Comparative AI Ethics Between Silicon Valley and the Vatican: Divergent Foundations, Convergent Initiatives, and “How-to” Ideas for Discussing and Developing Technology Ethics

The field of AI ethics has gained much attention in recent years, not only as technology has failed in crucial ways, such as spreading misinformation, biasing data evaluations, and even killing people in autonomous vehicle accidents, but also as it has succeeded almost too well, gathering precious data, making huge piles of money, and stealing our attention from our loved ones in order to look at screens. The technology industry has proliferated principles and begun to practice them, while the Roman Catholic Church has wondered what to make of this contemporary technological situation. Several organizations within the Catholic Church have been investigating the ethics of AI from a much deeper philosophical and theological level than that of mere principles and their operationalization (not to malign the clear importance of such practical work). When faced with technologies that can turn society upside-down, corporations don’t do philosophy, they do damage control and cost-benefit analysis, while individual people, and particularly religious individuals and religious and educational organizations, should think about these subjects philosophically and theologically. This paper will compare these different approaches, both in terms of what is being done and what should be done.