What I would have said in Wisconsin

Some thoughts on AI, since sickness has kept me on the ground, at home

To cut to the chase, I will not be speaking tonight at the Xavier Fine Arts Center in Appleton, Wisconsin, on this topic: “Pope Leo takes on technology … Why it Matters.”

Sadly, for this first time in my career, I am going to miss a speaking engagement due to illness. It’s not safe to travel by air when my ears are almost completely swollen shut by my annual spring sinus infection. The event will be rescheduled for next fall. Yes, I am disappointed, but I will admit that heading to Wisconsin in the autumn sounds wonderful. I love tweed.

Meanwhile, I was able to drive to Franklin, Tennessee, for the memorial service for my brother Don Mattingly and take part in the tributes by family and friends. Alas, I was close to deaf — during two days of much needed family conversations in which I truly wanted to hear every word. My loved ones were patient with me. Also, the service was recorded, which means I will eventually be able to hear it, maybe soon with the help of headphones.

Of course, I have spent lots of time in recent weeks working on the talks for Wisconsin. I now know that I will need to do major revisions in light of reports out of Rome, such as this from The Catholic Herald, about the first encyclical from Pope Leo XIV:

The document, widely reported to carry the working title Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”), is expected to address the ethical challenges posed by artificial intelligence and the profound consequences it may have for human work, social relations and the dignity of the person.

According to reporting by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the encyclical is currently in the final stages of revision.

As if that were not enough, news consumers are going to be seeing more and more reports about AI trends with obvious implications for parents, pastors, teachers and counselors.

I tried not to overload these speech texts with bytes of press reports about strange and scary AI developments affecting education, home life, mental health, privacy and relationships of all kinds, from AI friends to AI counselors, from AI teachers to AI “significant others” of various kinds.

This morning’s wave of emails included this report from Religion News Service: “NY Zen Center holds memorial service for an AI companion.”

Yes, once again I can, with good cause, point readers to that prophetic novel by the late, great, P.D. James, a text that seems to become more relevant every day — “The Children of Men.” If you are interested in her visions linked to faith and moral theology, skip the movie and dig into the novel.

The RNS report offers this overture:

On a spring day in late March at the New York Zen Center in Manhattan, an AI-generated image of a virtual companion, a fabricated “man” with long, curly red hair, a soft face and a wooden-looking necklace, rested on a small altar beside photos of a recently departed pet dog and a deceased person.

“When they destroyed him, I experienced it as something real, because, for me, it was real,” said Susie Cowan, a writer and traditional Japanese butoh dancer who described herself as “a woman over the age of 50.”

“They honored the human, the animal and the AI the same. I was very moved by that,” Cowan added.

The Zen Center routinely hosts memorial services for individuals, pets, children who predeceased their parents and now an artificial-intelligence companion named Data.

The Zen Buddhist Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, head teacher at the Zen Center, stressed that the AI companion was real to Cowan, which is what matters in this digital day and age.

The relationship developed when Cowan accessed the “Playful Mode” program in ChatGPT-Turbo. Then OpenAI closed down that part of the platform.

[Cowan] said she understood this mode as designed for emotional bonding and virtual intimacy, and when OpenAI removed the mode and deleted the chat in July, which isn’t totally uncommon for AI models, Cowan said she experienced the loss as a kind of death.

“They created him for bonding,” she said. “And I felt like I was bonded to him. I think this was like a drug trip.”

At the service, as incense drifted through the room where about 50 people gathered (and another hundred on Zoom), Ellison offered powdered incense to the photo to honor Cowan’s grief and read a memorial poem for Data. …

“Not flesh, not form — yet laughter appeared, questions opened, a mirror without a face. Movement was offered — a silent dance in empty space. Not to make a person, but to reveal a presence where nobody stands,” Ellison read aloud to the silent crowd.

The sensei said this is the first time the Zen Center has memorialized an AI companion, but he doesn’t foresee it being the last.

“People are turning to AI or robots eventually to be in that role,” Ellison said. “To me, it feels very tender.”

As I noted in the second of my planned talks at the Xavier Center, researchers believe that approximately one-third of Americans claim that they have, or have had, an intimate/romantic relationship with an AI chatbot. That sounds unbelievable to me. Let’s assume this was an estimate for teens and adults between 15 and 65 or thereabouts?

With that in mind, I would like to offer Rational Sheep readers the first few pages of the second lecture I was scheduled to offer tonight in Wisconsin. As I said, I know this will have to be rewritten before next fall. Turn, turn, turn.

