Make money doing the work you believe in
“Pope Leo’s encyclical insists that humanity itself can’t be transcended. Human beings are themselves transcendent,” writes Father Robert Sirico in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. He’s onto something big. It’s the capacity for transcendence that makes man infinitely more valuable than even the “wisest” AI system.
There’s another factor at work here, though. We expect the Catholic Church to call us to transcendence. Much of the criticism of Magnifica Humanitas, I submit, reflects disappointment that call did not come throughly clearly enough to overcome the power of secular presumptions.
More on this theme later. For now, another apt observation from Father Sirico, commenting on that presumption:
The irony here is difficult to miss. A civilization increasingly uncertain about the meaning of human life and identity now proposes to build machines in its own image.