2024-01-24 10:49:30
Pope Francis warns of the risks of artificial intelligence in the media. In his message for the 58th World Social Communications Day this Wednesday, January 24th, he referred to highly dangerous misinformation generated by AI and remembered killed war reporters.
Slowly but surely, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming the focus of the Vatican. In his message for the World Day of Peace on January 1st, Pope…
Gudrun Sailer – Vatican City
Like any other technological tool, artificial intelligence can benefit or harm humans, the Pope wrote in his long message. It can “contribute to liberation from ignorance and facilitate the exchange of information between different peoples and generations” or have the exact opposite effect. Francis criticized a “distortion of reality” through wholly or partly fake narratives “that are nevertheless believed – and spread – as if they were true.” He himself has also been seen in deceptively real images generated by AI, so-called “deep fakes,” wrote Francis. The underlying technology can be useful in special cases, “but it becomes abnormal where it distorts the relationship to others and to reality.”
“Information cannot be separated from living relationships”
Francis warned against underestimating the dangers of artificial intelligence in the media world and in communication. Mapping the world on the basis of huge amounts of data, so-called big data, means a “significant loss in terms of the truth of things,” explained the Pope. “Information cannot be separated from living relationship: it includes the body, standing in reality; it requires relating not only data but also experiences; it requires the face, the look, the compassion and the exchange.”
“…how many reporters get injured or die on the ground so we can see what their eyes saw.”
He is thinking of reporting on wars and the “parallel war” that is waged through disinformation campaigns. “And I think about how many reporters on the ground get injured or die so we can see what their eyes saw. Because only when we experience the suffering of children, women and men first hand can we understand the absurdity of wars.”
AI cannot replace journalism, but it can support it
Of course, artificial intelligence can also enrich the work of the media in a positive way, the Pope continued. This is the case when technology “does not eliminate the role of journalism on site, but supports it” and when it “gives everyone back the role of a critical subject of communication”.
(vatican news – gs)
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