777.hu, a Hungarian blog for young Catholics made an interview with György Cserey, Dean of the Faculty of Information Technology and Bionics about the preparations for the Pope's visit, the special gift for the Holy Father, and the dangers and possibilities of artificial intelligence.
How is Pázmány University preparing for the Pope's visit?
It is a great honor to have the Holy Father here. Basically, he comes to visit Pázmány Péter Catholic University and will be received by the Rector.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Faculty of Information Technology (ITK), and we have many successful graduates to be proud of. Many of them have become researchers, got a PhD, or have pursued a successful career abroad, but we also have graduates who have become our colleagues, i.e. lecturers and researchers at the university and are among the top 100 promising researchers in their field. Yet Pázmány ITK is less known compared to other universities offering IT study programs for a larger number of students. Therefore, around September, we asked ourselves how we could raise the Faculty's profile, and soon afterwards we found out that the Holy Father was coming here – I think that this is God's answer to our question, as well as His gift and His grace.
Few people are familiar with what you do at the Faculty of Information Technology and Bionics. How would you summarize its academic and scientific activities?
On the one hand, we provide excellent and, in my opinion, competitive education in the field of IT. On the other hand, we have a special feature: our study programs in bionics. In this respect, the curriculum of computer science engineering offered by Pázmány ITK is different from that of other universities, because we are focusing on developing engineering tools, hardware, and software related to biology and medicine.
What is bionics? This field is little known to many, particularly to those who are more versed in humanities.
Bionics is a field of science linking biology and electronics, embraced by information technology. Let me give you an example to help you understand how bionics contributes to everyday life. There is a competition called Cybathlon, organized every four years in Switzerland by ETH Zurich, Europe's most prestigious engineering university. This is essentially a 'Formula 1' race of devices designed by engineers to help people with disabilities. In one category, patients paralyzed from the waist down ride a bicycle by moving their muscles with a muscle stimulator. In another one, visually impaired people have to solve everyday tasks difficult for them with the help of targeted tools developed by the engineers. ITK's team has recently won the preliminary round of this second category. We are also planning to compete in a third category with software developed for measuring the brain's electrical activity, with which people paralyzed from the neck down will be able to control computer games or other software. This is what the meeting of biology, electronics and computer science is like.
"The primary mission of Pázmány ITK is to help people."
We actively collaborate with clinics, medical universities and hospitals, which ensures that our research and development activities are focused on finding well-functioning solutions to real problems.
In addition to our current educational offer, we also want to launch new master's programs in the near future, such as a Master's program in Quantum Engineering, where a technological leap is expected compared to the tools currently available. For example, doctors now use MRI machines to measure brain activity, which are huge devices that essentially take up an entire room and require patients to lie still, which is not a pleasant experience. This task may soon be solved by caps measuring brain activity. The other new Master's program that we are planning to launch is in the field of Bioinformatics, which will have a big impact on diagnostics based on genetic data and personalized therapies. We have exciting and forward-looking study programs in the pipeline.
There are also several solutions developed at ITK that are already in use.
You are preparing a special gift for Pope Francis, which is also linked to Pázmány ITK. Can you tell us about it?
Our idea was to make a special rosary for Pope Francis. Our study program in bionics has a lot to do with the development of prostheses, and for several years we have been working on a so-called prosthetic hand that reproduces the anatomy of the human hand as closely as possible. This is a special, unique and highly complex project, for which we have also developed a programmable spinning machine of our own design. This will be used to make the rosary for the Holy Father.
It is a beautiful symbol that we are making this sacred gift using a technology designed to help people.
Can you tell us about the event?
According to the plans, our reverend Rector will greet the Holy Father. Then one of the professors will give a testimony, which will be followed by a piano recital and a student testimony. Then comes the speech of the Holy Father. The meeting will end with the Lord's Prayer, which we will recite together. I trust that Pope Francis will bless our gift. There is a chapel in the building of Pázmány ITK, dedicated to Blessed László Batthyány-Strattmann. This year marks the 20th anniversary of his beatification, and on this occasion we will publish a holy card featuring the glass window of the chapel depicting the healing of the man born blind, and we would be very happy if the Pope blessed it too. The visit to our Faculty will be the last item in Pope Francis' program: he will go straight to Ferihegy airport from here.
Apart from the gifts, what else are you doing to prepare for the Pope's arrival?
In preparation of the Pope's visit, there are several programs organized by both the University and our Faculty. We pray a continuous novena, and there is also a weekly mass followed by adoration. We recently had a round table discussion about the Pope's visit, and we also organize a spiritual preparation for the participating students, comprising three evening sessions.
Of course, we also have to take care of the operational tasks to ensure a proper environment for the event. It is a huge responsibility, and it is not easy to meet all the requirements, but I am very enthusiastic and moved, and I feel very honored.
What other significance does the visit of the Holy Father have for Pázmány University?
