By Devin Watkins
The Pontifical Academy for Life has organized an international congress dedicated to “AI and Medicine: The Challenge of Human Dignity,” which takes place on Nov 10-12.
As the meeting began on Monday, Pope Leo XIV sent a message to participants, offering his “prayerful good wishes” for their deliberations about the use of artificial intelligence in healthcare.
The Pope noted the pervasive influence of AI and other technological advances on humanity, which he said “heavily influences the way we think” and alters how we perceive ourselves and others.
“We currently interact with machines as if they were interlocutors, and thus become almost an extension of them,” he said. “In this sense, we not only run the risk of losing sight of the faces of the people around us, but of forgetting how to recognize and cherish all that is truly human.”
Pope Leo highlighted the benefits technological developments have brought to the fields of medicine and health.
However, he added, true progress requires that individuals and public entities uphold human dignity and the common good.
Though AI and other technologies can be used to devastating effect on humanity when used maliciously, those same technologies have the potential to be “transformative and beneficial” if placed at the true service of the human person, said the Pope.
Pope Leo XIV invited healthcare professionals to employ AI responsibly in their field, so that they may fulfill their vocation to be guardians and servants of human life.”
“The fragility of the human condition,” he said, “is often manifest within the field of medicine, but we must never forget the ‘ontological dignity that belongs to the person as such simply because he or she exists and is willed, created, and loved by God’.”
The Pope then focused on the “irreplaceable nature” of human relationships in providing care for individuals.
Medical professionals, he said, must have both the expertise to offer care and the ability to communicate effectively while expressing closeness to their patients.
Healthcare cannot be reduced to solving a problem, he said, adding that technological devices must never take away from the patient-carer relationship.
“If AI is to serve human dignity and the effective provision of healthcare,” said the Pope, “we must ensure that it truly enhances both interpersonal relationships and the care provided.”
In conclusion, Pope Leo XIV recalled the “vast economic interests often at stake in the fields of medicine and technology, and the subsequent fight for control.”
Given the interests involved, the Pope urged participants in the conference to promote a broad collaboration between healthcare professionals and politics in the field of artificial intelligence that extends beyond national borders. – Vatican News
