The Seduction of Simulation

Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on technology and the human person, Magnifica Humanitas, offers a measured assessment of the ongoing digital revolution, giving special attention to artificial intelligence, its current cutting edge. The encyclical’s ambitions are modest, as they should be. We are only beginning to grasp the promise and peril of machines that can perform in ways so human-like that we’re driven to wonder about the future of our ­humanity.

Considerations of justice are the main emphasis of Magnifica Humanitas. Leo’s opening meditation on the Tower of Babel and the walls of Jerusalem echoes today’s conventional language of social justice. Will technologies remain in the hands of a powerful few, leading to “exclusions, manipulations and inequalities” (Babel)? Or will we use them to raise up a society of solidarity, fraternity, and inclusion (Jerusalem)?

These are important questions. But they do not reach far enough. In its earliest formulations, the modern Catholic tradition of social doctrine had larger concerns. Leo XIII was the first pope to assess challenges posed by modern industrial economies. He certainly aimed for equitable distribution of its economic ­benefits and warned about the dangers of oppression. But he saw a deeper threat as well. The stable structures of traditional society—its guilds, confraternities, and traditions of solidarity and mutual care—were being dissolved. The family itself was newly vulnerable in the fluid world of economic relations. As Karl Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, “All that is solid melts into air.”

Magnifica Humanitas hints at something similar. It’s not just that AI imperils settled expectations about employment, concentrates power in the hands of private companies, and provides tools for unprecedented social control. It invades and destabilizes our sense of what it means to be a creature, to live an embodied life.

Leo XIV cites his immediate predecessor’s concerns about the “technocratic paradigm.” By this phrase, Pope Francis meant the outlook that treats all aspects of reality as raw material for manipulation and refashioning, including persons, and even human nature. Under this paradigm, “human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized.”

We are well along in this project. The gay rights movement presumes our bodies to be available for pleasures of our own choosing without regard to moral limits, purporting to optimize individual happiness. Transgender ideology views our bodies as ready for radical transformation without regard to physical limits, again purporting to make people happy. And we are optimizing the species as well. Contemporary care for pregnant women involves many tests designed to expose genetic defects in the unborn child, and women are often counseled to abort, should test results indicate problems. This eugenic project is made even more explicit in embryo selection for in vitro fertilization. Meanwhile, at the end of life, doctor-assisted suicide dispenses with those whose prospects are dim. We are indeed seeking to optimize human beings in many domains.

St. Augustine shaped our spiritual imaginations by identifying pride as the first among the deadly sins. Giving pride of place to pride, we are likely to interpret the drive toward what Magnifica Humanitas calls “enhanced human being” as a Promethean effort to seize control of our destiny, not just as individuals, but as a species. That may well be the case in some circumstances. But there is another side to the technocratic paradigm and its drive toward optimization. Most people are not seeking to enlarge themselves; they wish to protect themselves. The impulse is not to control our created nature and overleap its limits, but to escape, to insulate, and to palliate. The ambition is not to become bigger; we seek to become smaller, less perilously engaged, less vulnerable to disappointments, more independent of our bodies. It is a spirit of retreat, not of advancement.

Therein lies the greatest danger of AI. Leo XIV makes the necessary observation that machine “intelligence,” however powerful in certain domains, is not the same as human intelligence. “So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean.” All true. Yet note well: Experiences often come unbidden, and they can be painful. Our bodies are vulnerable and mortal. Relationships can result in grave inner wounds. Love often brings anguish. Work can weary the soul and responsibility can become a burden. Truth be told, the fact that AI lacks these human qualities can seem appealing.

Disembodied and soulless, AI is all the more seductive because it simulates many essential dimensions of our humanity. It presently offers “companions” who can be trusted to remain always sympathetic, unlike human beings, who are often distracted, indifferent, even duplicitous. As it develops, AI will offer us the possibility of more advanced simulated experiences and relationships and even embodiments that seem “real enough,” yet unburdened of the gravity of reality. We can have virtual friends that won’t betray us and for which we need never make sacrifices. Or digital lovers that provide thin satisfaction, while remaining unreal enough to leave our hearts alone. As the technology advances, we can have adventures without risk, travel without dislocation, and aggression without consequences.

Again, we’re already advancing down this path. Social media invite us into an ethereal, disembodied world of social connection and bitter ideological conflict. A platform like X satisfies aggressive desires while sparing combatants the knowledge of the consequences of their blows—consequences that, if seen, might unsettle their consciences. By many accounts, for the rising generation, digital pornography now substitutes for sexual relations in the flesh. For some, becoming an online “influencer” is the supreme vocational ambition.

Magnifica Humanitas seems to take for granted a human desire not to be dehumanized. It’s certainly true that most do not wish to be degraded, enslaved, or abused. But as Leo XIV continues to reflect on today’s digital revolution, he should not discount the allure of a moderate but pervasive dehumanization, especially as it is palliated by countless substitutes for the kinds of things necessary for us to live as human beings. Idolatry has these characteristics. It simulates worship in a way that is both fake and yet real enough to satisfy, however vaguely, our longing to know and honor something greater than ourselves. By my reckoning, it is the seduction of simulation—not real enough to impose demands on our humanity, yet real-seeming enough for us to imagine that we’re still living as ­human ­beings—that constitutes the most profound threat.