The Vatican is worried about artificial intelligence

At a recent conference on the challenges of artificial intelligence, Christof Koch made clear in his remarks that the stakes were high: "By mid-century, humanity will be surrounded by ubiquitous, flexible, highly intelligent autonomous agents, and this will profoundly affect our future--including whether we have any." Dr. Koch--who is the chief scientist of the Mindscope Program at the Allen Institute for brain science in Seattle--was speaking to a group of roughly a hundred academics, diplomats and journalists. The conference was hosted by the Vatican at the Cancelleria, a 15th-century Renaissance palace in Rome, and centered around the theme of "the challenge of artificial intelligence for human society and the idea of the human person." This was the second event at the Vatican to focus on artificial intelligence, commonly abbreviated as A.I. Just before Italy entered into a nationwide lockdown last year, the Pontifical Academy for Life held a workshop on A.I. in February 2020. This workshop ultimately produced a "Call for AI Ethics," which was signed by Microsoft, IBM, the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the Italian government, in addition to the Academy.