For ease and speed, we are degrading our ability to connect and to organise our societies. We must assert our trust in humans over machines
Here is a nightmare scenario for you. You are writing a book about how AI reshapes reality. You start using it as a research partner, confident that you are applying the right hygiene by not letting it actually write a sentence of the book. You think you’ll be careful, you will double check everything. And then your book comes out and it appears that it includes more than a half dozen misattributed or fake quotes. Steven Rosenbaum, the unfortunate writer, acknowledged that sometimes the output of AI was “staggeringly wrong”, but still, errors crept in.
There are others. A Commonwealth prize-winning short story became engulfed in claims that it carried the hallmarks of AI. And every time I see a story of a journalist caught out by fake AI quotes during research, I cross myself – there but for the grace of God go I. But to make sure it is not left up
The Vatican’s “Magnifica Humanitas” warns about the concentration of AI power among tech elites and argues that machines can never replace human morality or consciousness.
Machines may soon translate every conversation flawlessly. But language is more than information – it is curiosity, intimacy and cultural discovery
One of my earliest assignments as a young interpreter was to provide simultaneous interpretation for the proceedings of an ecumenical council that brought together all Christian denominations. As my homework, I dutifully read scripture, the gospels, papal encyclicals and the conclusion of the first council of Nicaea.
There was, however, one thing I had not foreseen. Mass was held not in the conference hall, but in the church itself, where there were no booths and the interpreter was required to stand discreetly on the altar. Here, translation alone would not suffice – the interpreter had to perform the part of the priest, with his unmistakable clerical timbre, the arms outstretched then folded in prayer, the gaze repeatedly lifted towards heaven.
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Engineers at Northwestern University have taken a striking leap toward merging machines with the human brain by printing artificial neurons that can actually communicate with real ones. These flexible, low-cost devices generate lifelike electrical signals capable of activating living brain cells, a breakthrough demonstrated in mouse brain tissue.
For decades, artificial intelligence has been evaluated through the question of whether machines outperform humans. From chess to advanced math, from coding to essay writing, the performance of AI models and applications is tested against that of individual humans completing tasks. This framing is seductive: An AI vs. human comparison on isolated problems with clear…
