With Living Hearts
—A Wandering Review of—
Rerum Novarum
in the age of a.i.
Mary C. Tillotson
A brutally short summary of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum might go something like this: Leo discusses relations between the wealthy and working classes, especially the duty of the wealthy to treat their workers and the poor with justice and dignity. It would be possible (though not easy) to study this encyclical and then take these principles, as he elaborates on them, and apply them — either in policy or in one’s own professional and personal capacities. Or anyway, it seems that way to me.
But, then again, maybe we don’t need to study the encyclical or do the work of applying its principles. After all, we have A.I.
Any of myriad Large Language Models currently in circulation could, of course, parse Leo’s document and instantly spit out a summary like the above. I could have skipped that effort. Far more importantly, though, maybe we don’t even need to consider the encyclical’s ideas any more; maybe, nearly a century and a half after its promulgation, in the context of our present circumstances, we no longer need do the work of applying them. Forbes recently published a list of “Five ways to harness A.I. and eradicate poverty forever.” Technology, apparently, can do it all for us. And that seems easier.
The A.I. solution asks less of us, and beyond that, it promises (at least at first glance) far more. It promises to actually eradicate poverty. The vision seems to be an A.I.-driven world in which poverty (and any kind of suffering) is no longer a part of the human experience.
Leo makes no such promise; in fact, his argument is founded on an assumption that poverty and suffering will continue to be part of the human experience. There is a tension in Leo’s encyclical that is worth addressing, both in terms of our approach to suffering and poverty and our consideration of A.I.’s potential role therein.
Leo is very concerned that the poor receive justice and are treated with the dignity appropriate to all people. Many of us share this concern and work toward it in various ways. In the bewilderingly wealthy West, where so many are so poor, many people are involved in alleviating poverty in some way or another, whether it’s running nonprofits, volunteering at the parish’s soup kitchen, donating financially to these and similar endeavors, or pushing for policy changes that promise to ensure better treatment for the disadvantaged.
At the same time, Leo’s concern for the poor never embraces the goal of eradicating poverty, suffering, or (perhaps especially) economic inequality. Eradication of suffering is a useless goal, he says explicitly: “The other pains and hardships of life will have no end or cessation on earth; for the consequences of sin are bitter and hard to bear, and they must accompany man so long as life lasts. To suffer and to endure, therefore, is the lot of humanity; let them strive as they may, no strength and no artifice will ever succeed in banishing from human life the ills and troubles which beset it.” There is a tension between the futility of striving for the eradication of poverty and suffering and the necessity of our work to alleviate them.
We may here be reminded of the gospel, where Jesus says both “Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor,” and also, “The poor you will always have with you.”
It is worth sitting with this tension for a bit. If Jesus and Leo XIII are correct, if we are never going to eradicate poverty, cure all disease, mend all conflicts, or otherwise fix the world, then what is the point of all the work we do toward these goals? If we know the work will end in failure — or, rather, never end because success is impossible — why bother trying? We can avoid despair, at least for a little while, by refusing to think about these things. But as Leo teaches, “Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is,” and we ought to do better than a mere refusal to look.
The world as it really is now includes A.I. and other types of modern technology, which Leo could not have anticipated. We could turn to the technological promise of eradicating these problems. Leo’s assumption that poverty will remain a part of the world is, perhaps, antiquated.
But perhaps it is not. Let me complete the quotation, and we can consider what Leo actually means.
“Nothing is more useful than to look upon the world as it really is, and at the same time to seek elsewhere, as We have said, for the solace to its troubles.” This is the way to avoid despair in these tasks: to look elsewhere for solace, knowing that God has transformed suffering, and also that he calls us to love. Leo was unfamiliar with A.I. but very familiar with technology over-promising to solve human problems, and he recognized the emptiness of the promise. He was also familiar with love; he knew that love is more powerful than technology could ever be — and not in a sentimental way (there is nothing sentimental about crucifixion). “Jesus Christ,” Leo writes, “when he redeemed us with plentiful redemption, took not away the pains and sorrows which in such large proportion are woven together in the web of our mortal life. He transformed them into motives of virtue and occasions of merit.” If this is true, we should not seek to eradicate suffering but accept it — in ourselves and others — as a motive of virtue and occasion for merit.
Leo was unfamiliar with A.I. but very familiar with technology over-promising to solve human problems, and he recognized the emptiness of the promise.
What does this mean? We can distinguish between accepting poverty and suffering as real versus accepting them as good. Poverty and suffering are not, of themselves, good. Leo does not assert that they are, and in fact he opens his encyclical with concern for “the condition of the working class” and numerous times affirms the goodness of various efforts to alleviate poverty. This is the motive for virtue. Our awareness of poverty and other forms of suffering ought to prompt us to generosity, charity, humility, courage, selflessness, and other virtues. We ought to act on those promptings and not let them stagnate as mere velleities. In acting on these promptings, we grow in virtue. When we act generously, we become more generous. When we act courageously, we become more courageous. We become better people, not because we feel that someone ought to “do something” about the suffering of others, but because we, ourselves, actually do that something, whatever it is. We are changed for having done the work. But this can only happen if we acknowledge and accept the reality of poverty and suffering.
