You must be wondering, are we now starting to talk about politics and religion. Though I do agree, politics is important and religion is as per individual’s beliefs, we are never going to talk about those, until and unless, AI is involved. We serve you only AI flavors here.

Pope Francis was the first pontiff to address leaders at a G7 Summit. For those unaware, the Pope is often portrayed by the popular mainstream media as someone having liberal or moderate values. He won the Times’s “Person of the Year”, Esquire’s “Best-dressed man” and even featured on Rolling Stone’s magazine cover. He is also the first pope to have opened an Instagram Account. To date he has 9.3M followers in the social media platform. So now you know that you are not dealing with just an ordinary religious leader but someone who is also considered progressive. If you remember, how there was an artificially generated image of Pope in a white puffed jacket, circulating in the internet. Some reports even informed how shares went down. Did that really happen for that reason? I don’t know. Maybe it happened. But the point is that the current Pope seemed to be the right person to talk about AI.

A little history about G7 – It is a group of advanced democracies that openly discusses on policies, securities, global economic concerns, and more. Each year, the presidency is rotated between the members and there’s annual summit organized by the presiding country. Who are these countries? They are – U.S., U.K., Italy, France, Japan, Germany and Canada. This year it was Italy’s turn and Giorgia Meloni, the Italian Prime Minister was the host leader. Meloni being a devout Catholic had extended the invitation to the Pope and other heads of state and government.

Apart from other concerns discussed during the G7 – including China, Russia, migration issues – AI was one of the main topics. The Pope was invited to share about his views on artificial intelligence.

So, what did the Pope say?

The pontiff started by stating that AI is both fascinating and terrifying. He thanked God for being so kind to give His Spirit to humans and allowing us to have His wisdom in all kinds of task. Therefore, science and technology are extraordinary products of this potential realized in us, Humans. Of course he is religious leaders, so you see, he has to connect the two. He reminded that AI is after all is a tool, acknowledging that it is powerful and proving extremely helpful in medicines, communications, labour, education, politics etc. However, it is also, ambivalent. On one side it democratizes knowledge and automate demanding tasks, but on the other hand it generates fear. It brings with it more injustice between advanced and developing countries, between dominant social and oppressed social classes and endangering possibility of a culture of encounter but leading to a culture of discarding others. Humans no doubt has time and again proved that they could misuse tools, bringing destruction to self and also, to the environment. Therefore, it is important to bring in ethical regulations that has control on what we use it for. Politics, though hated by many, is very much needed. Good politics bring in good for the common people and in right hands, AI inspired by ethical principles will help humanity.

What do you think?

Whether religious or atheist or someone with no-opinion, one thing which unites everyone is that, all of us are scared on what if AI goes unregulated and what it will do to our future.

^{Featured Image by Coronel Gonorrea on Unsplash}