The following is excerpted from the Deseret News. To see the original article, CLICK HERE. 

The world’s 6 billion people of faith need to mobilize now to convince AI labs that artificial intelligence must always put human values over machines and algorithms, said leaders who met this week at the Vatican City.

The notable group of global faith leaders, academics, ethicists and AI experts issued a 10-page working paper on AI ethics on Wednesday after two days of intense dialogue at the Rome Summit on Ethics and Artificial Intelligence.

The need to apply moral leadership to the development of AI is urgent because the race to create the dominant AI model is putting the needs of machine intelligence ahead of protecting children from real harms, they said.

AI also is accelerating child sexual abuse, cyber attacks, the disruption of democracy and financial crime, too, one participant said. Another said unethical AI is harming relationships profoundly.

Several group members noted that most AI models are machines are built on the same foundation of addictive algorithms that monetize social media platforms.

“The rise of AI is currently the greatest threat to religious freedom,” said Tyler Deaton, founder of the American Security Foundation, which sponsored the summit. “It threatens it in so many different ways, and threatens it with machine strength and persistence. We have to sleep. It doesn’t. It doesn’t take a break.”

There is still time to influence the future of AI, and the summit adjourned with an armful of action items.

“It is very early days for this technology,” an AI investor told the group. “The way it is adopted will shape the technology as much as the way it was developed.”

One of the action items was a call to support the launch of a tool that will be designed by Brigham Young University, Baylor, Notre Dame and Yeshiva University computer scientists and tech experts that will evaluate AI programs.

“This effort we’re talking about is not to bring religion into AI, but to make sure that it’s balanced so that it can be accurate and honest and respectful,” he told the group. “It has to be accurate, it has to be honest, it has to be respectful. So please help us in this effort.”

To see the original article from the Deseret News, CLICK HERE.