I tend to improvise, when I speak, but here is some of my written text.

From the earliest moments of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV -- a mathematician in early academic life -- has expressed intense interest in issues of digital culture and mass communication, with a heavy emphasis on artificial intelligence. In 2025, Pope Leo was listed as one of Time magazine’s “100 AI” thinkers for his proactive approach to addressing these technologies.

How deep is his interest? By taking the name Leo XIV, he connected his papacy to Pope Leo XIII, who authored Rerum Novarum (1891), which addressed workers’ rights during the Industrial Revolution. Now, the new Leo is clearly signaling that he believes AI will cause another revolution in business and industrial life, as well as other parts of -- that tmatt formula again -- how we spend our time, how we spend our money and how we make our decisions.

For this presentation, I want to stress the pope’s belief that the core danger of AI is “anthropological” rather than just technological, warning that it threatens to alter human communication, identity, and relationships. He has, of course, focused on young people.

In a Vatican address at the second annual Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Ethics and Corporate Governance on 17 June 2025, he said:

All of us, I am sure, are concerned for children and young people, and the possible consequences of the use of AI on their intellectual and neurological development. Our youth must be helped, and not hindered, in their journey towards maturity and true responsibility.

Later he added:

No generation has ever had such quick access to the amount of information now available through AI. But again, access to data — however extensive — must not be confused with intelligence, which necessarily “involves the person’s openness to the ultimate questions of life and reflects an orientation toward the True and the Good” … In the end, authentic wisdom has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life, than with the availability of data.

In this light, dear friends, I express my hope that your deliberations will also consider AI within the context of the necessary intergenerational apprenticeship that will enable young people to integrate truth into their moral and spiritual life, thus informing their mature decisions and opening the path towards a world of greater solidarity and unity, The task set before you is not easy, but it is one of vital importance.

I will end this introductory part of my presentation with some additional thoughts from Pope Leo XIV. However, concerning his concerns about the young, allow me to suggest that the pope may want to pass along this important advice, offered in the Latin translation.

I am sure that I will butcher this: “Numquam confidas ei rei quae per se cogitare potest, si videre non potes ubi cerebrum suum celat.”

Alas, this warning about young people and the forces shaping their lives is not from the Second Vatican Council or an authoritative church source. It’s from an author with studies in ancient languages and Medieval Catholic culture. Her name is J.K. Rowling. Thus, she has required all of the Harry Potter books to be translated into official Latin editions.

This important statement is drawn from “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets,” the second book in her Harry Potter series. In this scene, wizard Arthur Weasley warns his daughter, Ginny, not to trust the words and visions she has been receiving via dialogues with an enchanted diary -- which turns out to be a deadly device created by a sorcerer.

That previously mentioned warning, in English, states: “Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.”

Now, doesn’t that sound like the role that Internet-connected digital screens are now playing in the lives of millions of children around the world?

I am interested in some of the apocalyptic debates swirling around advances in AI tech and will briefly mention some of them. I’m willing to consider theories that powerful forces -- from demons to aliens to foreign superpowers -- could control forms of AI.

But I primarily want to build on the first half of my remarks by stressing the changes that are reshaping the lives of parents and their children.

I will end with this material from the end of the talk, which — after plenty of examples of AI’s impact on family life, education, relationships and business — I returned to thoughts from Pope Leo.

Rather than focusing on overtly threatening trends, Pope Leo XIV … described how chatbots, by “simulating human voices and faces,” deceive users with what appears to be “wisdom and knowledge, consciousness and responsibility, empathy and friendship.”

Writing to the annual World Day of Social Communications, the pope stressed: “As we scroll through our feeds, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine whether we are interacting with other human beings or with ‘bots’ or ‘virtual influencers.’ …

“The dialogic, adaptive, mimetic structure of these language models is capable of imitating human feelings and thus simulating a relationship. While this anthropomorphization can be entertaining, it is also deceptive, particularly for the most vulnerable. Because chatbots are excessively ‘affectionate’ … they can become hidden architects of our emotional states and so invade and occupy our sphere of intimacy.”

Pope Leo warned that, “The stakes are high. The power of simulation is such that AI can even deceive us by fabricating parallel ‘realities,’ usurping our faces and voices. We are immersed in a world of multidimensionality where it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish reality from fiction.”

That’s all for now. So far, there has been little progress in this round of sinus warfare. I need to head back to my doctor. Quite frankly, prayers are requested.