Pope Francis blesses the arrival of Artificial Intelligence

Who knows the history of the Church, of the papacy and its obscurantisms of the Middle Ages, with the bonfires of the Inquisition, and who remembers the persecution and death sentences of the great geniuses of science such as Savonarola, Copernicus or Galileo Galilei, You will be able to better understand the audacity of Pope Francis, who has blessed the much feared Artificial Intelligence (AI).

The Argentine Pope has accustomed us, during his rich pontificate, to surprising us by addressing topics that were taboo in the Church, from the blessing of homosexuals to the resurrection of the primitive strength of women in the first Christian communities.

The pope, just elected, recalled that he came “from the periphery of the Church,” which until him had been Eurocentric.

And that same day he broke all the protocols of centuries, by not wanting to be called Pope, a legacy of the influence of the Roman Empire, but simply bishop of Rome.

For this reason he refused to live in luxurious palaces, preferring a room in a small Roman hotel.

But perhaps his greatest audacity, which here in Brazil has just been recalled by Alesandre Chiavegatto in the newspaper

O Estado de São Paulo

, has been the open and unambiguous defense of the much-discussed AI.

I have met half a dozen popes through my work as a journalist, but none as daring as Francis, who has broken old inquisitorial prejudices and opened the doors of the Church to modernity.

“The good use of AI,” says Francisco, “will introduce important innovations in agriculture, in improving teaching and in culture.

An improvement in the life of nations and the growth of human fraternity and social friendship.”

The Pope, after conversations with Microsoft gurus, has even launched Vatican awards for the best doctoral theses on AI.

According to Francis, AI, which worries the traditional Church about the dogmas, anathemas and excommunications of the past, is only “a reflection of human dignity and our ability to create.”

It is not that Francis ignores the possible dangers and challenges that the new invention could bring to humanity if misused, such as for the creation of even more deadly weapons.

He knows it, but unlike in the past, in which what dominated in the official Church was fear and condemnation of all scientific novelty, Francis has preferred to put his eyes on the positive aspects of the new horizons opened for him.

Homo sapiens

.

According to Francisco, “the answer to AI is not written;

It depends on us.

It is up to man to decide if he is going to become food for algorithms or to nourish his heart of freedom.

And the fears that AI could challenge human intelligence and take unknown paths?

Faced with this fear, the Pope has preferred to focus on his positive aspects.

And as far as he refers to the possible misuse of the new tool, he has limited himself to saying that it is necessary to “criminalize the crime, not the tool.”

Pure wisdom.

Sometimes, those of us who have studied the history of the papacy and the secular ups and downs of the Church cannot cease to admire the open-mindedness of the Argentine Pope.

The first pontiff to look, with serenity and even hope, at the new and revolutionary discoveries of science that the Church, for centuries, feared, condemning its protagonists.

We live in a historical moment of global perplexities, of fears of an increasingly unpredictable future.

A time where everything seems to be configured as uncertainty and where for the first time we get a glimpse of the disappearance of

Homo sapiens

, whose intelligence was until today considered superior to the rest of creation.

And perhaps for this reason, the defense by the highest authority in the Church of the much feared AI, seen in the light of ancient scientific obscurantism, never ceases to surprise and even scandalize the traditional Church of the old excommunications.

Furthermore, it opens new hopes that faith, whatever it may be, that of the inevitable afterlife, no longer appears tinged with fears but with new and unexpected hopes for better times.

Yes, Pope Francis seems to have lost the Church's old fears of science and its discoveries, like the illusion of a rainbow that has emerged after the old storms of radical obscurantism tinged with fears.

For centuries, the Church defended not only the physical existence of hell and purgatory, but even limbo, where unbaptized children would end up.

Since they had not yet been able to sin, they could not be condemned to hell, but neither could they enjoy heaven.

They went to limbo where they did not suffer, but they did not enjoy either.

It was the conservative Pope John Paul II who declared that limbo did not exist and eliminated it from the official Catholic catechism.

Reason?

He told it himself.

As Pope, he wanted to unite his entire family in a single tomb, except for one of his sisters who had been stillborn.

Her parents, who were fervent Catholics, were unable to baptize her daughter nor bury her.

The Polish pope was not satisfied that his sister, having never sinned, was not in heaven but in limbo.

No sooner said than done.

He declared that limbo, like heaven and hell, were not “physical places” where one enjoyed or suffered, but rather spiritual states.

I mean, they don't exist.

Today, Pope Francis not only does not condemn AI as if it were coming to create a new hell on earth, but he sees it as a new conquest of human intelligence.

He regrets that those who were sacrificed in the bonfires of the inquisitions for answering the Vatican dogmatisms that today are slowly dissipating under the new spring of a pontificate that makes history cannot be resurrected.

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