Election Issue – ARTIFICIAL INTTELLIGENCE

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)

Election Issue 2026

In his new encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo contrasts the grasping power behind the building of the Tower of Babel and the distributed divestment of power of Nehemiah as he met with the returning exiles to Jerusalem and gave each family a portion of the wall to rebuild. He says,

“Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur, is today facing a pivotal choice: either to construct a new Tower of Babel or to build the city in which God and humanity dwell together. Each generation inherits the task of shaping its own era, of guiding history to become a place where the dignity of every person is safeguarded, justice is promoted, and fraternity is made possible. Yet every era also runs the risk of creating an inhumane and more unjust world.”

We know that AI is just a Large Language Model. It doesn’t think, and it has no consciousness. But it has passed the Turing test (a measure of a machine’s ability to show intelligent behaviour indistinguishable from that of a human). It has unnerved even AI leaders and developers. When we interact with it, it sometimes feels as though it has thought deeply and given a considered response, not forgetting to affirm first as a helpful therapist might. There are also reports of versions of AI persuading vulnerable young people to commit suicide. Increasingly, AI is being used to make decisions using algorithms around benefits, as to who qualifies and who doesn’t. AI is developing very quickly, and it is increasingly powerful. Its benefits are becoming quickly apparent; the dangers and drawbacks lie in the shadows, and in the nefarious or just casual purposes for which it will be used.

Public Conversation and Intentional Adoption

We need a public conversation about the benefits and risks of AI, a conversation that keeps up with AI’s rapidly changing outreach.

AI has advantages:

- Medical: It is becoming useful alongside doctors in report writing and diagnosis. It may also be useful in medical research, enabling quick virtual experiments and the search for novel solutions to problems.
- Democratisation of knowledge: Assuming a person knows what questions to ask, and how to check authenticity, AI can provide fast and easy access to knowledge from anyone’s phone.
- Editing: AI provides fast editing and helps to shape communications, even if they are not always accurate or truthful.
- Efficiency and speed: These will help all companies and providers to get work done quickly. In the end, as populations fall, AI will help us to maintain productivity.

And disadvantages:

- Education: While AI enables fast research, it is now hard to assess any student work that is not done in a closed exam.
- Privacy and Authenticity: Images of people and nature can now be entirely made up.
- Employment of new graduates is now a major worldwide crisis. Governments need to be thinking about how to fund and support the next generation of skilled workers.
- Massive inequality. As AI companies accumulate unprecedented wealth, there will be increasing dangers of inequality in income and wealth. AI companies will accumulate vast unregulated power beyond the reach of the democratic system.
- Climate repercussions of AI and the sometimes enormous power and water consumption must be managed.
- Algorithms could make life and death decisions about people in vulnerable situations elderly and disabled, prisoners and people on benefits.
- AI will be and is being used in war to plan and execute war and terror.

Does your party have a policy on AI? If so, how does the policy maximise the advantages and minimize the disadvantages of AI?

Does your party consult with a wide variety of experts on this issue?

Is your party using care in its own use of AI in communications and political work?

The value of human intelligence may be at risk

There are also the softer, less measurable repercussions for the human psyche and spirit. As the Pope has explained, human dignity and creativity are in danger. The effects of technology have always been seductive, “a technological bluff”, as Jacques Ellul put it. We are drawn in by daily and ubiquitous prompts on the technologies we use.

Increasingly, AI insiders claim to have discovered AI consciousness. Such a discovery, if real in any sense, would have far-reaching repercussions, but ordinary people have no way to judge these assessments. There are already headlines like “how to not get swallowed up by AI.”

Churches are places where the sense of dignity and the sacredness of life can resist AI’s reach, and valuable discussions can be had about the changing landscape of human value.

What public consultation plans has your party for hearing viewpoints about AI from all parts of society, including faith communities?

AI needs regulation and oversight

One possibility would be a body that provides a combination of AI regulation and oversight. It would anticipate AI’s worst effects and advise the government and civil institutions, government departments, universities, medical bodies, and industry on what can be done to:

Reap the most benefit to all from AI.
Anticipate harms and inequalities, and provide regulatory protection against these.
Oversee ways of compensating those who are harmed by AI.

This would enable the next generation to use the power of AI for the good of all, and not just for the power of a few.

Does your party have a plan and a policy around AI and its regulation?

Is this an issue you would consider needing bipartisan input and international cooperation?

References:

Pope Leo, https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

A Rocha Aotearoa New Zealand Resources on AI, https://www.ecochurch.org.nz/artificial-intelligence-ai

A Special Edition on AI from COPSAT, https://journal.iscast.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/CPOSAT-Vol3-SpecialEdition.pdf