Many arguments about generative AI hinge exclusively on what these models do or don’t do, weighing the end results in a T-chart of pros and cons.

Using these models can help speed up our work on mundane tasks, but this use has also been shown to deteriorate our critical thinking skills. They could be used to automate workflows, but their adoption is also driving devastating unemployment. They could be used to cure cancer, but these models have also created billions of non-consensual nude images of women and children. Those for and against using chat AI models can end up arguing in circles about whether the pros outweigh the cons, and frequently disagree based on having differing personal value systems in the first place. 

It’s common to hear others regard generative AI as merely a tool that can be used for good or harm to others. Fewer people seem to approach the ethics of generative AI use from a means-, rather than ends-based argument.

Pope Leo XIV went viral recently for doing exactly this with a post on social media, clipped from a longer speech he delivered to a group of artists in Rome: “In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and........

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