Over the course of the past three years or so, I have spent a considerable amount of time reflecting on the question of how artificial intelligence might be analyzed through the lens of Catholic social teaching (CST). In December of last year, I published an essay with Front Porch Republic calling for resistance to the AI movement, and I led an undergraduate seminar covering the essential primary texts in CST this spring semester. These things are fresh on my mind. When word got out that Pope Leo was preparing an encyclical dedicated to this, I was excited and relieved, but I proudly thought I knew what form the main avenues of his analysis would take. Since the mid-twentieth century, after all, CST had been warning of the threat to human freedom posed by humans allowing themselves to be dominated by their own technological creations. And while most of the points made in Magnifica Humanitas were indeed those I was expecting, I also noticed a minor theme dealing with the principle of subsidiarity in a way that I found both surprising and enlightening.
In CST, subsidiarity has to do with rights and duties being exercised at the most foundational social level. This principle stems from the recognition that the human person lies at the heart of the social order and therefore economies and governments should exist to support the flourishing of the person, not vice versa. Responsibilities—actions, decisions, discussions—should be exercised at the level closest to the individual and only move “upward” if necessary. Providing care and education for children, for example, should be always the responsibility of parents. This responsibility should only be passed to extended family, community, or state if parents are unable or unfit to carry it out. Similarly, local problems should always be dealt with at the local level by local people if possible. In CST the principle of subsidiarity has typically been seen as dealing with the proper ordering of social structures and institutions and is usually associated with ensuring higher-level authorities, such as government agencies, do not improperly interfere with lower-level authorities, such as individuals, families, and local bodies.
Without changing the principle itself, Pope Leo subtly points us toward a new way of applying it in Magnifica Humanitas, effectively challenging us to consider subsidiarity as not only a principle of social order but also as an intellectual virtue. Early on, he sets up subsidiarity as one of several core components of CST that ought to be at the forefront of our response to the AI moment, and he defines it in this way: “whatever can be carried out by individuals, families, intermediary organizations and local communities should not be carried out by higher-level authorities” (MH 31, italics mine). Further on, he adds: “higher-level institutions must recognize, protect and promote the freedom and creativity of lower-level entities” (MH 68). At the lowest level is of course the individual human person, but whereas in past CST documents it was governing authorities that were almost always identified as the highest-level entities, in Magnifica Humanitas it is private entities: AI companies, the owners of those companies, developers, financiers, and the platforms they make available: “The principle of subsidiarity applies especially in the context of the digital revolution. Here, the highest level is not the State, but rather major economic and technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life” (MH 71). Lastly, when Pope Leo gets to the business of assessing the AI situation in light of CST, he has this to say about education: “As knowledge becomes increasingly fragmented, it becomes difficult to grasp reality as a whole, to ask profound questions about meaning, or to develop authentic, critical and creative thought… A genuinely healthy attitude is needed, requiring rhythms that incorporate silence, in-depth study, reading and judicious analysis, for without these elements inner freedom may be compromised” (MH 146). In other words, intellectual malformation is one of the risks involved in allowing AI to be integrated into the educational process. This malformation is bad in and of itself, of course, but I sense that the Pope is leading us to also view this as a violation of the principle of subsidiarity. Let me explain how.
The “inner freedom” Pope Leo speaks of is a good to be sought for every human being, and it is one of the chief aims of education in the Catholic view. It is the freedom that allows us to make as full a use of our intellectual faculties as possible, and growth toward this interior freedom comes in large part through intellectual formation. Intellectual formation happens precisely through the kinds of skills and practices the Pope mentions: critical and creative analysis, patient study, attentive reading, silence, and dialogue with others engaged in the same work. This kind of formation happens both communally and solitarily, but it is always a lower-level endeavor, the level of the individual human person and the local community to which he or she belongs. In accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, since intellectual formation can and should happen at these lower levels, higher-level authorities should not be entrusted with this work.
However, as the Pope rightly suggests, the higher-level powers in view now are not states and their governments but private tech companies, their owners, and the vast amount of resources they have acquired: data, data centers, computing power, popular platforms that continuously collect data, private platforms that manipulate data, massive investments, and so on. These entities violate the principle of subsidiarity when they aggressively and without transparency seek to claim what should be the intellectual work of individuals, groups, and local authorities. Likewise, individuals, groups, and local authorities violate the principle when they willingly unload what should be their own intellectual burdens onto AI systems. By identifying where the threat of the concentration of power lies and linking this to concerns with intellectual formation, Pope Leo has thus shaped subsidiarity to be not only a principle of Catholic social doctrine but an intellectual virtue.
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