‘It is individuals that matter, each and every person, together with their families. Social movements, communal ideologies and grand political proclamations in favour of a population are worthless unless they lead to the flourishing of persons with their inalienable rights. Similarly, it is not enough to extol individual freedom or private enterprise if we then allow a multitude of people to continue living without decent work, protections or access to basic necessities.'
Pope Leo XIV, from his AI Encyclical
While Labour Party leaders and former leaders struggle over yesterday's ideologies and politics, the Pope looks ahead to tomorrow's challenges in his AI encyclical. We will focus in this commentary on how to tackle the AI challenge which he addresses in that document, following a brief reflection on the issues of regulation and big government about which Andy Burnham and Tony Blair have argued last week.
Big government doesn't work. Last week’s commentary, on how young people are suffering as a result, explained why this is the case.
As Adam Smith explained 250 years ago, competition keeps progress focused and efficient; but we do need to accept that it still requires an appropriate level of regulation.
Andy Burnham specifically referenced failure of de-regulation from the Thatcher era as the reason for the 2008 financial collapse. In one specific respect, he was correct: we should not have done away with ‘single capacity’ — the separation of agent and principal roles — in financial markets in 1986, which was commonly referred to as the ‘Big Bang’. The resultant consolidated financial institutions proved incapable of handling the resultant conflicts of interest arising from trading both for their clients and for themselves, and we all suffered from the results of that excess in the 2008 financial collapse.
Let's learn from the past in terms of maintaining sensible regulation, but let's not use it as an excuse to suppress human enterprise — and that's a good basis on which to start considering the Pope's contribution on Artificial Intelligence. It’s currently the prime case of human enterprise in need of the correct balance of encouragement and regulation, and that’s why his contribution is so timely.
Pope Leo starts his 49-page encyclical with a qualified welcome: ‘Technology should not be considered, in itself, a force antagonistic to humanity’. However, he makes the point in his introduction that technological development takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it, and he warns against too narrow a group of people in those controlling situations.
His encyclical is much more down to earth than one might expect from such a document; in a message no doubt intended for his colleagues in the Church, he says, ‘Let us not be afraid to get our hands dirty on the ‘construction site’ of our time’.
But his calls for wider participation are very deep, and he quotes from Pope John XXIII who wrote, ‘Societal life calls for a balance between the initiative of citizens and groups — who are called to organise themselves and work together — and the action of the state, which must coordinate and provide support without stifling the freedom and responsibility of the individual’.
There's also a reference to John Paul II who wrote, ‘The various kinds of job security, fragmented career paths and automation must not be evaluated solely in terms of efficiency, but in relation to the dignity of the worker, the right to sufficient remuneration, and the genuine possibility of participating in society’.
Bill Winters, CEO of Standard Chartered Bank, should take note; and I'm grateful to Private Eye magazine for allowing us to include their cartoon on ‘inhuman resources’.
The chapter analysing the current and potential impact of Artificial Intelligence is very comprehensive and professional, and Pope Leo links this closely with philosophies of social doctrine and the common good in order to stress the need for participation for all.
A very important part of this analysis is his drawing creativity into the realms of the common good. Here’s what he has to say:
‘Today, among the goods that are universally intended for everyone, we must also include new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure and data. In a context where the wealth of nations depends increasingly on knowledge and technology, when these goods remain concentrated in the hands of a few, without adequate forms of sharing and access, a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods. In turn, it widens the gap between the included and the excluded, between those who can participate in the digital revolution and those who remain on the margins.’ [extract from Clause 67]
The key message of his encyclical is a call for participation for all, to which both Share Alliance and Share Radio are deeply committed. The research which Share Alliance is undertaking into ‘Stock for Data & Creativity’ is directly relevant to this call, and we look forward to opening conversations with the Vatican in this respect. Indeed, the Pope welcomes this interaction by saying, ‘I would like to encourage academic institutions and universities to give fresh impetus to these principles and to apply them in a way that will be relevant and effective in addressing the digital revolution’.
The great point about the stock distribution proposed by ‘Stock for Data & Creativity’ is that it not only shares wealth creation but also shares the opportunity to participate in corporate governance: so it would provide the opportunity for all recipients to contribute to the way technology is developed into the future. It therefore welcomes humanity into that controlling position for which Pope Leo is calling.
There will, of course, be a place for both direct and intermediated participation in such a widespread system of governance and participation, and the encyclical refers directly to the need to make this meaningful: ‘Communities and intermediary organisations must not be reduced to passive recipients of decisions made elsewhere; they must be able to contribute to discernment and oversight’.
Mass participation through share ownership provides a strong counterbalance to government-driven regulation which is, in any case, unlikely to be effective since we have no reliable system of global governance — national regulations will simply result in tech giants playing off one country against another.
So, this brings us back to the Blair—Burnham debate over government control and regulation. Both of these politicians see these issues from a national perspective, but the really big challenges — the accelerating rate of technological growth, the massive polarisation of wealth throughout the world, and climate change — are all global issues. We need to think outside the box in order to resolve them, and that's exactly what Share Alliance is seeking to achieve.
Gavin Oldham OBE
Share Radio