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Fidelity & Excellence91 is unique among American colleges and universities, offering a faithfully Catholic education comprised entirely of the Great Books and classroom discussions.
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Truth MattersTruth, and nothing less, sets men free; and because truth is both natural and supernatural, the College’s curriculum aims at both natural and divine wisdom.
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Dr. Hanby Asks “Will the Future be Human?” in Friday Lecture
Dr. Michael Hanby arrived at the Fritz B. Burns Auditorium last Friday evening, marking the year’s fourth installment in the St. Vincent de Paul Lecture & Concert Series, speaking on the subject: “Will the Future be Human? Thoughts on the Human Meaning of AI.”
Dr. Hanby, who serves as the associate professor of religion and philosophy of science at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage & Family, began by extolling the beauty of 91. “How fortunate all of you are to live and study in such a beautiful place,” he remarked.
As a proper beginning to his argument, he commented on how different ideological movements across the centuries have sparked a realization in the Church that modernity is a threat to the human person. “These ideologies have provoked in the Church an urgent sense that modernity, in its essential aspect, constitutes a profound threat to the intelligibility of the human being, the integrity of human agency, and therefore, the future of human society as political, and as human.”
He exhorted the dangers that artificial intelligence imposes on our society today, on our minds, memories, and even souls. Drawing from Hobbes’ Leviathan, “It soon becomes obvious that the real purpose of the artificial god is to fence the immortal God out,” he declared.
In his discussion of AI, Dr. Hanby claimed that society might be experiencing the point of no return for technology. Making an analogy between Boromir’s desire to use the One Ring for good in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and many peoples’ desire to use AI for good in modern times, he said that artificial intelligence may have to be viewed as something to be suffered, and not as a tool. “At the very least, we ought to consider the possibility that the seemingly inevitable expansion of AI is simply incompatible with a rebuilt Jerusalem.”
He ended his lecture by repeating that to defend God is to defend man, and that it is important to fight back against AI’s theft of the human mind and soul. “It remains true that whoever defends God defends man,” he concluded. “In the age of AI, it is no less true that the defense of God depends upon the great labor of thought to keep alive the memory of what it means to be a human being.”
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