Editor’s Note
The following declaration is a summary of New Polity's thinking and position in regards to "the AI moment" facing the world. It is not an exhaustive statement. We limit ourselves to expressing the political nature of AI development, and the principles by which it ought to be guided.
Every new technology affects the whole of society, granting humanity new power over itself and power over others.[1]
AI has the potential to massively centralize power in the hands of a few, reduce the scope of human freedom, and produce the illusion that humanity could and even should be surpassed and replaced.[2]
Unprecedented resources, economic, environmental, and spiritual, are being poured into the construction of AI systems by an elite operating without the agreement or participation of those who stand to be most affected by these systems.[3]
The logic of an AI arms race, motivated by the threat of death and of the presumption of war between nations, has captured the narrative of AI development.[4]
The decision to build AI systems as if in a state of war grants the unwarranted appearance of impunity to those building them and inevitability to the systems they build. What is in fact a contingent decision appears as a wartime necessity demanding sacrifice and resignation from all people.[5] Within the frame of an arms race, any calls for slowdown and political decision and any moral objection to an AI-fueled world become new forms of treason, suspected of foreign influence.[6]
Real political objections are increasingly reduced to one: the danger of “existential risk”, or “doom”, an objection which only seems to advocate for a prudential “slow down”, but actually assumes the same inevitability of the “arms race” and advocates for the State to manage a superintelligence which will otherwise “kill us all.”[7]
We are beginning to see the construction of a regime of compliance fueled by a false inevitability of either technical utopia or dystopia.[8]
If we are to be hopeful about our future with powerful AI, we must reject the primacy of place given to breathless prophecies of utopias and panic-inducing prophecies of catastrophe.[9] Instead, we must insist that the dignity of the human person, as he actually is, and not as he might be in the future, is the one and only necessary criterion for any and all technological development. All technological power should be deployed for the sake of the common good, or not at all.[10]
Christ is the redeemer of man.
Those promising utopian salvation through powerful AI reject the salvation already accomplished by Christ. We believe in the resurrection of the body given by God, not a utopia manufactured through technology.[11]
The quest for a technical utopia is “misaligned” to the good of humanity, and, as it only ever exists in the state of an unfulfilled promise, represents a clear power-grab for those developing powerful AI systems, who are heralded as “saviors.”[12]
AI systems are not and will never be conscious.
Consciousness is not grown in an AI system. It cannot be identified with the increasing capabilities of AI models. Consciousness belongs to the human person according to his rational soul, as given by God the creator.[13]
Because AI systems are trained on human language and informed by human purposes, there is a grave risk of political authorities granting the same rights and duties to AI as to real, human persons.[14] To do so would degrade the dignity of the person by reducing intelligence to a mere mechanical function judged by its results.[15] We must never grant that AI can become conscious, nor be constrained to act “as if” it were so.
AI must be democratic at every level.
“Democracy” cannot be reduced to an abstract set of values, still less to a label which a government merely inherits as its own; rather, it either describes the actual work of governing by and for the people or it is merely the marketing rhetoric of an oligarchy. If AI development is to be truly democratic, it must be determined by free decisions, born in and through the participation of many, and made for the sake of the common good. Democracy must not only be a means, but an end, the attainment of which is marked by the real distribution of freedom, ownership, power, and responsibility to people.[16]
America must remain free and courageous.
The AI arms race is not a battle between democracy and authoritarianism, but produces authoritarianism on both sides. If America is truly to represent democracy to the world as the leader of AI development, we must be willing to “disarm” AI at every level.[17]
At the international scale: America must present its supremacy in AI development as an opportunity for negotiated mutual development. The willingness to negotiate our advantage rather than fearfully and blindly “push the frontier” shows true strength and commitment to democracy.[18]
At the national level: the executive branch must be transparent about its usage of AI systems for domestic surveillance and reject uses for propaganda. If powerful AI can be used to exert authoritarian control over the American people, it must be disarmed and legislated against.
At the state level: constituents must be given a say in the buildout of AI infrastructure. Americans do not love their country as an abstract, political unit, but as a reality present to them in their states, cities, and homes; in the natural beauty and history that forms them, and in the flourishing of the humane economies in which they work. The potential economic benefits of AI must be weighed alongside potential damages and degradations to the actual places Americans live.
Americans are inventors, visionaries, and leaders who venture into the unknown with confidence. We own the frontier in the development of powerful AI for precisely this reason. We cannot allow the technologies we invent to enslave us or destroy our way of life by giving overwhelming power to those who—out of fear of enemies or “inevitable” dystopias—would restrict our freedom and sap the courage that makes us great.
Notes
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 108. Cf. MH, 4–6; Francis, Laudato Si, 104; Francis, G7 Address; John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 15; Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 14, 71.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 108, 133. See also, Magnifica Humanitas, 31, 65–67, 76, 95, 107, 109.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 5, 101.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 110, 200.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 117.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 110.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 106–107, 205.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 106.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 14.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 102–11.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 230–233; see also, 49–50, 117; John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, 13–16, 18.
See Luke 22:25
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 99; See Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Antiqua et Nova (January 28,. 2025), 10–13, 30–35.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 99; See Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Antiqua et Nova (January 28,. 2025), 10–13, 30–35.
Cf. Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 51–58.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 39, 108, 132–134; John Paul II Centesimus Annus, 46.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 110, 214.
Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas, 218–222, 224. See also, Magnifica Humanitas, 186–187. On the notion of mutual development and technology more generally, see Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, 68–77.