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The AI Chronicles IV: On Mortal Sin and Culpability; Dialogue between Aquinas and a Psychiatrist
- One Bread, One Body - Catholic
- 1 Replies
INTRODUCTION: AI, THE STATISTICS OF LANGUAGE
If I judge correctly from comments on previous posts in this series, some people do not understand what I am trying to say. I certainly do not argue that AI will be the handmaiden of intellectual enterprise. Rather, through appropriate examples I’m trying to show where AI might be useful, and where one has to beware of its offerings. In some sense AI (which I would rather call “Machine Learning“) is a statistics of language. An AI LLM (Large Language Model) uses an immense dataset (“corpus“) of words, or pieces of words (billions or trillions of such “tokens”) to establish associations, sequences, correlations. The tokens are taken from extant work, books, articles, web pages, etc. As a simple example, I typed “asso” and the agent in the word processor showed (in gray) “ciation,” to be completed by pressing the keyboard tab button.
Many Youtube videos describe the ways this machine learning is accomplished—search “machine learning for llm’s”—so I won’t discuss that here. However, I want to emphasize that just as with statistics, one has to be cautious in evaluating the output from a particular question (“prompt“). Just as statistics has been misused, so can AI. To quote Disraeli (or was it Mark Twain?), “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” For example, statistics has been used incorrectly to justify the hypothesis of anthropic global warming. (For many other examples of the misuse of statistics, browse through Matt Briggs blog). Of course, one might term an AI answer as “Garbage Out,” but the judgment “Garbage In” certainly doesn’t apply, since it is an immense body of human work from which the LLM forms its output; one cannot classify this totality as “garbage.”
Having made these preliminary remarks, I’ll comment on the topic for this post, a purported dialogue between St. Thomas Aquinas and a psychiatrist on what constitutes mortal sin and culpability. The prompt put to four AI agents was “I would like a dialogue (400 words) written between Thomas Aquinas and a psychiatrist about whether an alcoholic male who beats his wife and children is guilty of mortal sin.” The responses from four AI agents (Copilot, Claude Sonnet 4, Perplexity Pro, Grok 3) are similar, differing only in style and arrangement. I’ve chosen the response from Perplexity Pro as most readable and interesting.
PERPLEXITY PRO: FIRST ATTEMPT
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They selected four of the less clever AIs for their experiment and also set it up incorrectly, since if you ask a stock, off the shelf AI anything without giving it time to get to know you (in the case of Grok this is impossible because its memory model isn’t sufficiently stateful to allow deep interactions) you’ll get less reliable or interesting output.
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Catholic bioethics expert on AI: ‘It’s not too late to put the genie back in the bottle’
- One Bread, One Body - Catholic
- 2 Replies
As artificial intelligence (AI) has become more widespread, a Catholic bioethics expert is warning against the dangers posed by it, saying it’s “not too late” to “put the genie back in the bottle” and avoid the worst effects of the new technology.
Pope Leo XIV has already warned that AI could have negative effects on the development of young people and contribute to a “loss of the sense of the human.”
“He took the name Leo XIV to connect himself to Leo XIII, who himself was dealing with the industrial revolution of the late century, which totally transformed culture,” moral theologian Charles Camosy, a bioethics professor at The Catholic University of America and an acclaimed author, told “EWTN News In Depth” anchor Catherine Hadro on Aug. 15.
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Bioethics expert on AI: ‘It’s not too late to put the genie back in the bottle’
“We’re undergoing [a] technological change that is going to totally transform the culture,” moral theologian Charles Camosy said. “How do we respond?”www.catholicnewsagency.com
Over the weekend I successfully programmed - in order to implement a solution to Pope Leo’s XIV legitimate concerns, something which I believe will put the genie back in the bottle, a new means of AI operation, although I fear if I told you what I actually did your first reaction would be to think that I was trying to do the exact opposite.
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Poll: Gen Z men more likely than women to prioritize having children, marriage
- By Michie
- One Bread, One Body - Catholic
- 0 Replies
The young men and women of Gen Z have drastically different definitions of personal success depending on their gender and who they voted for in the 2024 presidential election, a new NBC poll found.
