‘We are all impacted by AI but nobody’s listening’ to one another, cardinal warns at conference

An annual forum on artificial intelligence held in Rome this week aimed to foster a new interdisciplinary community dedicated to supporting the development of AI products that serve the Church’s mission.

The Builders AI Forum, held Nov. 5–6 at the Pontifical Gregorian University, was centered on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica Humanitas and brought together companies leading in Catholic AI, venture capital, and angel investors as well as prominent AI thought leaders and researchers.

In his opening remarks, Cardinal Michael Czerny, a founder of the Vatican’s inter-dicastery commission on artificial intelligence, drew on his work with the commission to remind participants that we “cannot treat learning as an isolated, transactional process but rather a communal, dialogue form.” He went on to say that “we are all impacted by AI but nobody’s listening [to one another].”

Vincent Higgins, CEO of the Builders AI Forum, said the event aims to cover four areas: AI in evangelization, in healthcare, in education, and in building and scaling AI for responsible development in creating critical safeguards online.

The prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, Maria…