This seems to circumvent the A.I. approach, which is not in any way concerned with the interior growth of those working to alleviate poverty. Forbes’ list and similar tech-based approaches are limited to various ways to increase and better target the material reach of these efforts. More people in rural areas could have access to education, with A.I. mimicking teachers; A.I. could help local artisans better predict the market and expand their customer base; and so on. But does the bot become a better person by its service to rural children and third-world artisans, as a teacher would? Do these children and artisans benefit from a human relationship?
Taken wrongly, Leo’s approach could objectify the poor, as if they do not have a full human dignity in their own right but exist only for the betterment of the rich. It could sound as if poverty exists — must exist — as an institution so that rich people have opportunities to be generous. This is not Leo’s argument; in fact, his reasoning for helping the poor in various ways — either through charitable aid or through improving working conditions — is because of their human dignity. “Some opportune remedy must be found quickly for the misery and wretchedness pressing so unjustly on the majority of the working class,” he writes; elaborating on this misery, he says “that a small number of very rich men have been able to lay upon the teeming masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than that of slavery itself.” Elsewhere, “the wealthy owner and the employer,” he says, have a duty “not to look upon their work people as their bondsmen, but to respect in every man his dignity as a person entailed by Christian character.” And again, he decries “the cruelty of men of greed, who use human beings as mere instruments for money-making.” His arguments for improving the lot of the poor and working class are grounded in his belief that they are not objects, but human persons who ought to be treated as such. It is not too much of a stretch to say they are not to be objectified as recipients of charity, either.
The relationship Leo envisions between the rich and poor is not one of benefactor-beneficiary, in which objectification is easy, but one of solidarity and love — something impossible with A.I. “If Christian precepts prevail,” — the precepts he outlines in his encyclical — “the respective classes will not only be united in the bonds of friendship, but also in those of brotherly love.” This is a bold claim, especially when the rich and poor seemed locked in perpetual conflict. But that conflict isn’t necessary, he says; in fact, it is a “great mistake . . . to take up with the notion that class is naturally hostile to class, and that the wealthy and the working men are intended by nature to live in mutual conflict.” Leo insists that mutual care and concern, and indeed brotherly love, between social classes is in fact possible. How can this be?
Leo sees only one way. “We affirm without hesitation that all the striving of men will be in vain if they leave out the Church,” he writes. “It is the Church that insists, on the authority of the Gospel, upon those teachings whereby the conflict can be brought to an end, or rendered, at least, far less bitter.” It is the Church that sees that “the things of earth” — which include A.I. — “cannot be understood or valued aright without taking into consideration the life to come, the life that will know no death.” It is the Church that proclaims that “God has not created us for the perishable and transitory things of earth, but for things heavenly and everlasting.”
Leo continues, “As for riches and the other things which men call good and desirable, whether we have them in abundance, or are lacking in them — so far as eternal happiness is concerned — it makes no difference; the only important thing is to use them aright.” In the light of eternity, the poor man and the rich man do not look so different. They both just look like men.
With this, we return to our earlier question. Why should we work to alleviate poverty, knowing that we will never eradicate it? Why should we look at the chronic injustice and evil in the world and not despair? Why not wholeheartedly pursue the tech approaches, since they promise what Leo, more than a century ago, could not imagine — a true eradication of poverty?
Leo could not have imagined A.I. or other modern technology, but he could imagine something greater, something beyond this temporary, mortal life. “Life on earth, however good and desirable in itself,” he writes, “is not the final purpose for which man is created; it is only the way and the means to that attainment of truth and that love of goodness in which the full life of the soul consists . . . . In this respect, all men are equal; there is here no difference between rich and poor, master and servant, ruler and ruled, ‘for the same is Lord over all.’”
This is the weakness of the tech-forward approach: the absence of this eternal vision. If A.I. really could do what it promises in eradicating material poverty, where would we be? We would still face death, whose shadow is much darker without hope in eternal life. In this life, the poor would be better off materially, and that is a good thing. (Leo would agree.) Still, we — all of us — would be empty, with hearts that haven’t grown, without the relationships that we could have built, surrounded by human dignity (in ourselves and in others) that we haven’t discovered and therefore cannot properly respond to. Tech can help with the material aspect of poverty, but the deeply important, deeply spiritual, and deeply human aspects require a different approach. In the conclusion to the Forbes list, we find that “the success of A.I.-driven solutions depends on the voluntary collaboration of governments, businesses, academia, and civil society. It needs more than an abstract commitment . . . .” What is this if not a concession to the necessity of love, or at least something very like it?
Without this eternal vision, it appears that it’s better to be rich, because poverty carries with it less power, less prestige, less control over one’s life — more obvious suffering, and the kind of suffering that is most obviously alleviated by what the wealthy have in abundance. This is the only place from which A.I. can work. But in the light of eternity, we can identify ourselves and others not by our condition in this life but by our common humanity and eternal destiny, and we will find that our efforts to alleviate poverty stem not from a commitment to ending poverty but a commitment to love.
We make donations, or volunteer, or found nonprofits, or push for policy changes, not because we have a project to accomplish or a societal problem to conquer, but because we see the dignity in others and recognize our common humanity in them, and we do not want to see any person destitute or treated unjustly. When this perspective increases, class conflict decreases. All interpersonal conflict decreases. Interior conflict decreases. Along with these, we would find that greed, war, and social instability also decrease, and are these not major causes of poverty?
Leo’s goal is not to eradicate poverty, but to grow in love. Tech may be a helpful tool for some of the material challenges involved in helping the poor, but it can never replace a living heart.
