Why Pope Leo Says AI Has Brought Us to a Crossroads

Leo uses this image that, you know, the two choices that face with AI is to construct the Tower of Babel or to construct the walls of Jerusalem.

Well, the library is the inverse

of Babel.

There was a lot of concern this summer that the end of reading is here.

People don't read books anymore.

When was the last time you read a book?

No comment.

Oh

my gosh, okay.

Is reading becoming a lost art? I hope not.

What's behind the anxiety? If we lose the sense of reading, we lose something fundamental to ourselves.

Because, I mean, Jesus Christ is the Word.

You are a researcher in one of the most important libraries in the world, the Vatican Library, and you're surrounded by the sources of human knowledge every day that you

go into work.

My concentration is the Latin manuscripts in the collection.

I'm preparing a catalog of all of the manuscripts in the Vatican Library that contain works written by Thomas Aquinas.

Amid the rise of AI, what do you believe about the nature of human intelligence that most people don't know today?

It's the ease that's the fear.

The ease that this can give you answers, can give you pleasure, can give you these things without any of the human emotions and the human failings and the human foibles and all those things that go into being human.

It takes that away.

We lose control.

What does a world look like when human beings are no longer in control? So what do books have to do with that? Over the past 15 years of covering the Vatican, I've encountered people wrestling with the deepest questions we can ask.

I am fascinated by all of them.

Does God exist? How should we order our lives? What gives life meaning? And how do we make sense of the mysteries and challenges of our age? My hope is that the conversations in this podcast will challenge you, inspire you, and perhaps even help you think more deeply about your own answers to life's biggest questions.

So go ahead and click the follow or subscribe button and join the conversation.

Now back to the episode.

Leo uses this image that, you know, the two choices that face with AI is to construct the Tower of Babel or to construct the walls of Jerusalem.

Well, the library is the inverse

of Babel.

There was a lot of concern this summer that the end of reading is here.

People don't read books anymore.

When was the last time you read a book?

No comment.

Oh

my gosh, okay.

Is reading becoming a lost art? I hope not.

What's behind the anxiety? If we lose the sense of reading, we lose something fundamental to ourselves.

Because, I mean, Jesus Christ is the Word.

You are a researcher in one of the most important libraries in the world, the Vatican Library, and you're surrounded by the sources of human knowledge every day that you

go into work.

My concentration is the Latin manuscripts in the collection.

I'm preparing a catalog of all of the manuscripts in the Vatican Library that contain works written by Thomas Aquinas.

Amid the rise of AI, what do you believe about the nature of human intelligence that most people don't know today?

It's the ease that's the fear.

The ease that this can give you answers, can give you pleasure, can give you these things without any of the human emotions and the human failings and the human foibles and all those things that go into being human.

It takes that away.

We lose control.

What does a world look like when human beings are no longer in control? So what do books have to do with that? Over the past 15 years of covering the Vatican, I've encountered people wrestling with the deepest questions we can ask.

I am fascinated by all of them.

Does God exist? How should we order our lives? What gives life meaning? And how do we make sense of the mysteries and challenges of our age? My hope is that the conversations in this podcast will challenge you, inspire you, and perhaps even help you think more deeply about your own answers to life's biggest questions.

So go ahead and click the follow or subscribe button and join the conversation.

Now back to the episode.