This week, the Vatican released Antiqua et Nova, Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence. The expansive document makes a surprisingly detailed assessment of human nature, the purpose of technology, and emerging “artificial intelligence” technology.
Its far-ranging concerns include embodiment (¶16-17), ecology (¶24-25), economy (¶64-70), and even warfare (¶98-103).
We’ve touched on AI before at Incensepunk Magazine, once focusing on human dignity, and once on art and empathy.
I work adjacent to AI/GenAI in my daily bill-paying labor (as opposed to running a literary mag!)—though I’m not developing with it myself, some of my colleagues are and part of my job entails helping to explain the tech to clients and other areas of the company. So it’s pretty easy for me to take emerging tech for granted; I often get disillusioned about a technology before it even enters the public’s awareness.
But one section of Antiqua et Nova stood out to me, not in its novelty, but in its familiarity. The Vatican authors write in a section titled “AI and Healthcare”:
As healthcare becomes increasingly oriented toward prevention and lifestyle-based approaches, AI-driven solutions may inadvertently favor more affluent populations who already enjoy better access to medical resources and quality nutrition. This trend risks reinforcing a “medicine for the rich” model, where those with financial means benefit from advanced preventative tools and personalized health information while others struggle to access even basic services. (¶76)
My work is in the financial sector, so the health care angle is a bit more foreign to me, but this quote immediately sent my mind into rain-soaked streets glaring neon reflections. Because that quote—increasingly a reality in our world, AI or not—is ripped straight out of cyberpunk fiction.
Lady 3Jane and the other hyper-wealthy living cloned afterlives in the orbital resort of Freeside in Neuromancer.
The functionally immortal Meths, abusing religious freedom to cover up their debauched lifestyles in Altered Carbon.
The jarringly casual death of David Martinez’s mother Gloria when she can’t afford medical care for a drive-by shooting in Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.
From its very inception to some of the very latest examples, the cyberpunk genre has given this exact same warning. Without something changing, unchecked medical technology is going to elevate the wealthy and leave the rest of humanity in the gutter.
And now the leadership of the Catholic church is echoing that sentiment.
It’s not without cause: for all the improvements to longevity and quality of life medicine has brought, it has also proven callous toward inequality.
A few years back, the idea cropped up of transplanting stem cells from the blood of the young into older patients to increase lifespan, in a shockingly on the nose modern recreation of the vampire myth. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out which young would be “donating” and which elderly patients would be receiving said stem cells.
The emergence of for-profit “designer baby” start-ups like Orchid Biosciences offers the ability to detect genetic disease and select the healthiest embryos for IVF implantation for its customers. But how soon will other traits be able to be selected as well—hair color, eye color, athleticism, potential IQ, symmetry—a generation of ubermensch for the wealthy while the hoi polloi make babies the old fashioned, risk-prone way?
It’s no coincidence that both stem cells and IVF are touchy subjects for the Catholic church, which views humans as a union of soul and body from the moment of conception, imbued with inalienable dignity by merit of our existence alone.
Maybe when the famously meandering Catholic church and the forward-focused science fiction writers are warning about the same thing, it’s time to listen up.