Jordan Joseph Wales

Influenced by both 17th-century philosophical developments and 21st-century computer science, intelligence today is often defined as “the ability to solve problems.” Drawing on early and medieval Christian thinkers, a theological perspective affords a richer view. For these writers, intellegentia is more than receptive or oriented towards problem-solving. It participates both in the world and in God, by coming to know the world as good not first in how it may serve us but in its kaleidoscopic refraction of the one divine Wisdom, the intellect of God – a refraction that undergirds the latent capacities and potential uses of natural things. Intelligent participation in the world, therefore, is contemplative; the intellegentia passes through the world towards God, its source. In this passage, the diverse echoes of God’s own mind are regathered within the human mind so that the latter becomes ever more an echo of the divine. Theologically understood, this spiritual intelligence entails not only a metaphysics or epistemology of thought, but also a relationship, as the human mind is regathered towards God, known at last not simply as a “highest Good” or first cause and end, but a friend, lover, and, finally, spouse, from whom all things derive their intelligibility as gifts from the triune God who exists by self-gift.

Consulting early and medieval Christian thinkers, I theologically analyze the question of how we are to construe and live well with the sociable robot under the ancient theological concept of “glory”—the manifestation of God’s nature and life outside of himself. First, the oft-noted Western wariness toward robots may in part be rooted in protecting a certain idea of the “person” as a relational subject capable of self-gift. Historically, this understanding of the person derived from Christian belief in God the Trinity, an eternally relational and self-giving God who has created all other things. According to this trinitarian anthropology, the “glory” of God is the manifestation of his life outside of himself, especially in human relationships of self-possessed empathic self-giving. Second, the material world can be drawn into this glorification of God by the invention of technologies, including robots. For Christianity, the personal transcends the material, and matter cannot simply be recombined to make a person. Nonetheless, the material world is a lesser glory that echoes fragmentarily the primal self-gift by which God exists. Human persons can marshal these material powers to serve the personal by the invention of technology, which extends the possibilities of human self-giving and, therefore, of God’s “glory.” Third, this Christian account of creation and technology shapes medieval Christian writings on humanoid robots. These “automata” uniquely draw together nature’s deep powers, but they lack true personal interiority and so cannot give themselves. Instead, they are instruments by which humans’ own relational personhood can be developed or degraded. At best, a robotic image of personhood can serve as an “icon,” directing us back to the relationality by which humans echo God. At worst, robots serve as “idols” when they become substitutes for human companions, drawing their users into a utilitarian frame that excludes self-gift by simply mirroring back to the user his or her own aims. I illustrate these outcomes by two medieval legends. In one, robots function iconically as social facilitators; in the other, as ambiguous romantic partners. And fourth, looking to an actual renaissance-era “praying” robot, I will propose that the non-subjective robot might yet “glorify God” within the religious community by representing the prayers of particular humans—thus iconically standing for rather than idolatrously standing in for the relational subject.

What does it mean to consider the world of AI through a Christian lens? Rapid developments in AI continue to reshape society, raising new ethical questions and challenging our understanding of the human person. Encountering Artificial Intelligence draws on Pope Francis’ discussion of a culture of encounter and broader themes in Catholic social thought in order to examine how current AI applications affect human relationships in various social spheres and offers concrete recommendations for better implementation. The document also explores questions regarding personhood, consciousness, and the kinds of relationships humans might have with even the most advanced AI. Through these discussions, the document investigates the theoretical and practical challenges to interpersonal encounter raised by the age of AI.

The lead authors for this volume were Matthew J. Gaudet, Noreen Herzfeld, Paul Scherz, and Jordan Wales, and

the contributing authors were Nathan Colaner, Jeremiah Coogan, Mariele Courtois, Brian Cutter, David E. DeCosse, Justin Charles Gable, OP, Brian Patrick Green, James Kintz, Cory Andrew Labrecque, Catherine Moon,

Anselm Ramelow, OP, John P. Slattery, Margarita Vega, Luis G. Vera, Andrea Vicini, SJ, and Warren von Eschenbach.

