By Levi Checketts, PhD
“A just society,” Pope Leo XIV writes in his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas [Magnificent Humanity], “requires a vigilant State and civil institutions that are capable of overcoming the singular mentality of efficiency, and of ensuring that resources, creative solutions and regulations favour the most vulnerable” [158].
In this moment of rapid advancement and spread of artificial intelligence [AI] across all sectors in Hong Kong, the pope’s words are deeply relevant. It seems everywhere we go, we hear about how AI is transforming our workplaces, our schools and even our city system. This is the way of the future, we’re told.
But when we look at the reality of this AI world, not everything is roses. Maybe we feel left behind, or maybe we’re worried about how much our city has staked on the AI promise. Pope Leo cautions us against “economic models that exalt efficiency and individual success” against those who are unable to keep up, “as if their futures depended solely on their ability to keep pace with the ‘winners’” [158].
While Magnifica Humanitas emphasises the problem of humanising AI while dehumanising people, as well as AI’s position in an increasingly galvanised world, the encyclical also speaks directly to our everyday concerns—to work, to family unity, to education, to political stability, to economic equality.
How do we Catholics, living in this singular moment in Hong Kong, follow Catholic teaching on AI?
Hong Kong seems to have gone “all in” on AI. The Education Bureau is trying to integrate it into the secondary school curriculum, while most universities have already tailored curricula to the AI reality. Our city is also home to over 300 AI companies, with hundreds more start-ups, and has quickly become the favoured place for mainland Chinese AI firms to launch their IPOs. Due to automation of entry-level positions, available jobs for university graduates across the city number only 31,000 today, down from 80,000 in 2022 [South China Morning Post, May 16].
What should we ordinary Catholic faithful of Hong Kong do? Let’s begin with education.
“Education,” the pope reminds us, “is a long journey requiring patience, and therefore needs time for development and for engagement with reality beyond appearances” [140]. AI applications have proven very helpful in science and maths education, but in the humanities, students need to spend time reading and engaging with ideas, thinking on their own and in conversation with peers and teachers, and writing their ideas.
AI has, unfortunately, become a bypass for most of this process, where students often use LLMs [large language models] to summarise books and articles, to do their own brainstorming for them, and to write their papers. Such critical thinking is ever more important in a world of fast-changing technologies and worsening climate.
“We must learn,” Pope Leo tells us, “how to exercise restraint in the use of AI and to protect our young people from the promise of the perfect machine, from that subtle temptation which renders human thought seemingly superfluous precisely when it is most needed” [140]. As we teach our youngsters, it is important that they struggle and make their way slowly and deliberately through their learning.
While AI for finance is proving to be an incredibly powerful tool to expand and strengthen national economies, the pope also warns that this needs to be directed towards the common good: “while the world’s wealth has grown in absolute terms, it is increasingly concentrated in fewer hands” [161].
Therefore, the development of financial tools must be directed to the right end: “finance for its own sake is fundamentally different from finance aimed at the development, creation and evolution of work” [160]. This development can be done through careful planning and responsible action from those working in financial and civic sectors.
“Just laws and methods of redistribution are certainly necessary for correcting imbalances…. However, the pursuit of social justice should not be considered a separate issue…, as if the economy existed solely to create wealth” [162]. This is because “justice concerns every phase of economic activity, from resource acquisition to financing, and from production to consumption” [162].
With an economy directed towards human good, Pope Leo also reminds us that work is good for us as well.
Twin concerns emerge on this front: in the first case, the problem of technological unemployment. Obviously, without strong social support systems, automation will leave many people behind. However, even if we provide basic needs for people while depriving them of work, we risk “forced inactivity, a lack of responsibility and the absence of daily tasks and stimuli, resulting in human and cultural impoverishment” [154].
On the other hand, though, are new forms of exploitation that reduce “men and women to ‘data’ to be tracked and ‘packages’ to be moved around within the same digital circuits that support much of the global economy” [173]. Work in the new AI world needs to be available to all as well as dignified.
Companies and governments, the pope tells us, need “to establish social criteria for innovation… [to establish] proactive policies that make continuous training and professional transitions accessible to all… [and to ensure] a corporate commitment to include quality and dignity of work among its indicators of success” [156].
As Hong Kong tries to position itself as a key city for China’s AI strategy, it is important that we do not let the push for innovation and development sideline our obligations to “the most vulnerable.”
As Catholics and as members of this society, we are encouraged by the pope to look for opportunities for a more humane world: to emphasise dignified work, to demand an economic order that serves the common good, and to keep the goals and efforts of education firmly in view.
The “technocratic paradigm,” which Pope Francis first warned us about, tells us all these problems will have technical fixes. But the Catholic view is that these are moral problems that require our attention and Christian commitment.
