Artificial Intelligence

An inadequate substitute for the creative power of the human person

The former Cardinal Robert Prevost recently explained his choice of the moniker “Pope Leo XIV” for his pontificate. Among the reasons was that he saw his pontificate would be charged with addressing the unintended harms the artificial intelligence revolution in the same way that Pope Leo XIII had to address the unintended consequences of the industrial revolution. Underlying both problems is the lack of reverence for man as creator, and at the heart of that is an attack on motherhood. Because we fail to understand the importance of the creative power of the human person, we accept pale substitutes, like mass produced junk, or artificial “intelligence.”

Motherhood has been under attack long before our recent culture war. While the reduction of femininity to any human with ample bosom, plenty of makeup, flashy clothes, and high heels might be obnoxious and accurately characterized as “womanface,” it does not come close to the horror of the real attack on women, which is an attack on their role as mother. Long before “what is a woman” was a debatable question, certain forces have been trying to eliminate the most essential part of womanhood - maternity. Our society has lost its admiration for motherhood, and with it, its appreciation for the creative power of the human person.

Clearly, the parts of a woman which allow her to become a mother are hidden, and consequently, easily overlooked. Motherhood is seen as an extra - one of many options in the choose your own adventure of modern adulthood. Unfortunately, many women in our society fail to see the value in that great power, and choose to delay child bearing, even in marriage, to pursue recreational or financial pursuits.

Women have the natural ability to facilitate one of the most sacred acts on earth - the incarnation of a new human being with an eternal soul. Similarly, but in a lesser way, all people participate in human creation when they write a poem, grow a garden, or build a home. As Chesterton points out in the Everlasting Man, “art is the signature of man.” It is the eternal soul that differentiates humans and allows us to participate with the Creator to bring new creations into the world. We are most fully human when we are co-creators with God to bring forth babies, art, poetry, and the work of human hands.

The power of a mother cannot be overstated. Her ability to gestate, nurture, and educate her children is the closest thing to a superpower that humans possess. This special role has been admired by men throughout the ages. As Cardinal Mindszentzy points out,

“The most important person on earth is a mother. She cannot claim the honor of having built Notre Dame Cathedral. She need not. She has built something more magnificent than any cathedral -a dwelling for an immortal soul, the tiny perfection of her baby's body. . . The angels have not been blessed with such a grace. They cannot share in God's creative miracle to bring new saints to Heaven. Only a human mother can. Mothers are closer to God the Creator than any other creature; God joins forces with mothers in performing this act of creation. .. What on God's good earth is more glorious than this: to be a mother?”

Today, more and more women choose to remain child free. They say they would not want to bring children into this world because it is too terrible. This is the sign of a civilization in decline. Many women avoid becoming a mother by taking birth control; some even resort to violence through abortion to avoid becoming mothers. Similarly, many people have lost the desire to create in any way. They are information workers and consumers of goods. There is no generative force behind their actions.

Gilbert and Frances Chesterton suffered the cross of infertility. He would have been a great father and she a wonderful mother. Their love for children was evident in the care for their relatives, neighbors, and godchildren. You can see in his writing a love for children and a longing - a recognition of what they lost through their infertility.

Perhaps this great loss deepened his disgust at the rejection and destruction of fertility by society at large. To one who suffers infertility, the concept of birth control and, god forbid, abortion, is particularly terrible. Instead of falling into despair, the Chestertons focused their creative power into an abundant legacy of plays, poems, essays, and books which continue to bear fruit many generations after their passing.

Chesterton points out, in Babies and Distributism, that a child is a “creation and a contribution; his is [his parents] own creative contribution to creation.” Furthermore, a person who prefers material possessions to a child are “preferring the last, crooked, indirect, borrowed, repeated and exhausted things of our dying Capitalist civilization to the reality which is the only rejuvenation of all civilisation.” Men who fail to see the beauty of the child “have lost the appreciation of primary things, and therefore all sense of proportion about the world.” Chesterton was speaking of the world post Industrial Revolution, but it is clear that his thoughts also apply to the world post Information Revolution.

Our dismissal of the value of the creative power of women leads directly to a blindness about the loss our society incurs when it settles for the crooked, indirect, borrowed, repeated, and exhausted “intelligence” of Artificial Intelligence. There is no creative power in AI, just a recombination of already created ideas, words, and phrases. That is, while AI might be able to recombine and modify content which has already been created, it does not have the power to make anything new.

There is a direct correlation between our loss of reverence for the sacred role of the mother and our willingness to accept the perverted creative force that is artificial intelligence. The same philosophy behind “dog moms” is the one that allows us to attempt to use artificial intelligence to fulfill our human relationship needs.

Even Catholic apostolates are rushing at breakneck speed to embrace AI as a way to “evangelize” the culture, forgetting that evangelization is an interpersonal human work, which cannot be done by a robot or a computer program. While there is nothing wrong with an advanced search engine, there is certainly nothing personal about it either. The work of evangelization is about much more than information - it is about relationship.

Man is made in the image and likeness of God. We reflect that truth most fully when we cooperate in bringing a new eternal soul into existence, but we also cooperate with God in creation when we write a poem, draw a picture, or build a church. For generations, our society has failed to recognize and revere the creative power and importance of the mother. Is it any wonder there is little resistance to substituting artificial intelligence for our own creative genius?

A previous version of this article was published in Gilbert, the Magazine of the Society of Gilbert Keith Chesterton