8 June 2026

Initially, I couldn’t understand it. The Russians and Ukrainians were digging trenches to defend and attack each other. Could it be that warfare in the twenty-first century had regressed a hundred years to the battleground of the First World War and the Western Front?

Whilst the trenches still remain, there have been two technological developments. The first is the drone and its capacity to earmark particular targets, damage infrastructure and human beings without the vulnerability of human contact.

The second is the use of AI to create robots. Instead of human beings risking their lives to decimate the enemy, robots have been created literally to do the running instead. They do not share our vulnerability. If they are destroyed another can be built fairly quickly.

In this way the human element of warfare is being removed. On the face of it, this appears to be  a good outcome. Human lives are not being sacrificed unnecessarily. But how far can we go with technological warfare before we lose our humanity, our ability to empathise,  our compassion, our mercy?

Ai has been created by human beings. As such, it is capable of enhancing the common good. But equally well, it can be used to exercise undue power over others especially when those who control its development are a wealthy few.

Recently, the Pope issued an encyclical, ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ in which he highlighted ‘a culture of power’ being supported by the development of AI. ‘Precisely because we experience limits – vulnerability, suffering, failure – we can recognise the inviolable dignity of every person ….’ This is what it means to be human and AI can never replicate it.