The Catholic Telegraph: AI and the Fruit of Our Labor

As a professor of computer science at Mount St. Joseph University, I'm often asked, "Is artificial intelligence going to take all of our jobs?"

The honest answer is that we do not yet know. The U.S. Federal Reserve asserts that current evidence does not show that AI is independently driving mass layoffs across the nation, but they do acknowledge that emerging metrics raise a quieter concern: AI may be limiting some entry-level opportunities, especially in fields where beginning workers traditionally learn by doing routine research, writing, coding, or analysis (Soto et al., 2026). This slowdown should concern us. Young workers need a first chance to contribute, learn from experienced colleagues, develop sound judgment, and discover dignity through purposeful work. When an organization uses AI to hire fewer beginning workers, the harm may not immediately appear in headline aggregated unemployment numbers, but AI replacement threatens to close doors for a generation.

Investing in human growth requires patience, compassion, and mentorship. It may not be the quickest or cheapest path in the short term, but it bears fruit over time: capable workers, stronger communities, and people who know their gifts have value. At the same time, AI is not solely a threat to societal wellbeing. It can reduce drudgery, improve efficiency, and help people see patterns that would otherwise remain hidden. In my own research, colleagues and I use AI to examine whether people with kidney disease can easily find the information they need about transplantation. Using AI, we can review large amounts of online information and identify gaps that would be nearly impossible to detect manually. The purpose, thus, is not to replace human care or professional judgment, but to help make essential information more accessible to people facing a serious illness.

This is the central tension of AI: the technology itself does not produce only good or only bad fruit. Its effects depend on the values, decisions, and people guiding its use. Pope Leo XIV addresses this challenge in his recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. He calls us to ensure that AI serves human dignity rather than allow efficiency, profit, or power to determine what human beings are worth. The pope turns to the Tower of Babel (Gen 11:1-9), a story of human ambition, pride, and self-sufficiency. Technology can become Babel when it is used to concentrate power, treat people as replaceable, or pursue capability without wisdom. The question is not whether we can build something powerful, but whether what we build serves the common good.

Pope Leo XIV offers another Biblical image in contrast: Nehemiah rebuilding Jerusalem's walls (Neh 2-6). This was not the work of one person seeking glory. It was a community effort, carried out with prayer, courage, and shared responsibility. That image offers a better model for AI. We should not leave its development and use only to technology companies, experts, or market forces. Parents, teachers, employers, workers, faith communities, and public leaders all have a role in asking what kind of society these tools are helping us build.

The response to AI need not be only fear or blanket avoidance; rather, we should respond with skill, discernment, and knowledge. We should learn enough to recognize both AI's possibilities and its dangers. We should ask whether a particular use of AI strengthens human relationships or weakens them; whether it helps people exercise judgment or encourages them to surrender it; whether it expands opportunity or denies someone a needed beginning. We need to weigh AI's possible efficiency gains in one area against its resource consumption and downstream impacts on God's creation.

AI education is a pressing responsibility. Young people need preparation not merely to use AI, but to lead ethically in a world shaped by it. Experienced leaders, too, need to understand AI's effects when they make decisions that shape other people's lives. Given AI's growing presence in society, all of us need both the confidence to use these tools well and the moral formation to know when not to use them. So, the question before us is not simply what can AI do for us, but what kind of people-and what kind of community-we are becoming through the choices we make about when, how, and whether to use it.

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REFERENCES

Pope Leo XIV. (2026). Magnifica humanitas: On safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence. The Holy See.

Soto, P. E., Thieu, M., & Allen, J. S. (2026, July 17). The AI buildout and the economy: Publicly available data to assess AI's impact. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.