The U.S. bishops’ conference on Wednesday announced the establishment of a task force on artificial intelligence.
The USCCB said Sept. 16 that the task force will “focus on promoting policies and practices that protect human dignity, religious liberty, democratic institutions, workers, families, and vulnerable populations.”
It is not immediately clear what policies the bishops will advocate for, or even in what forum. But it seems likely that the intended scope of the bishops’ project will be the deciding factor in how effective the task force might actually be.
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The task force was announced Wednesday as an initiative of the USCCB’s administrative committee — the governing body consisting of the conference officers, committee chairs, and regional representatives — which is meeting this week in Washington to plan the conference’s November plenary assembly.
The membership of the task force has not been announced, but the group will be chaired by San Jose’s Bishop Oscar Cantu, who is in principle the prelate of Silicon Valley, and who has been active since the promulgation of Magnifica humanitas in meetings and conversations with tech leaders about AI and its potential.
As a task force of the USCCB, the group will operate for two years, and then bishops will decide whether to bring its work to a close, or to establish the task force as a committee of the conference.
The announcement itself was preceded by a “private meeting” between the administrative committee and tech officials, which was mentioned on twitter.com by USCCB officials and by Charlie Camosy, the CUA moral theologian who has emerged in recent months as a bridge in conversation between tech leaders and the Church’s theological community — and who characterized the confab as an “extremely candid conversation.”
The gathering was followed, according to the USCCB’s announcement, by a meeting of more than a dozen bishops “to Capitol Hill, to meet with members of Congress urging for the enactment of meaningful safety guardrails on Artificial Intelligence and to support legislation to protect children online.”
The announcement suggests that when the bishops’ conference says the bishops will advocate on policy, they have in mind federal lobbying — that they will join in the emergent calls of tech leaders and others for Congressional legislation that would see a slowdown of AI development and the mandated creation of independent third party safety reviewers, possibly akin to the National Transportation Safety Board’s work to review aviation, railroad, and other transit disasters.
The Pillar requested an interview with Cantu on Wednesday, or with staffers assigned to the task force. While the USCCB told The Pillar that its membership did not intend to give interviews on the subject, Cantu was interviewed by OSV News, and focused his remarks on federal lobbying on the subject — both from the bishops themselves, and from U.S. Catholics, from whom Cantu called for an “all hands on deck” approach on the subject.
But in a column on the subject this week, Camosy acknowledged that AI regulation in the near and medium-term future is “almost unimaginable” in Washington.
This might mean that USCCB lobbying on the subject will be a matter of tilting at windmills, so to speak. That isn’t necessarily problematic. Quixotic quests can be meaningful expressions of prophetic witness — and can sometimes bear fruit in the long run. The Church’s aim of seeing Roe v. Wade overturned, for example, seemed like a fantasy, until about five minutes before it wasn’t.
But it does mean that from the perspective of immediate accomplishment on civic policy, the bishops should have limited expectations about what the task force can accomplish.
And bishops — diocesan bishops, especially — have another arena in which they might have immediate and clear effect on the impact of AI in American life and culture: the ecclesial institutions they govern.
While big picture questions loom about AI and the American future, most people experience its effects in their ordinary and day-to-day lives. And it is in the arena of everyday life that some of the most pressing questions about AI loom for the Church.
Can AI design the renovation of a parish sanctuary? Can it create the designs for stained glass windows? Can AI write a priest or deacon’s homily? Can it write the opening hymn of a Sunday liturgy, or the prayers of the faithful?
Can an AI chatbot evaluate students in Catholic schools? Can it evaluate men for admission to seminary, or seminarians for admissions to orders? Can an LLM trained on psychological journals and statistical data evaluate the suitability of a cleric for orders?
Can an AI chatbot write the libellus for a tribunal process? Can it assist judges in evaluating proofs and arguments in a marriage case — can it be asked by judges to weigh in on what their finding should be? Can AI write advocates’ briefs for priests accused of serious misconduct? Can it draft diocesan particular law? Can it draft universal law?
Why or why not?
How much can a bishop’s pastoral letter be generated, edited, or polished by Claude? Is it ok to ask Grok to make images of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Of Jesus Christ? What about flyers for the parish bazaar? Where’s the line?
Can an AI chatbot triage arrivals at a Catholic Charities shelter? Can it train employees to work with the mentally ill? Can seminarians practice hearing confessions with AI avatars?
To date, diocesan policies on AI usage is relatively limited, with only a few dioceses promulgating much on the subject, and most policies limiting their guidance to the expectation that the use of AI in the Church’s life must be disclosed.
But that doesn’t answer everything. If a deacon or priest explains from the ambo that AI “helped” with his homily, can he deliver one written mostly by a robot? If Claude’s name is in the corner, can AI-created stations of the cross adorn the Church?
The Church is facing real questions about AI everyday. The answers to those questions have implications for evangelization, education, employment, and the power of the Church’s prophetic witness. And the bishops’ task force could go a long way to answering them — for the universal Church, in fact — especially if they harness the input of theological and canonical experts to develop from Magnifica humanitas a set of principles by which the Church herself makes decision about the use of AI in her own life.
The task force has broad ambitions. Cantu told a reporter this week that if bishops could “speak with clarity,” they might well “save human dignity and even humanity.”
As they work toward those broad ambitions, there are a host of pressing issues — more granular and specific than “sav[ing] … humanity” — which might benefit from their close attention.
I hope they get into concrete specifics instead of just vague statements about making your own judgements.