[Paper Review] Can Technology Create Idols?: Examining the Vatican AI Document

Kim Jiyeon's paper "Does Technology Create Idols?: Centered on the 'Vatican AI Document'" is closer to a science and technology studies attempt that broadens the scope of AI ethics discourse. The author asks: why do humans feel awe before technology they created? Why do they use technology as a tool yet at some moment treat it like greater authority? And can religion provide, not as outdated moralism, but as an important intellectual resource for reinterpreting technological civilization? The paper places the "Old and New Things: Notice on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence" announced by the Vatican in 2025 at its center and connects AI, human intelligence, soul, and idolatry. The author reads this document not only as the Vatican's confessional declaration but as an occasion to restore the issues of relationality, temporality, and invisible reality that we have lost in the AI era.

The Reason Religion Is Called Back in the AI Era
 Religion and science are often dealt with within the dichotomy of irrational vs. rational. But the author doubts this structure. The modern world elevated science to the place of "complete truth" and pushed religion aside as outdated belief, but in that process the very way of understanding the world itself became impoverished. If only what can be rationally verified is recognized as real, many things humans are actually affected by — faith, attachment, imagination, fear, awe, ethical responsibility — disappear from sight.

The core concept the author draws is "invisible reality." Religion is a long tradition of relating to things that are not visible but leave powerful effects on human life. Things like God, soul, salvation, guilt, and vocation are hard to measure in a laboratory but have the power to change human behavior and society. The author sees religion as useful precisely at this point when dealing with AI issues. AI too is not only a matter of visible mechanical devices. AI changes humans' imagination, sense of authority, decision-making structures, value of labor, forms of knowledge, and attribution of responsibility. Therefore, to properly understand AI, one must look not only at performance, data, and algorithms but at the invisible effects it creates.

Christianity Has Not Rejected Technology but Has Used It with Caution
The paper views the Christian tradition as having been deeply intertwined with technology from the beginning. The Bible itself was transmitted through documentary technology, and female mystics turned private religious experiences into public language through writing. Religion is not a pure outsider outside technology that criticizes technology, and has formed itself through documents, writing, printing, educational institutions, and ritual devices.

However, the Christian tradition has always detected tension when using technology. The stories of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, Cain and Abel, the Tower of Babel, and the Great Flood show the possibilities of arrogance and destruction that arise when humans try to rule the world through technology and wisdom. The reason this paper is interesting is the way it connects the Bible's technology criticism with contemporary AI discussion. The Tree of Knowledge is read not just as a forbidden fruit but as a symbol of knowledge that destroys relationship with nature. The Tower of Babel is read as the form of human desire to seize God's place through technological means. Through these interpretations, the author positions AI as a new yet not at all unfamiliar problem. AI is the latest form of the desire humans have long repeatedly held — "I want to transcend myself with what I created."

Human Intelligence Is Not Computational Ability but Relational Capacity
The first subject the author most importantly treats in the Vatican AI document is intelligence. Here intelligence is a comprehensive capacity including informational, spiritual, cognitive, physical, and relational dimensions. That is, humans exercise intelligence living within the world with a body, relating to others, taking responsibility, loving, regretting, waiting.

From this perspective, AI's "intelligence" is very limited. AI may show excellent computation and pattern recognition ability, but that is not wisdom in the human meaning. The Vatican document views that AI is made by human thinking, learns from human-generated materials, responds to human input, and is maintained by human labor. Therefore AI is not an artificial replica of human intelligence but a product of human intelligence.

The author's point is that while the Vatican document is persuasive in distinguishing human intelligence and AI, there is a risk of grasping intelligence in an excessively human-centered way. If intelligence is viewed as relational capacity, intelligence cannot be monopolized only by humans. All life, ecosystems, cells, and non-human beings also form relationships, respond, and constitute the world in their own ways. While saying machines cannot think like humans is right, the author argues that this cannot seal the possibility that machines might in the future have intelligence in an entirely different way. This part is the sharpest transition in the paper. The author defends the Vatican document while also suggesting it must boldly go beyond the Dartmouth-style AI definition and anthropocentrism.

Restoring Temporality Through the Word Soul
The second core subject is soul. In AI discussions, the word "soul" is usually treated as unscientific or rhetorical expression. But the author interprets soul as a matter of temporality and relationship. Humans are beings who remember the past, interpret the present, and wait for the future. Humans are not reducible to the function of a single moment. They make choices, regret, take responsibility, endure pain, and reconstruct the meaning of their own lives. This thickness of time makes humans human.

The author takes issue with the point that AI is technology operating in the present. AI processes enormous amounts of data, but does not have "time lived" like humans. Of course AI can also process conversation history and context, but that differs from temporality such as human memory, regret, and waiting. For humans, time is not accumulation of information but formation of existence. From this perspective, the soul mentioned by the Vatican document is not a residue of irrational faith but a conceptual device for not reducing humans to functional beings.

This section is important when thinking about labor, education, healthcare, and administrative systems in the AI era. Modern organizations increasingly digitize people and evaluate by task processing speed and output. AI can further reinforce this tendency. However, humans cannot be understood only by fast processing ability. People have time for waiting, hesitation, failure, recovery, mourning, and growth. The author attempts to restore precisely this temporal dimension through religious language.

AI Idolization Is Not Worshipping Machines but Worshipping Humans Themselves
The third subject is idols. The question "Does technology create idols?" — which is also the title of this paper — is actually closer to the question "Why do humans make technology into idols?" What the Vatican AI document cautions against is not the science-fictional scene of AI itself becoming God. The more realistic danger is humans regarding AI as a greater other, a more objective judge, a more complete intellect, and handing over their own responsibility.

 Traditional idols cannot speak, see, or hear. So with just a little thought one can know it is an object made by humans. However, AI appears to speak, appears to judge, appears to understand. Because of this, AI can become a much more powerful idol. People may suspend their own judgment because AI "said" something, and blur the responsibility of choice because AI "recommended" something.

Here idol worship is not worshipping machines but humans becoming subordinated again to products made by their own hands. Looking more deeply, it is worship of humans themselves. Humans worship their own capabilities, their own efficiency, their own desire for domination by deifying technology they created. The problem is not whether AI has consciousness but what authority humans are granting to AI. AI's danger exists not only inside the machine but in the way human society summons, deploys, and follows AI.

The Real Question of the AI Era Is Not "What Can Be Made" but "What Relationships Are We In"
We often ask how far AI can go. Can it write, can it draw, can it replace humans, can it have consciousness? However, from the author's perspective, the more important question is what kind of relationship AI has with humans. What kind of being are humans calling AI? How is AI changing human temporality, soul, labor, responsibility, and imagination? And are we remaining as tool users before this technology, or are we becoming worshippers who hand authority over to what we created?

 The author neither demonizes AI nor negates technology itself. Religion too has grown alongside technology, and humans have extended themselves through technology. The problem lies in whether technology enriches the relationship between the world and humans, or severs relationships and makes humans components of efficiency. When humans lose relationship, temporality, and responsibility, technology becomes an idol.