Archbishop Paul Ssemogerere centre on right hand is Fr. Joseph Mukiibi, left is Fr. Dr. Ronald Kigozi.
By George Bukenya
Pope Francis argues people globally to make Artificial intelligence work for human being instead of substituting his normal thinking capacity so as to mitigate the resulting ethical and social- economic challenges.
The Pope’s message was relayed to the media by the Archbishop of Kampala Archdiocese Paul Ssemogerere in a press conference held at his administrative offices in Rubaga, Kampala.
The Archbishop revealed that His Holiness said that Artificial Intelligence is quite misleading and it’s from this back ground that he suggested the name should be changed to machine learning intelligence in order to deviate away from the misleading name.
He also said that the Pope’s message concerns about being with the Wisdom of Heart in dealing with Artificial Intelligence and that in that manner the natural law will prevail.
His Holiness`s message is appropriately conveyed when the world is preparing to commemorate the 58th World Day of Social Communications that is celebrated on every 12th May.
This time round the day will be commemorated under the theme, “ Artificial Intelligence and the Wisdom of the Heart: Towards a Fully Human Communication.’’
Artificial intelligence has both positive and negative mishaps and although it helps man to do a lot of work in education, medicine, agriculture and industry sports to mention but a few, it also has negative consequences such as loss of jobs, distorts relationship with others, importance of decent work disappears and destruction of lives indiscriminately.
Such ethical concern compelled the Pope to intervene through his pastoral message guiding people to avoid reducing thinking of human to a mechanical thing. He suggests that the so called Artificial intelligence should be used as a helper not as a substitute to the natural thinking of a human being.
Father Dr. Ronald Kigozi a lecturer at Ggaba National Major Seminary said the church’s stance on artificial intelligence as guided by the pope is that such technology shouldn’t in any way replace the human wisdom of thinking, values of the heart.
He said that, Pope Francis advised that group thinking should be avoided and instead leave the natural law or consciousness to take centre stage.
According to Fr. Kigozi, the Pope posed several questions and among others; He asked how do we safe guard professionalism in the field of communication and information, the issue of transparent and criteria of rules that governs operations.
The other is on, how can we make technology sustainable and accessible to everybody and also on transparency of information processing?
As a way forward Fr. Kigozi said that the Pope called upon people to regain values of the heart and should refrain from using Artificial Intelligence to think for them and also avoid group thinking.
The seminary tutor also said that the Pope quotes the Book of Wisdom 6: 12-16 in his emphasis of embracing personal consciousness when it comes to use of wisdom in decision making which is a key aspect lacking in the so called Artificial Intelligence.
He also argued leaders to enact laws and put in place better policies that will help to regulate and streamline the use of such misleading technology.
Father Dr. Abrose Wangatto the head of Pastoral Duties at the Archdiocese implored government to invest more in the aspect of protecting society against deep fake news so as to secure the masses from misinformation and propaganda.
“ If we don’t address the issue of deep fakes now, we will still have a lot of lies, many responsible dignatories will be made to speak things they haven’t done and many social communicators will continue to perpetuate lies.’’ Fr. Wangatto cautioned.
The Catholic Church here will commemorate this year’s World Day of Social Communications at Gayaza Parish this Sunday and the mass that is expected to attract many believers from various parishes will be led by the Pope Nuncio emeritus His Grace Augustine Kasujja.