The Vatican Discusses AI - And the Berean Juxtaposition

I happened to catch Pope Leo and the Catholic Church discussing concerns about AI. I thought this might be a good opportunity to weigh in as well. We’ve been very open about our use of AI on this podcast. Included in the source material is a recent Vatican discussion on AI and our response to it. I was particularly triggered by the idea that an institution heavily using AI is telling its members not to use AI. This is mentioned briefly in the paper.

I think, ultimately, like with any technology the is use and abuse. AI is no different. Your own smart phone gives you more computing power than that used to land the astronauts on the moon. Technology itself is not inherently good or evil. By definition, it is inherently human - in that it can be used for both good and evil. And no, I’m not saying AI is human in the real sense though there is a lot of anthrophonic rhetoric out there with the discussion of AI as sentient or conscious.

We digest the information in Pope Leo’s discussion, discuss our own use of AI and how the Berean Filter we use was just to combat many of the very problems that unfiltered AI can lead to, and then issue our own warning about the use of AI.

This is also a good opportunity to talk about the content on this podcast. We’re not shy about our use of AI. We embrace it. But I also want to point out, because you see it a lot, that we’ve decided not to put my personal name on the articles written using AI. I think this is a more honest approach in a world where people heavily lean on AI for writing. What you’ll see in our publish documents is “Directed, Produced, and Edited by Greg Newell”. Credit is given to the AI structure we’ve developed for creating the material we publish. Collectively we give the writing credit to the AI system that helps us produce the content - an author we refer to as “the Berean Teacher”. The best way to think about how we produce content is exactly how we state it in our articles. We Direct, Produce and Edit. Our AI system is an amazing ghost writer, and we give the ghost writer credit.

Notes - Disarmed But Not Dismissed - the Vatican and AI

Episode Link:

https://www.rabbitholesandmeditations.com/the-vatican-discusses-ai-and-the-berean-justaposition/