‘MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS’

Part 4: Finding fault in the exploitation of our current systems

Words reading "Artificial intelligence AI" and miniatures of a robot and a toy hand are seen in this Dec. 14, 2023, illustration. (OSV News illustration/Dado Ruvic, Reuters) (Courtesy photo of Dado Ruvic)

One of the scariest things about the times we live in involves how we get information. There’s a hint of our present in the 1941 film “Citizen Kane.” The film recounts the life of a newspaper tycoon that was a thinly veiled lampoon of William Randolph Hearst. Hearst was one of the most powerful men of his time and his network of newspapers strongly influenced how Americans perceived what was going on in the world. He had no qualms making his own political positions the positions of the paper’s editorial board and he regularly featured stories in his paper that appealed to emotions rather than reason. The legend goes that before the Spanish-American War, when told by a reporter on the ground that there was no war to speak of, Hearst allegedly said: “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.” Whether or not it’s a legend, the story speaks of something we have had to ask ourselves a lot, certainly in the last few decades: Can we trust that the information we are getting is factual or might it be serving another agenda?

Something else happened over the years as well. Instead of asking ourselves if a given news source is true, we might be tempted to simply give an ear to those news sources that mostly agree with our own established points of view. The age of AI has created an even more complicated phenomenon that I’ve bumped into a lot when talking to people. Since AI can answer practically any question you give it and provide sources to back it up, what happens when you ask it to provide evidence that is tailored to your point of view? What if you ask AI to provide you with evidence, not to form your opinion, but to confirm your suspicions?

Applying the principles of Catholic Social Teaching to new circumstances

As a director of parish faith formation, I am regularly challenged to present the ancient truths of the faith to contemporary circumstances. How can I apply the truths of the Bible to today’s world? This is exactly what Pope Leo is doing for us today. The collection of Church teaching that has to do with society is known as Catholic Social Teaching. It began to take its current form in 1891 when Pope Leo XIII published his encyclical “Rerum Novarum.” The principles of Catholic Social Teaching mean trying to live out God’s truth in today’s society and in real circumstances.

Before looking at some of his various applications to society, it’s worth considering the big picture of Chapter 4 of “Magnifica Humanitas.” Pope Leo finds great faults in our current systems, be they financial, economic, social and technological. A common result of how we have settled on doing these things is exploitation. He sees children, the poor and workers as all being exploited by faulty systems that promise so much but, ultimately, often benefit the few. I feel quite certain that most of us have all had enough experiences that have left us feeling that things weren’t fair. Perhaps we’ve just resigned ourselves to things being unfair. But Pope Leo wants us to look with one eye on the Gospel and one critical eye at those areas in the world where things are unfair, even unjust.

Fairness to Pope Leo is where people, particularly the disadvantaged, are empowered and equipped to do well in this world, while those who have been blessed with resources are urged to share with those who have less. These resources can be economic, material or technological. A more cynical assessment may decry this as communism. It is not. This vision is as old as Acts 2:44-45. Pope Leo says that “a just society 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 favor the most vulnerable” (158). 

Foundational to everything is the family, which is the basic unit of society. In a family, parents need to work to support the family. Their jobs need to be protected and they need the means to not only survive but to thrive. Young people need pathways to meaningful employment and the hope to be able to provide for themselves, to have a home and their own family. Their work should allow them adequate rest and leisure. They must not be exploited by a profit-centeredness on the part of employers. New technologies shouldn’t marginalize workers, creating an atmosphere where laborers fear for their livelihood. They should create opportunities, not take them away. As children grow, they should have access to a good education and to be free from the sorts of exploitation manifesting in new technologies, even those found in school. 

New technologies not only replace jobs, they can also replace authentic human experiences. Pope Leo is thinking of addiction to things like our phones and our tablets when he refers to the “digital attention economy,” noting that “platforms and services are designed to capture users’ time and attention, exploiting their vulnerabilities and weakening their inner freedom.” He says that when “business models thrive on human weakness, the person is treated as a means rather than an end” (170). He urges those who develop these technologies to take responsibility for what they’re doing to all of us.

He also talks about the subtle way that trace forms of data about us are shared and used over various platforms. These little bits of information are often used to predict, or even modify, our behavior, often through advertising but very possibly for worse purposes. He also exposes the underbelly of the digital economy that “relies on the silent work of millions of people engaged in essentially yet largely unseen activities, such as data labeling, model training and content moderation, often involving disturbing material” (173). He finds people exploited by the system as well as those using the system to exploit others, requiring us to be vigilant.

Tom Acemoglu is Pastoral Associate for Evangelization and Catechesis at St. Ambrose Church in Latham. He has 25 years of experience in parish ministry and has worked in the church for 18 years.