The Social Burden of Artificial Intelligence

The Social Burden of Artificial Intelligence

Peter Kopa, Prague, April 1, 2026

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3Vym6Mz7QE

The correct approach to AI can be found in a seminal text of Catholic social teaching, the encyclical Rerum novarum. This teaching should not be viewed as a text on structural issues of political economy, but rather as a text on the demands of time and authority.

During the Industrial Revolution two centuries ago, the father’s wages were not enough to cover the cost of living. That is why wives and children also had to work, leaving hardly any time for family, the parish, and worship. And thus a dependence on the employer arose. This situation, moreover, seemed immutable; members of the household seemed to have no way to escape their condition as “wage slaves.”

The encyclical *Rerum Novarum* demanded a “decent” and just wage, one not dictated solely by the labor market. If the father is paid enough to support his family and to accumulate savings, the family is strengthened as the building block of society. And its authority is also restored.

Today, a situation analogous to that of the Industrial Revolution era is emerging once again. Harvard University professor Shoshana Zuboff has defined it as “surveillance capitalism.” In the euphoric days of the Wunderkinder (child prodigies), such as Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, technology was considered to be at the service of humanity as a creator of value. But around the early 2000s, things took a turn, so that the user of technology became the product.

Man as the Means of Payment

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieYadopst4s

The maxim that “if the digital app is free, you are the product being sold” is well known. We pay for seemingly “free” services not with money, but with our time and our attention. Thus, revenue comes from advertising targeted at digitally selected users, which leads to better prediction and more reliable control of their behavior.

My fellow teachers across the country say that students can no longer sit through a class: they must “go to the bathroom” at least once an hour, which is a pretext for checking their phones, just as tobacco addicts used to behave. These shortcomings are neither accidents nor mere weaknesses of human nature. What is natural and logical is for parents to spend time with and devote themselves to their children, not to Instagram feeds, and to follow a culture established by them, not by influencers.

The Digital Paradigm Shift

https://www.unesco.org/es/artificial-intelligence/recommendation-ethics

As Professor Zuboff has rightly pointed out, to overcome “surveillance capitalism,” we must view it as an addiction to tobacco, drugs, or pornography—evils that can destroy a person from within.

The main ethical issue regarding AI chatbots, therefore, is not new. Will these new technologies serve as de facto trustees, prioritizing the legitimate interests of the user, or will they ally themselves with existing “surveillance capitalism,” so that chats end up serving an advertising master, dragging users into the enslaving networks of subjective illusions?

Just as Leo XIII, drawing on the principles of natural law, rejected communism as a solution to the exploitation of workers, so today we must reject, as a solution to “surveillance capitalism,” the kind of communism in social life observed in China. Here it is the state that regulates the time children spend in front of screens, not parents, at the expense of a system of identification and social control incompatible with religious, economic, and political freedom in a free society.

The Utility of AI

Every qualified person I know who uses AI claims to have experienced a dramatic increase in productivity, using AI not as entertainment but as a tool for work. Google, for instance, has observed a 10% overall increase in the efficiency of its engineers. For teaching staff, the large language model Claude can serve as both a part-time teaching assistant and a research assistant, all in one.

A simple rule, then, for a young person to benefit from the disruption that is undoubtedly coming would be: “Through your education, become someone who is capable of making good use of AI rather than being replaced by it.” This rule implies becoming, as far as possible, someone who is continually creative, a “source of content,” independent in thought, and possessing deep personal resources. The profile of a good entrepreneur would be well-suited for this. Achieving such intermediate goals requires, for most of us, a serious return to the sources of creativity in Western civilization, in communion with other like-minded people.

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Summary review of an article by Prof. Michael Pakaluk, published in ‘Catholic Things’ on March 26, 2026