Last year, Pope Leo XIV declared St. John Henry Newman the newest Doctor of the Church. Newman’s chosen motto was Cor ad cor loquitur (“Heart speaks to heart”). Truth, goodness and beauty — we have always held that these things must be spoken from one heart to another. However, in our current age of artificial intelligence (AI), I fear there is a great temptation to doubt the necessity of this belief.
Do certain truths demand cor ad cor loquitur, or can truth, goodness and beauty be shared from machine to heart (or mind)?
I was confronted with this question recently after seeing a post on X from Father Ian VanHeusen, a well-known priest.
“I have been spending the past week,” Father VanHeusen writes, “developing my ideas and my ‘system’ using AI. This has led [to] the creation of 7 AI books touching on everything from my theories on politics … [to] prophecy, visions and miracles. … [B]efore AI, writing one of these 7 books would have taken 6 months to a year.”
That post raises an important ethical question: Is AI merely a research tool, or should it also generate the content of books that seek to teach truth?
Father
