The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) presents humanity with unprecedented opportunities and profound ethical dilemmas. Navigating this complex landscape requires robust moral frameworks, and the rich tradition of Catholic social teaching (CST) offers a compelling and comprehensive lens through which to evaluate AI ethics. At its core, CST centers on the inviolable dignity of the human person, created in the image and likeness of God. This foundational principle demands that AI development and deployment always serve human flourishing, never diminishing or exploiting human beings.
The concept of human dignity is paramount in assessing AI’s impact on work, privacy, and autonomy. As AI automates tasks, concerns arise regarding job displacement, the deskilling of labor, and the potential for a large segment of the population to lose meaningful work. A Catholic perspective insists that work is not merely an economic activity but a participation in God’s creation, essential for personal development and societal contribution. Therefore, AI systems must be designed to enhance human labor, create new forms of meaningful employment, and facilitate retraining, rather than simply replacing human workers without just transition plans. Furthermore, AI-powered surveillance technologies and predictive algorithms pose significant threats to privacy and individual autonomy. These tools can categorize, influence, and even control human behavior in ways that undermine personal freedom and dignity. The Church teaches that privacy is a fundamental right, protecting the inner sanctuary of the person, and AI must respect this boundary, ensuring transparency and user control over data. The development of autonomous weapons systems, capable of making life-or-death decisions without human intervention, represents a particularly grave challenge to human dignity, crossing a moral threshold by delegating ultimate responsibility for killing to machines, thus diminishing the sanctity of human life and the accountability of moral agents.
Beyond individual dignity, Catholic social teaching emphasizes the common good – the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily. AI’s potential to exacerbate existing inequalities or create new forms of injustice directly contradicts this principle. Algorithmic bias, often stemming from biased training data or design choices, can perpetuate and amplify discrimination based on race, gender,