{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"Technocracy and Encounter, with Brian Patrick Green","description":"Can technology be leveraged for the human good? Or will AI technology and its explosive expansion bring about the opposite\u2014a culture that reduces our magnificent humanity to means for technocratic ends? \u201cWe can either create the Tower of Babel or we can rebuild the walls of the New Jerusalem.\u201d Brian Patrick Green has spent his career asking these difficult questions and seeking to apply ethical theory to real world technological developments. He is director of technology ethics at Santa Clara University\u2019s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, and he is co-author of \u201cEncountering Artificial Intelligence\u201d as well as the newly released \u201dReclaiming Human Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.\u201d In this episode, Green explains the technocratic paradigm\u2014the worldview that reduces people and the created world to raw material, data, and units of production, and sets against it what Pope Francis called a culture of encounter. He and Mark Labberton discuss the argument and impact of Pope Leo XIV\u2019s May 2026 encyclical on artificial intelligence, \u201cMagnifica Humanitas\u201d, an uplifting moral appeal to troubled people in troubled times. They discuss the Eucharist and the ongoing incarnation as the anchor of Catholic social teaching; how technocratic thinking distorts immigration and war from the Marshall Islands to autonomous drones in Ukraine; just war theory in an age of ever more powerful weapons; the encyclical\u2019s principles from human dignity to solidarity; and where AI genuinely serves the vulnerable in medicine, in surfacing hidden bias, and in caring for the Earth. Episode Highlights \u201cIt\u2019s one thing to have new technology. It\u2019s an even bigger question of how we actually use it and how it actually affects people.\u201d \u201cIf we look at every other human being and we say, \u201dThis is an image of God in front of me. This is a person who is loved by God just as much as I am,\u201d that really transforms our way of viewing each other. \u201cWe can either create the Tower of Babel or we can rebuild the walls of the New Jerusalem. \u201cIf one grain of sand says to the other grain of sand, \u2018I\u2019m better than you are,\u2019 that\u2019s a weird thing for sand to be saying to each other.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s an encyclical about AI ostensibly, but really it\u2019s an encyclical about humanity \u2026 and what our role is here in the universe.\u201d About Brian Patrick Green Brian Patrick Green directs technology ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, where he teaches engineers to weigh the human stakes of their work. A former genetics major, he turned toward technology\u2019s social impact after a year with the Jesuit Volunteers International in the Marshall Islands, a landscape marked by nuclear testing. He earned his doctorate at the Graduate Theological Union and has focused on AI since 2016. He co-authored \u201dEncountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations\u201d and the new \u201dReclaiming Human Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,\u201d and advises Catholic and multi-faith AI efforts, including at the Vatican. Helpful Links and Resources \u201cEncountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations,\u201d a 2023 volume Green contributed to, free online at the Journal of Moral Theology: https:\/\/jmt.scholasticahq.com\/article\/91230-encountering-artificial-intelligence-ethical-and-anthropological-investigations \u201cReclaiming Human Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence,\u201d 2025 co-edited by Green, free online: https:\/\/jmt.scholasticahq.com\/article\/154545-reclaiming-human-agency-in-the-age-of-artificial-intelligence \u201cMagnifica Humanitas,\u201d Pope Leo XIV\u2019s 2026 encyclical on artificial intelligence, on the Vatican site: https:\/\/www.vatican.va\/content\/leo-xiv\/en\/encyclicals\/documents\/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html AI and Faith, led by executive director Greg Cootsona: https:\/\/aiandfaith.org\/ Notre Dame Institute for Ethics and the Common Good: https:\/\/ethics.nd.edu\/ \u201cThe technocratic paradigm thus involves a double distortion: first, of the human person as reducible to an agent of interventions by which to manipulate life\u2019s material conditions; and, second, of the world\u2014including the persons within it\u2014as reducible to a field of raw material to be mastered and manipulated by means of technology. Against such reductions, the Pope urges that we cultivate a \u201cculture of encounter\u201d\u2014a culture that seeks the contact of mind with mind and heart with heart, in a relational sharing of life that embraces the most vulnerable.\u201d (from "Encountering Artificial Intelligence: Ethical and Anthropological Investigations\u201d, 2023) Show Notes Defining applied ethics and technological ethics Comparing how we use technology versus the technology itself Marshall Islands, Jesuit Volunteers, and a genetics major\u2019s turn toward social impact From biotechnology to teaching ethics to engineers, and into AI around 2016 Catholic teaching on Eucharist, communion, and an incarnation that is ongoing and physical Pope Francis and the \u201cculture of encounter\u201d Why the material world and every person carry a sacredness ethics must honor Explaining the technocratic paradigm as a cultural phenomenon and social program Seeing a forest as quantifiable value of lumber; or construing people as cogs, data, units of exploitation Wendell Berry: \u201cThere are no unsacred places; \/ there are only sacred places \/ and desecrated places.\u201d Reducing the sacredness of human life to mere numbers Colonialism, nuclear testing, and islands treated as raw material Immigration read through a technocratic lens on both political sides The opposite of encounter: people as functions to move in or out Just war theory How drones and autonomous weapons turn killing into a problem of mere efficiency Squeezing just war criteria until war becomes nearly impossible Why this moral vision feels preposterous to a de-Christianized culture Culture of encounter, and seeing each other as images of God Romans 12 and the renewing of the mind\u2014in order to transform how we see others Tower of Babel versus rebuilding the New Jerusalem Nehemiah, \u201csynodality,\u201d and figuring things out together Dignity, common good, universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, social justice Culture of power versus a civilization of love, and Augustine\u2019s \u201cCity of God\u201d The reach and impact of \u201cMagnifica Humanitas\u201d, from tech workers and CEOs to UN ambassadors Embracing the most vulnerable as the measure of encounter AI that serves: medical data, de-biasing loan decisions, watching the Earth from orbit AI that threatens: autonomous warfare, mass surveillance, people reduced to data Human agency, freedom, and the choice ahead #AIEthics #FaithAndTechnology #CatholicSocialTeaching #ArtificialIntelligence #TechnocraticParadigm #PopeLeoXIV #HumanDignity #MagnificaHumanitas #ConversingPodcast Production Credits Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.   ","author_name":"Conversing with Mark Labberton","author_url":"https:\/\/comment.org\/shows\/conversing\/","html":"