Dr. Julio Tudela, director of the Bioethics Observatory of the Catholic University of Valencia and an outstanding expert in artificial intelligence ethics, warned about three dangers of the use of the so -called artificial intelligence.
In recent interview with Ewtn News, the expert first explains that the name of “artificial intelligence is incorrect”, since they are actually “sophisticated programs” that “simulate human behaviors.”
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Given these “artificial intelligence” programs, Dr. Tudela alerts about three things that are in danger:
1. Respect for privacy
Dr. Tudela warned about “the illegitimate use of the data. That is, in the end there is a kind of confluence of all of us towards Internet computing, in Internet programs, in social media programs, etc. We are all the product of artificial intelligence, so artificial intelligence is sold for free, because the product is us”.
“We are feeding the databases that then the artificial computer problems will use to generate their answers and these data can be handled without our consent,” he added.
Therefore, “there is a possible violation of privacy,” he said.
2. Respect for truthfulness
The specialist said that “artificial intelligence can present as true what is not true” or “return information (…) that you present biases, that is, it can present as true information that is not, well because it is deliberately manipulated by ideologues, by power groups, etc., or because it presents deficiencies, deficiencies, errors, absences, what we call the hallucinations of artificial intelligence.”
Artificial intelligence can be wrong, he continued, and present information “as true, before which people give him all their credibility, and not to be. Therefore, the truthfulness threatens.”
3. Interference in learning processes
“Artificial intelligence can also break, when it is not used properly, as a substitute for our brain processes. That is, we can relieve us of things we should do,” said Dr. Tudela.
“In the field of education, artificial intelligence can generate atrophy. That is, it can relieve our students from the acquisition of competencies for mental exercise, which they will stop doing because someone does it. This is very worrying too,” said the Spanish expert.
Prudence, Education and Freedom
The specialist commented that there is still no mode or tools that help the person not to fall into the manipulation of artificial intelligence. “This is not resolved, and we have to say it clearly. We are in it,” he said.
However, he encouraged “an exercise of prudence. Not everything new, not everything fascinatingly novel is good.”
Then it is essential to work in education, because “we must educate our children, our students, our classmates, our citizens. We must educate them in the defense of freedom.”
It is necessary to assess “his own freedom. And second, correctly calibrate threats towards our freedom. And, above all, to educate in the defense of truthfulness. That is, the search for truth is the conductive thread of the education of our children, of our children, of our students. This is very important”.
“He who values the truth has enough reasons to be prudent to these tools,” he concluded.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.