The last time the Holy Father came to Hungary, he was probably touched by the fact that his visit was a source of joy and honor and also grace for so many people. I am sure that he perceives its importance for us. Our motto is "Fides et ratio". ("Faith and Reason", encyclical proclaimed by Pope John Paul II in 1998 – ed.) I think that his coming to a university must have a serious message. He wants to remind us that there is no conflict between science and faith.
There are certain areas where these issues must be increasingly tackled by relying on both. For example, the current state and future societal impact of artificial intelligence raise a large number of serious ethical and moral questions. But none of this can be understood without science, or more precisely, without computer science.
Speaking of artificial intelligence, what do you think about its increasingly rapid spread? What problems might it pose?
Artificial intelligence (AI) raises both ethical and security issues. From an ethical point of view, the question is what it can be used for legally, whether it may use texts written by others, and who owns the newly produced texts afterwards. However, a much more exciting problem is that we have here an intelligent-looking system and there is no way of programming ethics into it.
"Let's say it clearly: it is a psychopathic system."
It doesn't know what is right and what is wrong. It doesn't know what is real and what is virtual. It has no conscience.
Psychology teaches that the deepest layer of every decision we make is an emotional, moral filter, and all our decisions, even the logical ones, necessarily pass through it. It is very deep inside us, and we cannot naturally eliminate it. It is partly the reason why our society works. But artificial intelligence doesn't have such a filter, it hasn't been programmed into it. Or to be precise, they tried to put a polite layer on top of it, which is politically correct, therefore, you can't ask it to tell you how to make a bomb, for example. However, experience shows that you can eventually find your way to get the information that they have tried to cover up.
So the attempt to make this a safe system for society does not seem to have been successful so far. The fact is that we don't know yet what societal impact artificial intelligence will have in the short or long term. Hundreds of millions of people are using a system that is essentially psychopathic, with a layer on top that tries to hide it but can be tricked. There has been a report of someone committing suicide after conversations with the system. Taking a look at the exchanges, it became clear that the person had shared his suicidal thoughts, but the system did not try to dissuade him. Big multinationals are competing to see whose device will be the first to corner the market, and they are only concerned with financial returns, with security being almost completely ignored.
The other challenging question is what will happen to the hundreds of millions of people who will lose their jobs because of AI.
It is estimated that 300 million jobs will be lost in Europe and America alone. All this will happen much sooner than we think, perhaps in 3–5 years from now.
As a dean responsible for university education, my first question is: what shall we teach students so that they may have a job in the future? This is a critical question that my colleagues and I are constantly trying to answer. In some ways, Pázmány ITK, our faculty has a safer position because I believe that those who work with tools are a little longer protected than those who only work with software. But I'm also worried about the work prospects of humanities graduates.
At the moment, artificial intelligence has an IQ of approximately 115, but it is likely to go higher in the future. This is due to its huge lexical knowledge, which is greater than what 99.9 percent of people can achieve. The ability of AI to see connections in vast amounts of data and information is beyond human capabilities.
But can there be a silver lining to the change that AI will bring about?
Of course, it makes people's everyday lives easier in many areas. Our lives have changed quite a lot in recent years. Let's think of the democratization of photography, for instance. We have a camera on our smartphone in our pocket and we don't have to pay to develop the pictures. Correspondence has also been democratized: we don't have to write letters on paper, post them and wait for them to arrive, but we can send emails instantly and for free. Artificial intelligence has the potential to enable even more things to become democratized, i.e. free, and thus accessible to a wide range of social strata.
Let's take medical diagnostics as an example. I can ask my mobile phone about my symptoms, take a picture of them, and the AI will tell me which diseases I may have; perhaps it will ask for other symptoms to narrow down the possibilities. Finally, it will tell me what check-ups or what medication I need; this possibility is not so far-fetched. It will also be able to do legal administration, for example, to draw up a sales contract or a formal letter that we only have to sign. It will also be extremely easy to develop applications, because I will only need to tell the system what application I want, and it will program it, install it, and it will work on my phone. Basically, these are good things, but the question is what will happen to the people whose job it was to do these tasks?
But, again, we don't know what will happen when the IQ of artificial intelligence goes well above 115 and it becomes smarter than man. As one of my colleagues put it, young people do not realize that they are living in the most rapidly changing and exciting period in human history.
You mentioned earlier that there is no contradiction between science and faith. How does this manifest itself either here at ITK or in your personal life?
I believe that faith and science can offer complementary perspectives on understanding the world. Science helps us understand the world and its processes, while faith can give meaning and purpose to our lives and help us find our place in this physical reality that we know.
What makes a university Catholic if a significant proportion of its students are non-believers?
The university is based on Catholic values and expects its staff and students to respect them. However, it is important to note that this is not imposed. Neither students nor staff members are expected to practice their religion. We have some subjects that are related to faith, but they cover topics of general culture. However, I think that the most important mission of a Catholic university is to help students get to know themselves and fulfil their potential.
This is strengthened, supported and defined by the fact that our university is Catholic.
Anna Szilágyi
777.hu
original article in Hungarian: https://777blog.hu/2023/04/21/a-hit-es-a-tudomany-nincs-ellentmondasban-cserey-gyorgy/
