Artificial intelligence can give us answers faster than ever. But what happens when getting the answer replaces the work of thinking?
In this week’s Vatican Access, Steve Metzger of the Vatican Apostolic Library argues that reading does something AI cannot: it puts us in contact with another human mind and forces us to wrestle with ideas for ourselves.
In this episode:
Why AI risks “short-circuiting” the intellectual work of reading and learning
What we lose when we stop reading books seriously
Why physical libraries still matter in a digital world
How scholars can help identify AI-generated falsehoods
What Pope Leo XIV is saying about AI and Catholic education
Why Metzger calls the Vatican Library an “anti-Babel”
What it is actually like to work with manuscripts by Thomas Aquinas and other treasures of the Vatican Library
Metzger’s central concern is not that AI will suddenly take control of humanity, but that we may gradually surrender some of our own intellectual agency to machines designed to make everything easier.
And that gives his image of the Vatican Library particular force: where Babel represents fragmentation, the Library gathers the languages and intellectual traditions of humanity together in what Metzger calls a “service of unity.”