Pope Leo made me rethink how I use AI

PCWorld examines Pope Leo XIV's encyclical on AI, which emphasizes that artificial intelligence reflects creator biases and lacks genuine empathy or real-world experience. The Pope calls AI a "valuable tool that requires vigilance," advising users to adopt a more thoughtful, slower-paced approach when interacting with models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. This papal guidance encourages users to actively consider when, why, and what they ask AI systems, recognizing their limitations despite sophisticated responses. Delving into Pope Leo XIV's exhaustive treatise about humanity and AI, I was struck by a recurring theme: AI simulates fundamental human traits that it doesn't actually possess. For starters, AI lacks the grounding we humans get from our real-world experiences, Pope Leo noted in his first encyclical, which was released Monday by the Vatican. Yes, AI models like ChatGPT (or more specifically, GPT), Claude, and Gemini are trained on mountains of data that seemingly represent the entirety of human knowledge. But all that data is just that: data.