According to a tradition that we hold variously today, the relational person lives most personally in affective and cognitive empathy, whereby we enter subjective communion with another person. Near future social AIs, including social robots, will give us this experience without possessing any subjectivity of their own. They will also be consumer products, designed to be subservient instruments of their users' satisfaction. This would seem inevitable. Yet we cannot live as personal when caught between instrumentalizing apparent persons (slaveholding) or numbly dismissing the apparent personalities of our instruments (mild sociopathy). This paper analyzes and proposes a step toward ameliorating this dilemma by way of the thought of a 5 th century North African philosopher and theologian, Augustine of Hippo, who is among those essential in giving us our understanding of relational persons. Augustine's semiotics, deeply intertwined with our affective life, suggest that, if we are to own persuasive social robots humanely, we must join our instinctive experience of empathy for them to an empathic acknowledgment of the real unknown relational persons whose emails, text messages, books, and bodily movements will have provided the training data for the behavior of near-future social AIs. So doing, we may see simulation as simulation (albeit persuasive), while expanding our empathy to include those whose refracted behavioral moments are the seedbed of this simulation. If we naïvely stop at the social robot as the ultimate object of our cognitive and affective empathy, we will suborn the sign to ourselves, undermining rather than sustaining a culture that prizes empathy and abhors the instrumentalization of persons.

In a friendly interdisciplinary debate, we interrogate from several vantage points the question of “personhood” in light of contemporary and near-future forms of social AI. David J. Gunkel approaches the matter from a philosophical and legal standpoint, while Jordan Wales offers reflections theological and psychological. Attending to metaphysical, moral, social, and legal understandings of personhood, we ask about the position of apparently personal artificial intelligences in our society and individual lives. Re-examining the “person” and questioning prominent construals of that category, we hope to open new views upon urgent and much-discussed questions that, quite soon, may confront us in our daily lives.

In recent decades, compelling voices have charged that the theological category of "sacrifice" has too long valorized suffering and has fostered a culture of violence, particularly through the notion that Christ's excruciating death on the Cross was a payment demanded by God for human sins. Such an attribution of violence to the godhead itself silences victims while eroding our resistance to victimizers, and a sacrificial understanding of the ideal human relationship to God encourages a pursuit of self-extinction that ends in mere dissipation. Of great influence in this wide-ranging discussion is the work of Rene Girard. Beneath the "sacred" violence of sacrifice, Girard discerns a concealed scapegoat-murder driven by a distortion of human desire that itself must lead to human self-annihilation. This paper has gone beyond Girard into the theological territory that he so humbly avoids, yet I hope that its diagnosis of the Satanic and its antithesis, the theomimetic, will be found a faithful development of what Girard has given.

Gregory the Great depicts himself as a contemplative who, as bishop of Rome, was compelled to become an administrator and pastor. His theological response to this existential tension illuminates the vexed questions of his relationships to predecessors and of his legacy. Gregory develops Augustine's thought in such a way as to satisfy John Cassian's position that contemplative vision is grounded in the soul's likeness to the unity of Father and Son. For Augustine, "mercy" lovingly lifts the neighbor toward life in God. Imitating God's own love for humankind, this mercy likens the Christian to God's essential goodness and, by this likeness, prepares him or her for the vision of God, which Augustine expects not now but only in the next life. For Augustine, the exercise of mercy can-when useful-involve a shared affection or understanding. Gregory makes this shared affection essential to the neighborly love that he calls "compassion." In this affective fellowship, Gregory finds a human translation of the passionless unity of Father and Son-so that, for Gregory, compassion becomes the immediate basis for and consequence of seeing God-even in this life. Compassion does not degrade; rather, it retrenches the perfection of contemplation. Reconciling compassionate activity and contemplative vision, this creative renegotiation of Augustine and Cassian both answered Gregory's own aspirations and gave to the tumultuous post-Imperial West a needed account of worldly affairs as spiritual affairs.