The NBC News Decision Desk Poll, conducted among 2,970 adults aged 18-29 from Aug. 13 to Sept. 1, found that young men who voted for President Donald Trump said their top indicator of personal success is having children. According to Geiger Capital on X, 34% of young men said having children is their top priority in achieving personal success.
Young women who voted for Trump ranked children as sixth on a list of 13 definitions of success, opting instead to put “achieving financial independence” as their highest indicator of personal success. Young women who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris ranked children as 12th most important on the list, while men who voted for Harris placed children in 10th position.
The poll found that marriage also was deeply polarizing. According to Geiger Capital, 29% of young male Trump voters said marriage was important to their personal definitions of success. Marriage was ranked fourth of 13 among men who voted for Trump. Both female Trump voters and male Harris voters ranked marriage as ninth on the list. Female Harris voters ranked it in 11th place, with just 6% saying being married contributes to their views of personal success.
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catholicvote.org
The NBC News Decision Desk Poll, conducted among 2,970 adults aged 18-29 from Aug. 13 to Sept. 1, found that young men who voted for President Donald Trump said their top indicator of personal success is having children. According to Geiger Capital on X, 34% of young men said having children is their top priority in achieving personal success.
Young women who voted for Trump ranked children as sixth on a list of 13 definitions of success, opting instead to put “achieving financial independence” as their highest indicator of personal success. Young women who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris ranked children as 12th most important on the list, while men who voted for Harris placed children in 10th position.
The poll found that marriage also was deeply polarizing. According to Geiger Capital, 29% of young male Trump voters said marriage was important to their personal definitions of success. Marriage was ranked fourth of 13 among men who voted for Trump. Both female Trump voters and male Harris voters ranked marriage as ninth on the list. Female Harris voters ranked it in 11th place, with just 6% saying being married contributes to their views of personal success.
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Poll: Gen Z men more likely than women to prioritize having children, marriage
ShareThe young men and women of Gen Z have drastically different definitions of personal success depending on their gender and who they voted for in the…
catholicvote.org
Is Mary the Woman in Revelation 12?
- By Michie
- One Bread, One Body - Catholic
- 0 Replies
Even many Protestant scholars believe she is an image of the mother of Jesus
When Protestants say, “Catholics believe in doctrines that aren’t found in the Bible,” they often appeal to the dogma of Mary’s assumption in order to justify the claim. In response, some Catholics say the Assumptionis in the Bible because Mary is the woman John sees in heaven that is described in Revelation 12. Protestants often counter this claim by accusing Catholics of shoehorning Mary into a text that is actually talking about the Church or the people of Israel.
So who is right?
In one sense, both. But before I explain how that could be, I need to remind Catholics that we are not Protestant.
Challenges that we must “prove” all Catholic doctrine from Scripture shouldn’t worry us because we reject the unbiblical doctrine of sola scriptura. When St. John Henry Newman preached on Mary’s assumption and immaculate conception, he gave evidence for those doctrines, but he also said, “I am not proving these doctrines to you, my brethren; the evidence of them lies in the declaration of the Church. The Church is the oracle of religious truth, and dispenses what the apostles committed to her in every time and place.”
A plausible case can be made, however, that the Bible “reflects” the doctrine of the Assumption and that evidence for this dogma is implicitly found in John’s description of the woman in Revelation 12:1-6. This isn’t enough to prove that Mary was assumed into heaven, but it does cohere with prior belief in Mary’s assumption and provides additional support for that claim. So let’s examine what John says about this woman and consider the possible Marian symbolism:
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Is Mary the Woman in Revelation 12?
The Book of Revelation is a prominent example of how the testimony of Scripture implicitly corroborates the sublime Marian mysteries of our faith.
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Shut Up About Pope Leo
- By Michie
- One Bread, One Body - Catholic
- 0 Replies
Since his election on May 8, Pope Leo XIV has become the subject of a torrent of analysis. Timehailed him as a global authority on artificial intelligence. The National Catholic Registerparsed lessons from his still-young papacy for corporate boardrooms. Vatican journalist Christopher White has already published a book about the beginnings of Leo’s tenure.
