No products in the cart.
Home > Catholic Social Teaching > The Impact of AI on Work
Chat services powered by the latest “artificial intelligence” (AI) have been hitting the news headlines recently. Many have been impressed, shocked and frightened at the same time by the ability of these AI-powered machines in answering queries or performing written tasks that surpasses most humans. As a result, more money is being poured into development of AI-powered tools by investors and institutions who believe they can greatly profit from them in the future.
Now, whenever new powerful technologies enter mainstream use, their inventors and the companies that back them often do not pay sufficient attention on the ethics of their use and their impact on human beings. A major concern that has been widely discussed, including in the Parliament, is the impact on jobs. Businesses may be excited at the ability of AI-powered tools to replace human workers so as to save costs. However, if the wave of new AI products causes massive unemployment, we will end up losing out instead of benefiting from such novel technologies.
If we as the Church are the “light of the world” and the “salt of the earth”, then we have the responsibility to draw from our Catholic social teaching tradition and participate in the public discourse on AI technologies and their applications. One important teaching we have inherited from this tradition, which was articulated by Pope St John Paul II, is that work is good for the human person because it expresses and increases human dignity. So it is profoundly immoral to see human workers as mere tools to generate profits for their employers. Businesses, then, should not treat their workers as dispensable tools that can be thrown away when convenient.
See what the Church has taught on how work is an exercise of human dignity. Also, workers are persons and not commodities.
Reflect: How do I feel about AI technology being a threat to workers? Is it justified for workers to be displaced if AI can do a better job?
Job loss is not the only potential downside to the adoption of AI technologies. Another major criticism of AI is the lack of accuracy compared to human experts, potential for disinformation campaigns and biases against minorities.
Now, we should not be afraid of technological developments. We should appreciate God-given human ingenuity that can innovate and create new tools to benefit the human family and all of creation. But this does not mean we should accept the latest technology uncritically without examining all potential ethical issues.
Society functions best in a democracy where every person participates in making society conducive for every person's fulfilment. But for each person's participation to be meaningful, there is a need for objective sources of information that help decision making. If AI makes it more difficult for people to get accurate information and objective facts, that will hinder the development of society and each person. Worse, it might make society more divided.
Therefore, government policies, regulations and respect of human dignity need to steer application of AI technologies in the direction of the common good. We, the Church, are obliged as the body of Christ on earth to contribute to the work of making that happen.
See what the Church has said about how even a democratic society can become the dictatorship of the majority.
Reflect: What are my experiences with misinformation? How might AI make it more challenging for me to get the right information and what can I do about it?