The (holy) ghost in the machine: Catholic thinkers tackle the ethics of artificial intelligence

In a conversation in Rome facilitated by the Vatican last year, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, reportedly weighed whether or not the phrase "artificial intelligence" is an oxymoron and criticized AI scientists' use of the term "electronic person." That came on the heels of a July 2017 roundtable on the topic at the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, California, where speakers from business and technology mixed with academics and theologians.