triggering massive urbanization and shifting the global economy from agriculture to large-scale industry.
This period raised questions on the dignity of labor, exploitation and poverty. It asked the question: How should the Church be present among workers?
The Second Industrial Revolution, also known as the Technological Revolution, occurred between the late 19th century and the early 20th century (roughly 1870 to 1914). This was the arrival of electricity, internal combustion engines, and mass production. This is the period when machines replaced human labor. It saw the rise of factories, mass production, and cities. Wealth came from capital, machines, and labor. Man learned to control machines to increase productivity.
This brought new dilemmas, which Pope Leo XIII addressed in his social encyclical Rerum Novarum. The questions raised were: What is a just wage and just social order? How do we respond to capitalism and socialism? What is the Church’s role in society? Rerum Novarum addressed concerns on labor, rights and human dignity.
Again, one can imagine the impact of these revolutions to faith and religion.
Then came the Information Period. The 1950’s to 2000 saw the digital revolution. This was the time of computers and the internet. During this period, media transformed communication. Knowledge became instant, global, and digital. In this period, information became the primary source of power and wealth.
From the scientific-technological standpoint, the changing of times saw expression in the following shifts. What in times past was pulled by 24 horses was later pulled by machines. What used to be operated by hands (manus -manual), began to be operated by the finger (digitus -digital). Man continued to discover powers in his mind and body. Man has reached further regions in space as he is now able to explore inner regions of the body in a less invasive way.
In this period, the questions asked were: How does faith speak in a technological, secular world? Where is God in an increasingly digital world? How does the Church become truly global?
The changing of times reminds us of Auguste Comte, the philosopher and sociologist, who distinguished three phases of historical evolution of human thought: "the theological-fictive; the metaphysical-abstract; the positive." Positivist thinking was applied across all domains of reality, giving rise to 'social physics'.
In times past, social concerns were addressed in the fields of moral philosophy and theology. But then science was applied to these. As a result, the so-called social sciences arose: sociology, economics, political science, psychology, anthropology, and even history. These social sciences began to explain patterns and causes. These systematically studied how human society functions through empirical methods –observation, data, and analysis, rather than moral or theological evaluation.
With the rise of science, people's faith in God and religion waned. God has been 'put in the dry dock' -another way of saying: 'God is dead' ‘God is of no use.’ Theology suffered a functional loss.
And again, the late Pope Francis said: “In our time humanity is experiencing a turning-point in its history, as we can see from the advances being made in so many fields.” (Evangelii Gaudium #52) Pope Francis describes this not only as time of change, but a change of time.
Indeed, it seems we are at the threshold of the 4th Industrial Revolution (21st Century) – the period of Artificial Intelligence, Cyber-Physical systems and Hyperconnectivity.
We have witnessed more transitions: from the digital to the vocal. We converse with chatbots: Hey Alexa! Hey Siri! Hey Google! etc. And still new regions and new frontiers of science are being explored. Again, a further shift from the optical to the neural networks. This is a time of integration of the digital, biological and physical technologies.
Back in the year 2000, at a Bioethics seminar, the prospect of being able to put the microchip in the brain had already been discussed. This was after the cloning of Dolly the Sheep and the Human Genome Project.
With the dawn of Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnology, we are seeing more radical changes. Machines now seem to have the capacity to decide. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence signals another moment of ‘changing of time.’ Mustafa Suleyman speak of it as the new wave which poses the problem of containment. The historian Yuval Harrari would call AI as Alien Intelligence, whose mastery of language may pose threat to religions of the book (sacred scripture). AI will be ubiquitous and we must be wary about is recursive self-learning ability and autonomy, adds Suleyman.
Today we ask: What is the human person in an age of machines? How do we preserve dignity in algorithm-driven societies? How can the Church discern God’s presence amid rapid change?
Pope Francis indeed says it well: “It is not only a time of change, but a change of time. These different period and the industrial revolutions are not merely economic stages, they are epochs in which humanity changes its self-understanding –and therefore moments when the Church must reread he signs of the times to proclaim the Gospel anew.
We recall the advice of the Second Vatican Council from Gaudium et Spes: “At all times the Church carries the responsibility of reading the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel, if it is to carry out its task. In language intelligible to every generation, she should be able to answer the ever-recurring questions which man ask about the meaning of this present life and of the life to come, and about the relationship of the one to the other.” (GS, 4)
The present age certainly poses new challenges to the living out of our faith. And this is a challenge for us, followers of the Lord Jesus: to find God in an ever-increasingly secular world and to be able point to God's presence in our historical circumstances. These new developments are not necessarily against us. We wish to take these developments positively and yet affirm the centrality of the human person in any development. The goal is not to eliminate humanity but to elevate humanity.
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