Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Responding to the Urgency of AI with... Patience and Waiting???
This week’s scriptures are here…
Pope Leo’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas conveys a deep sense of urgency about human dignity in the face of new technological developments. To name just a couple, the pope sees a concern with “a new mindset of [data] extraction” (178) where people in power have unprecedented access to health records, demographic data, and more, in such a way that they can vastly manipulate people into the future. (This is one of the many reasons for concerns with DOGE’s access to that data.) Or just a bit later, the pope discusses modern day technological slavery that abuses human workers (179). Many people describe some of the great advantages of AI development - but the pope reminds us that Christians cannot avoid consideration of human suffering that results from such development.
It’s interesting to reflect on the encyclical in relation to this week’s scriptures. Paul’s words in this week’s Letter to the Romans might seem to want to skip over the effects of suffering, in a way:
I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us. For creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God...
However, when we put Paul’s words alongside Jesus’ - we see that we already have the potential to see some of that glory now. Jesus’ parable this week is The Sower - a parable that talks about seeds being sown on different kinds of soil, and what happens to them. In his discussion of this parable, Jesus suggests that the seeds are the life of God, and that we are the soil in which those seeds are sown.
We already have those seeds - that glory of God - but we do not likely know what kind of soil we are cultivating. Of course, Jesus hopes we are cultivating that rich soil that produces fruit 30 or 60 or 100 times over its yield.
One of the puzzles of this parable is that we cannot know with any kind of immediacy or certainty that our God-given seeds have found that rich soil. In fact, Jesus cautions against being too quick to come to judgement or certainty - for that kind of certainty is actually a rocky and poor soil:
The seed sown on rocky ground is the one who hears the word and receives it at once with joy. But he has no root and lasts only for a time.
Cultivation is not something we can grasp with certainty - in fact, any degree of certainty is likely to be indicative of the wrong kind of soil. In other words, our actions cannot be outcomes-based (or grounded in how much money we have made or how much time we have saved). Rather, our actions need to be aimed at loving more. And love is something we are always growing into - always learning how to do more and better.
What Jesus’ parable suggests is that the cultivation of rich soil has to happen at the same time that we are also anticipating and seeking God’s seed that is in us. Rich soil is cultivated alongside waiting, love, hope, and expectation. We work and act, not because the work will definitely land somewhere, but because we work and act in love. In other words, love is the medium and the cause of our working and acting.
What might this suggest for the moral life and AI? To me it suggests that part of our practice of moral life is to cultivate waiting - that is to say, to cultivate contemplation, silence, and a waiting on God who will act in God’s own time.
Pope Leo suggests that despite the urgency of AI questions, waiting and patience are indeed part of our work. He writes, “Calling for prudence, rigorous evaluation and even, at times, a slower pace in adopting AI does not mean opposing progress; instead, it is an exercise of responsible care for the human family. This need is all the more urgent given the frequent imbalance between the speed of technological growth and the slower development of awareness, norms, safeguards and institutions capable of governing its effects.” (106)
The antidote to our AI discomforts and questions is not simply to perpetuate the world in which AI exists - to do more, quicker, more efficiently. It is to love, more patiently, to pay more attention to the human beings in our midst.
That requires rich soil, indeed. So this week, let us cultivate waiting and contemplation, yes even in the face of apparently urgent concerns. This kind of countercultural impulse also cultivate in us seeds that will sprout when and where they are needed in the days and years to come.