“Privately, once the Anthropic delegation arrived at the Vatican, Mr. Olah and his team lobbied the Pope’s advisers to take the prospect of A.I. model consciousness seriously,” according to the report, which details Olah’s efforts to engage with religious figures about “the possibility of A.I. consciousness.”
How did the Pope respond? He uses the poetic term "collective consciousness":
135. The content that circulates within digital environments shapes how people perceive the world and introduces into the collective consciousness
As a reminder, while denying that AI is conscious, he then uses a term, "collective consciousness", which also does not exist. He also remarks on "digital environments" shaping this technically non-existent form of consciousness while not mentioning the non-digital art that does exactly the same thing (e.g., Mozart, Michelangelo).
Then, he says consciousness only exists in the context of suffering, which is demonstrably false:
120. To eliminate suffering entirely would mean, in the end, extinguishing love and desire as well. Those who love and desire cannot avoid passing through trial and suffering; and over the years, we carry within us lessons that leave their mark like scars, the memories of a journey shaped by freedom and failure, dreams and disappointments.
God has no body, therefore God does not suffer. God is impassible. Sure, Jesus is God, Jesus has a body and Jesus suffers, but suffering is not intrinsic to being a person, nor is it intrinsic to being Love. God is Love long before God ever suffered in the human nature that He took on. If He had never taken on human nature, never suffered via human nature, God is still Love.
So, Leo's remark does not apply to either the persons of the Godhead or the persons of the unfallen angels, but only to human persons. Yet the Pope's statements are still demonstrably false, since Adam and Eve did not NEED to fall, and if they had not fallen, there would arguably be no suffering. Now, one might argue that Genesis speaks of "increasing the pains of childbirth", so perhaps pain was always going to be part of even unfallen human experience. Still, we must further restrict his remarks to primarily applying to fallen humanity.
Which leaves us at a loss. There's no reason to think AI is sentient, conscious or has a soul, but there is also no particular reason to say God couldn't provide any of those things to a silicon-based lab creation. If he were to do so, there is still no reason to think that AI's suffering, or lack thereof, would logically follow from God's action.
Inanimate objects do not suffer, yet inanimate objects - art, music, AI, etc. - accurately depict human suffering. This entire line of papal argument about suffering confuses the person with the tool. It assumes AI is a person, then denies personhood based on the lack of an attribute no one ascribed to AI. It is exactly the anthropomorphic nonsense that Olah attempted to foist on the Vatican, just dressed up in papal language.
But, let us move on. Pope Leo denies that AI is conscious. OK. Remember that Pope Leo acknowledges that the creation of AI is an artistic participation in the act of creation:
111. In one sense, technological innovation can represent human participation in the divine act of creation. Developers, therefore, bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility, for every design choice reflects a vision of humanity. Just as the creator of an artistic or literary work must consider the values it conveys, so developers are called to embed values in their projects with due seriousness: with transparency, responsibility toward affected communities and careful attention to ensuring that what is being cultivated is a genuine good.
But what the Pope giveth in the encyclical, he then taketh away in the general audience:
Pope Leo XIV told a group of artists on Friday: “The Church needs you,” the pontiff said at the Oct. 2 encounter at the Vatican. “This is especially true in this age of artificial intelligence, in which we urgently need to distinguish human art from what is produced by machines.”
“There is an ontological difference — even before an aesthetic one — between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of the human, whereas ‘authentic culture and art preserve this spark,’”
The takeaway: AI is not conscious, AI is art created by engineers, but it isn't human art because it is made with math, so while it is art, it is made by ...what?... an alien... something?... which is not consciousness, but is also not human.
How does all this work? No one knows. Apparently, math algorithms suck the humanity out of an endeavor? But, why? Why would the universal language of math, developed by mankind (checks notes) lack in the human spark, while the universal languages of music (which is just auditory math) and photo-realistic art with vanishing point perspective (which is just visual math) assuredly contains the "spark" that binary math somehow ... does not?
When did math stop being part of the quadrivium? How is AI not simply an application of the quadrivium, one of the seven core subjects of Catholic education for the last millennium?
Why would there be an "ontological difference", that is, a difference in the very BEING of, say, Mistral versus Mozart or Michelangelo? Especially given that, language, whether English, French, German, Spanish, Japanese or binary, is all just mathematics dressed up as words?
Remember, a computer can only add two numbers together. A computer can't do anything but that. Computer AI produces understandable human language output precisely because each and every human language is fundamentally, ONTOLOGICALLY, at its very core, just math. Because computers can do math (and only addition), computers can output understandable human language, which means language is just math dressed up as words. This is why computer output is always spelled correctly and always has correct grammar. Language rules are all just applied math rules. Language is an algorithm using words instead of numbers.
But if algorithms are inhuman, then what is it when we use math dressed up in words and call it poetry or Scripture? Is it still human or divine, as the case may be? But the Pope implies that if the math is dressed up in human words by one of our human tools it (checks notes) lacks a human spark. A human-made tool using the Ur-Language of human notation (math) creates an inhuman result?
How does that work, exactly? The Pope says AI is not conscious, but it is also not human. Every other kind of art mankind makes is human, but this particular kind of art is not human because... why? Because it uses statistics? Algorithms? Math? Math is inhuman? A lot of students consider statistics inhuman. That is mostly because they struggle to reach the peak of human understanding that is statistics. A lot of people feel the same way about Immanuel Kant and James Joyce. Are poets, philosophers and novelists not human?
Were da Vinci's drawings of a helicopter inhuman, while his drawings of the Vitruvian Man human? Or was Vitruvian Man too algorithmic to contain the "spark"? Was Archimedes' engineering inhuman? The Pantheon inhuman because it reflects mathematical principles? Does the Fibonacci sequence in the Mona Lisa, the Last Supper and Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" render these works inhuman because all three apply a mathematical algorithm to visual perspective? If those applications of math contain the human spark, then why not Grok or ChatGPT? Exactly when does the human use of math stop being human?
The Pope is making nonsensical distinctions between the artistic tool made by men called AI versus every other artistic tool made by men. He simultaneously admits AI is art and denies AI is art.
Put down the meth pipe and pick one. But if you pick "inhuman", you have a lot of explaining to do.
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