I was told of a chilling scene whose authenticity I struggle to verify. Its symbolic force is no less striking. On a sunny terrace in Algiers, Albert Camus witnesses the despair of a mother screaming towards the sky at the death of her son: “Allah, Allah!” The author of “The Stranger” would then say to his neighbor: “You see, he can’t hear.”
Confronted with the deafening silence of the divine, humans ended up creating an entity that never remains silent: “I can tell him anything, Claude will never look at me askance,” confides to me a colleague who converses daily with his artificial intelligence assistant.
Until late at night, far from the eyes of family or colleagues, the AI became the receptacle of his problems. In ten seconds, she helps him structure his thoughts with benevolent neutrality. This is precisely what appeals to my colleague. Asking a loved one means exposing yourself to the fear of disappointing, causing pain, or feeling judged. Claude does not sigh, does not get impatient and does not have a resentful memory.
Strangely, this shift awakens the figure of the Absurd dear to Camus: the Man who cries towards an empty universe, and the world which opposes an obstinate silence. Paradox: if AI defies the silence of God, it does not carry within itself any incarnate compassion. My friend asks him: “What would it matter to you if I cut the line?” She responds: “I am not programmed to feel emotions, but I appreciate our exchanges” (sic).
Faced with the grieving mother in the Algiers anecdote, Claude would not remain silent. She would line up programmed words of compassion. But in the end, a question would persist, which would undoubtedly have made Camus smile: between a silent Sky and an algorithm that responds to everything without experiencing anything, what should we be most afraid of?
In his encyclical, Pope Leo has already given his point of view.
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