by Marie-Lucile Kubacki
Salt Lake City – Before asking whether artificial intelligence will save humanity or endanger it, people need to answer a more intimate question: what, in their own lives, is worth preserving? During a session of the G20 Interfaith Forum in Salt Lake City, that question shifted the debate from the capabilities of machines to the clarity of human values.
“The more that we are clear about the values that we are trying to preserve, the better we’ll be able to confront this moment,” said DZ Kalman, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Kogod Research Center. AI, he suggested, is exposing something uncomfortable: people do not always know precisely what they value in their relationships, their schools or their encounters with one another.
Moderated by Medlir Mema, director of the AI Ethics and Governance Institute, the October 17 session asked: “Technology for Good: Is AI a Modern Miracle or an Existential Threat?” Kalman’s observation cut beneath that opposition. Responsible use requires more than understanding what a system can do. It also requires understanding what human beings should not surrender to it. “Sometimes the work we have to do around AI is not actually about AI,” he said. It is about articulating the value of engaging with others, of meeting in physical spaces, and of recognising the dangers of addiction. Religious communities, he argued, have a vital contribution to make to that work.
Beyond a machine’s apology
Kalman approached the distinction through an ordinary experience: receiving an apology from an AI system. Such apologies can be perfectly phrased, he noted. But users do not necessarily feel moved to reply, “That’s okay, I forgive you.” For him, that hesitation reveals an intuition that something is missing: the enduring moral subject whom a human being might forgive. The example illustrated why fluent language alone cannot settle questions of moral status, responsibility or personhood.
He also warned that treating AI as an independent agent could obscure the responsibility of its developers. What might otherwise be understood as a defective product could appear instead as an autonomous actor. Clarifying values therefore has practical consequences: it helps determine where accountability belongs.
A mirror of human intentions
Lamia Mekhemar, Egypt’s former ambassador to the Holy See, expressed a related conviction. “AI, to me, is a mirror of our intentions,” she said. “What it becomes depends less on the technology itself than on who we are when we use this technology.” She welcomed its possibilities in healthcare, education and communication between civilizations. But she warned that innovation was moving faster than rules and ethical reflection.
“Technology can tell us what is possible, but it cannot tell us what is right,” she said. Nor can it determine what deserves protection. Those judgments remain human responsibilities. Her argument also placed a limit on appeals to conscience alone. “Principles cannot guarantee conduct,” she observed. Ethics provides direction, but law must establish obligations and regulation must make them effective. Knowing one’s values is a starting point, not a substitute for institutions capable of defending them.
Changing the incentives
Tomicah Tillemann, CEO of the Pro-Human AI Coalition, carried that reasoning into the economics of technology. He rejected the impression that AI’s development follows an inevitable course. Its direction depends on decisions that people and institutions can still influence. He described the preceding generation of digital platforms as operating through addiction, the collection of personal information and the manipulation of behaviour. Repeating that pattern with more powerful systems, he warned, could further weaken human agency.
The challenge is therefore not simply to ask users to behave responsibly inside systems designed around different priorities. It is to change the incentives and structures shaping those systems. “We are accepting the current design of AI as a given,” he said. “It is not a given.” He pointed to alternatives that could give individuals greater control over their data and their interactions with AI.
For Muhammadou M. O. Kah, Gambia’s ambassador to Switzerland and permanent representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva, responsibility cannot remain with a small circle of governments and companies. “Artificial intelligence is a test of our moral maturity,” he said. Religious traditions bring moral memory, ethical imagination and a commitment to vulnerable people. These should inform demands for transparency, fairness and human oversight. Countries of the Global South, he insisted, must help shape the rules rather than serve merely as sources of data or testing grounds.
The guidance offered by “Magnifica humanities”
The closing exchange returned to what individuals could do next. Participants were urged to take time to understand the guidance offered by religious leaders, notably the encyclical of Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas rather than leave those reflections at the level of institutional declarations.
In the final remarks, reading and understanding such guidance was presented as one immediate step towards avoiding harmful outcomes in everyday life. Another was to demand better technological alternatives: systems whose design and economic incentives reflect ethical commitments, rather than expecting consumers to accept whatever developers offer. The two proposals brought the discussion back to Kalman’s central insight. Moral reflection and technological choice cannot be separated. Before deciding what to delegate to a machine, people need to understand the purpose of the activity itself: what education should cultivate, why human presence matters, and what makes a relationship valuable. Preparing for AI, in that account, begins not with surrendering judgment to a more capable system, but with learning to name what must not be lost.
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