by Alberto Mattioli
The wind and the lion It is a 1975 film with Sean Connery as Mulay Hamid Mohamed El Raisuli, sheikh of the Berber tribes of the Riff, who fights to free Morocco from the colonialism of France and Germany involving the US’s USA Theodore Roosvelt (Lion) who hires a relationship of challenge and esteem with the head of the Berber (the wind). The wind of the spirit that in the recent Conclave blossomed for the election of Pope Leo XIV called me this film work.
With the choice of the name Leone, the new pontiff wanted to reconnect to an encyclical that was a milestone of the social doctrine of the Church: the Rerum novarum of Pope Leo XIII (of 1891) which made the Catholic world of radical changes aware that brought industrialization, thus offering a moral and social reading of the dignity of work, wage justice and worker question. Today Pope Leo XIV indicates another revolution in progress: the tornado of artificial intelligence, which invests not only technology, but the very essence of the human, work, identity, its ultimate goal. A constantly evolving sophisticated technology that determines new grammars, new huge concentrations of wealth and enormous poverty of the excluded from these changes. Ultimately a new powerful tool for the colonization of entire countries. Even the wars, the conflicts, will go more and more from silent overpowering and technological distortion rather than from the bombastic noise of the bombs. Cyber War is now a reality, technological aggression can bring countries to the knees in a few hours. The defense systems are therefore no longer and so much the contract and tanks, but technological shields in defense of national security. In short Artificial intelligence is the new social question. NThe first meeting with the press The Pope said: “The real social question of the third millennium concerns the ability to govern digital innovation for the common good”. He recalled how artificial intelligence cannot be left at the mercy of the logic of profit or efficiency, but requires wise and inclusive governance. If yesterday the challenge was the assembly line for tangible goods, today the intangible and anonymous algorithms that evaluate hiring, loans, medical diagnoses and even sentences are today. An immense power that risks excluding, discriminating and inhumanizing. The Pope’s attention is aimed primarily at young people, developing countries, precarious workers, they are the most exposed to the risk of the digital revolution. The IA, recalled the pontiff, “can expand the opportunities, but also to strengthen inequalities if it is not guided by principles of equity and inclusion”. It is not just about regulating technology, but of redefining the relationship between science and consciousness, between progress, economics and morality.
Leo XIV, in the wake of Francesco, spoke of a “new humanism” who puts the person in his integrity at the center. Machines can learn, but don’t love. They can calculate, but do not choose the good. Only the man, he said, quoting Psalm 8, was “just under the angels” and called to cultivate the earth with wisdom and justice. The neglected social doctrine returns to fashion by soliciting the responsibility of laity competent in the many interdisciplinary subjects involved: technology, economy, the different jurisprudencies, philosophy, communication and politics. LAICI willing and capable of kneading the hands, consciences and knowledge within these new travails of history that also involve our democracies. Because, if the decisions were entrusted to algorithmic logic, the risk is the end of political responsibility. It is an intense call to regain the duty to build the future together, with a high vision of man and his destiny, which he addresses governments, universities, businesses, and also the Church. A solicitation for the promotion of an ethics of technology that is not only legislation and protective, but generative of hope. “Not everything that is possible is also right, and not everything that is efficient is also human”, remarks Leo XIV.
We remain human or … Make Humans Great Again.
