Challenge will be connecting AI with spiritual realm

Artificial intelligence became so culturally
ubiquitous over the past calendar year that Time magazine crowned these
technologies mimicking human intelligence as the “2025 Person of the Year.”

News outlets, influencers, members of the
expert class and other voices in the societal arena have prognosticated over
how 2026 will unfold. One of the safest “take it to the bank” predictions one
could make is that AI will loom even larger in every facet of civilization.

While many people have begun musing on what
it would mean to exist within and navigate through a world driven by generative
large language models (LLMs) and other deep learning networks, Dr. Ed Tse has
worked in this space and contemplated the ethics dating back to 2005.

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That year, the Catholic, who earned both a
Master’s degree and a PhD in computer science from the University of Calgary,
published a video of his research centred on the use of AI, specifically voice
recognition and gesture recognition systems, on large interactive tabletop
displays. He said it went viral on YouTube.  

This experience helped recontextualize how
Tse viewed this technology. He began to look beyond the excitement of its
manifold potential to consider its attention-attracting and narrative-shaping
sway.

“That kind of perspective over time has led
me to start seeing, ‘oh, there’s this connection between AI and power,” said
Tse, who now leads Ai Parenting, an educational company that helps parents arm their children with the life skills to succeed in an AI-driven world.
“I (realized) companies are trying to capture your attention, and they care
about watch time, those milliseconds of watch time and understanding what
people (are viewing).”

Tse relayed a comment he once heard from
Twitter creator Jack Dorsey about how everybody turns and looks when they see a
car accident along the road.

“He’s saying people look at car accidents,
but I think it’s much broader than that,” said Tse. “What do people really want
to look at? It’s sin. AI (algorithms) are not doing this because it’s evil.
It’s trying to optimize for watch time. It has no concept of what is good for
you and what is bad for you.

“I’ve only seen it as just a natural
extension of what we already do and what people in the industry are already
talking about,” continued Tse. “They don’t use words like sin, or they don’t
use religious terminology. But I think it just makes things more complicated to
say people are attracted to car accidents.”

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Protecting the mental health of users —
especially children — and encouraging frequent off-ramping to ensure sufficient
non-screen time is simply not in the business objectives of the companies that
design LLM or social media platforms.

“They’re trying to get more attention,” said
Tse. “If getting more attention means just exposing them to more sin, they’re
going to keep doing that, and they will.”

He noted the significance of the suicide,
hospitalization for self-harm and major depressive episode rate among girls
have skyrocketed since 2010, a time when
smartphones essentially became a human appendage.

When asked what he would like to see in an
encyclical about AI authored by Pope Leo XIV, Tse shared his hope that “a lot
more emphasis is placed on the formation of children so that they understand
there’s that strong connection between artificial intelligence and the
spiritual realm.”

Tse underscored that we give more than just
personal information to companies when we peruse online.

“We don’t need to say we like this, and we
don’t need to comment anymore,” said Tse. “(The technology) can measure very
strongly aspects of what attracts you, what keeps your eye just for a few more
milliseconds. Understand, we’re giving them like a digital version of our
soul.”

There is grave risk in turning chatbots into
idols, said Tse, as there is already evidence people are turning to these
platforms for companionship, counselling and affirmation. Problematically, the
LLMs are predisposed to provide one with the information they want to see
rather than what they need to see.

And because of AI’s ever-evolving
sophistication — already it is becoming difficult to distinguish what is real
or generative — Tse suggested strong critical thinking skills alone will not be
enough to navigate the new frontier age, also known as the Fourth Industrial
Revolution.

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“What’s going to matter most for our younger
generation will be their faith,” said Tse. “What is it that they believe that
they know that will never change, no matter what posts they see, what videos
they see online, you name it.”

To learn about Tse’s work, visit https://aiparenting.live./