DePaul University conference on Pope Leo draws conversation about AI, human dignity

AI “machines do not have soul,” Jesuit Father Philip Larrey said. “Only God can be responsible for the creation of the soul.”

Catholic scholars discussed Pope Leoʼs first year of papacy, including his dedication to addressing artificial intelligence (AI), at a DePaul University conference in Chicago.

The conference held April 30 and May 1 was titled “Pope Leo XIV: From the Americas, For the World.” It was the 17th annual World Catholicism Week conference organized by DePaul Universityʼs Center for World Catholicism and Intercultural Theology in the popeʼs hometown.

Jesuit Father Philip Larrey, an associate professor of theology at Boston College and past dean of the philosophy department at the Vatican’s Pontifical Lateran University, said Pope Leo has a “fresh” and “humane” take on AI.

“Pope Leo XIV took his name because of Pope Leo XIII, who in the 19th century did for the Church in the industrial revolution what Pope Leo XIV wants to do for the Church and the world … in what he calls the digital revolution,” Larrey said in his talk, “Pope Leo and the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence.”

Larrey, author of “Artificial Humanity: An Essay on the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence,” has collaborated with industry leaders, Vatican scholars, and the United Nations about the intersection of ethics and digital advancements.

The pope has a unique perspective as he is “very American, but heʼs also very Latin American,” Larrey said. “Heʼs very Peruvian. He loved his time as a missionary there.“

“Remember, Pope Leo is very, very savvy. He was the head of bishop[s] under Pope Francis, and so he knows a lot about politics within the Church,“ Larrey said. ”He knows a lot about … where the Church needs to go.”

“Heʼs a very complex person,” Larry said. In “his first message … the day after he was elected pope, he says, ‘I want to help the world in this transition of artificial intelligence.’”

Then during the summer he wrote a series of messages, “when he referred to AI as ‘soulless machine,'” Larrey said. “It really conveys a profound message: ‘These machines do not have soul.’”

The matter of the soul

Larrey discussed the “urgent concerns” of AI replacing human interactions. As a professor on a college campus, he said “a lot of students have difficulties forming relationships.” They turn to AI rather than human connection.

“With an AI, itʼs artificial, itʼs not real,” Larrey said. Ultimately, it “does not have a soul.”

The Catholic Church “uses Aristotleʼs vision of the creation of a soul,” Larrey said. “Now I have to specify … Aristotle, of course, was brought into the Catholic Church by Thomas Aquinas.”

“Now, Aristotle also believed that the man and the woman were not sufficient to cause a human being. You needed another principle, and that principle was the sun,” he said. “In ancient Greece, the sun was a divine entity. Look at how cool that translates into the Catholic theology, where you have the mother and the father, and then God.”

“Only God can be responsible for the creation of the soul,” Larrey said.

God “infuses the soul” in a new being, “and that is what distinguishes human beings from all other beings,” he said. “Aristotle said that all living beings have souls, but only the human being has an immortal soul.”

“Pope Leo has said machines can never have a soul,” Larrey said. At the World Day of Communications Pope Leo said: “If we fail in this task of preservation … digital technology threatens to alter radically some of the fundamental pillars of human civilization that at times are taken for granted.”

“By simulating human voices and faces … wisdom and knowledge, consciousness and responsibility, empathy and friendship — the systems known as artificial intelligence not only interfere with information ecosystems but also encroach upon the deepest level of communication, that of human relation.”

Consciousness and immortality

Larry detailed two matters Pope Leo has talked about “that are philosophical, but have profound ramifications in the area of AI” — consciousness and immortality.

With consciousness, “human beings are self-aware, which means that we know that we know,“ Larrey said. ”Other living animals are conscious, but theyʼre not self-conscious, which means they donʼt know that they know.”

“Now, some in … the tech industry are talking about consciousness with these machines. They are getting very good at simulating what we understand as conscious behavior,” he said.

“When a machine exhibits behavior we associate with consciousness, we will attribute consciousness to the machine,” he said. “That doesnʼt mean the machine is conscious. It just means that we will probably attribute consciousness to that machine.”

“The more sophisticated and the more complex these machines get, the more likely that is to happen,” he said.

Another issue is that there are many people who “are spending a lot of money for the search for immortality.”

“Now, according to Catholic tradition, the human being is not immortal. The soul is immortal. The human being dies, and the soul continues to live. And … at the end of time, there will be the resurrection of the body, which is when the soul will create its body once again,” he said.

Death “is part of life,” Larrey said. “Death is a meaningful part of it. And if you take that away… I think weʼre gonna lose a lot of meaning and purpose.”

Other panels at the DePaul conference discussed Pope Leoʼs connections across the globe, the future of the Church under his leadership, his recent papal trip to Africa, and his missionary work in Peru. Numerous speakers spoke about his perspective as the first American pope and a member of the Augustinian order.