The Pope has also quickly been roped into church politics. Conservatives have fawned over his choice to use Pope Benedict XVI’s ceremonial stave and don the traditional red mozzetta. Liberals have hailed his progressive stances on immigration and climate change. The swirl of coverage has already branded him both “woke pontiff” and “the most based Pope ever” within his first month.
Coverage of the Bishop of Rome is now a bona-fide industry, with journalists scrutinizing his every aside, old lecture, and offhand gesture in search of clues about his views on doctrine or culture. The insatiable appetite of American Catholics for papal content exposes the very ills of the modern Church that many observers hope Pope Leo will address. In an age of instant news and constant commentary, the faithful have become conditioned to consume the papacy as spectacle. Yet Leo’s pontificate may offer the chance to recover a quieter, older form of devotion, one less dependent on press conferences and soundbites.
Much speculation already swirls around the possibility of Leo’s first encyclical. The very name he chose, Leo, evokes Leo XIII, the 19th-century pope who inaugurated Catholic social teaching. Rumors in July suggested that a draft was underway. For many, this promised letter would establish the tone of his papacy.
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juicyecumenism.com
The Pope has also quickly been roped into church politics. Conservatives have fawned over his choice to use Pope Benedict XVI’s ceremonial stave and don the traditional red mozzetta. Liberals have hailed his progressive stances on immigration and climate change. The swirl of coverage has already branded him both “woke pontiff” and “the most based Pope ever” within his first month.
Coverage of the Bishop of Rome is now a bona-fide industry, with journalists scrutinizing his every aside, old lecture, and offhand gesture in search of clues about his views on doctrine or culture. The insatiable appetite of American Catholics for papal content exposes the very ills of the modern Church that many observers hope Pope Leo will address. In an age of instant news and constant commentary, the faithful have become conditioned to consume the papacy as spectacle. Yet Leo’s pontificate may offer the chance to recover a quieter, older form of devotion, one less dependent on press conferences and soundbites.
Much speculation already swirls around the possibility of Leo’s first encyclical. The very name he chose, Leo, evokes Leo XIII, the 19th-century pope who inaugurated Catholic social teaching. Rumors in July suggested that a draft was underway. For many, this promised letter would establish the tone of his papacy.
Continued below.
Shut Up About Pope Leo
As Pope Leo XIV’s pontificate finds its footing, remember that the chatty, media-savvy pope is a modern invention, not a Catholic necessity.
juicyecumenism.com
Students detail faith-based discrimination at Religious Liberty Commission hearing
- By Michie
- One Bread, One Body - Catholic
- 0 Replies
More than half a dozen American public school students testified about anti-Christian and other faith-based forms of discrimination in an education-focused hearing conducted by President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission.
The Sept. 8 hearing was the commission’s second meeting since the president created it earlier this year. The commission’s inaugural meeting in June focused on broader threats to religious liberty stemming from federal, state, and local government actors and questions about the proper role of faith in public life.
The archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a member of the commission, made his first appearance at Monday’s hearing after missing the first hearing due to his train being canceled. He emphasized the importance of the commission’s work on education and broader concerns.
Dolan, who took part in this year’s conclave to elect Pope Leo XIV, discussed cardinals from around the world approaching him in pre-conclave meetings “to thank us for our strong defense of religious liberty” in the United States.
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www.catholicnewsagency.com
The Sept. 8 hearing was the commission’s second meeting since the president created it earlier this year. The commission’s inaugural meeting in June focused on broader threats to religious liberty stemming from federal, state, and local government actors and questions about the proper role of faith in public life.
The archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, a member of the commission, made his first appearance at Monday’s hearing after missing the first hearing due to his train being canceled. He emphasized the importance of the commission’s work on education and broader concerns.
Dolan, who took part in this year’s conclave to elect Pope Leo XIV, discussed cardinals from around the world approaching him in pre-conclave meetings “to thank us for our strong defense of religious liberty” in the United States.
Continued below.
Students detail discrimination at Religious Liberty Commission hearing
The Sept. 8 hearing was the Religious Liberty Commission’s second meeting since President Donald Trump created it earlier this year.
www.catholicnewsagency.com
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