Preserving Literature and How Catholics Need to Get in the Game

Artificial Intelligence is becoming a phenomenon—some love seeing this advancement. Yet, there are some who are getting concerned as to what it can do to human beings. Books have long defined culture and have even preserved it over the centuries.

Sadly, with the technological apparatus of the last thirty years, reading is no longer a common pastime for many in the Gen Z age range and, soon enough, Gen Beta.

One example of concern is how AI intends to replace literature. An article from the Guardian raised an alarm that an AI firm called Anthropic is doing what could potentially destroy literature forever.

This firm is aiming to improve its language by buying old copies of books, uploading them, and even altering the content of the original to fit its agenda called Project Panama.

A court filing reveals that “Project Panama is our effort to destructively scan all the books in the world.”

Recently, Pope Leo XIV sounded the alarm on the imminent threat AI can pose to society.  He wrote that a machine can aggregate grammar patterns, but it completely lacks the "openness of the human heart to truth" and the lived suffering or joy that anchors great literature.

Catholics have long been shaped by the true, good, and beautiful of literature. Even Bishop James Conley of the Diocese of Lincoln credits classic literature in helping him and his lifelong friends embrace Catholicism.

There is something that needs to be learned. We need more literature that can help those break away from the technocratic race. We also must adapt critical thinking and creativity. These are the ways to counter AI.

Catholics must cultivate originality and safeguard the thinking that made authors like O’Connor, Chesterton, Tolkien, and Percy.

Catholics are called to preserve classic literature while also creating new ones that would permeate for generations to come.