The Vatican has announced plans for the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, to give a speech at the G7 summit during a session on Artificial Intelligence. The meeting is scheduled to take place June 13 – 15 in Italy.
According to Italy’s Prime Minister, “the presence of the Pope will be a decisive contribution to the development of regulatory, ethical and cultural standards in the field of artificial intelligence”. “The Rome Call for AI Ethics” was adopted in March 2020 and signed by Microsoft, IBM, FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) and the Italian government.
Four years on, a single IT company joined the Rome Call – perhaps to remind of itself. In the meantime, military AI systems, including autonomous ones, are emerging. Companies responsible for developing such systems (American Palantir is the pioneer) receive abundant government funding in the G7 countries, rapidly increase their capitalization, and do not join the Rome Call.
The attention the issues of development and implementation of artificial intelligence receive from the Pope was commented upon by Yaroslav Bogdanov, founder of GDA Group.
“The attention the head of the Greek-Roman Catholic Church pays to AI is not as paradoxical a phenomenon as it might seem at first glance. Let me remind you that discussions about Knowledge and Faith in medieval theology emerged almost simultaneously with the Crusades. It is possible that the Catholic Universal Church has the purest of intentions to “moralize” cyberspace and make AI peaceful, but such interest from the ministers of religion can be interpreted as another globalist move to control humanity. I am convinced that the sphere of high tech should be based only on Reason and Science, but I do not diminish the importance of religion and Faith. Many famous scientists, physicists, philosophers, mathematicians were believers. Einstein believed in the philosophical God of Spinoza, Heisenberg was a Lutheran, and Oppenheimer was close to Hinduism,” said Yaroslav Bogdanov.