AI, Work, Prayer and the Cross
Peter Buckley and Mark O'Donnell open this episode of On the Mark on AI doomsday talk and the more immediate threat it poses to work, prayer, and attention, pointing listeners to Pope Leo XIV's document on artificial intelligence, released on the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum. They then take a ubiquitous gambling advertisement, Robert George's warning about pornification, and the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross as a path back to recollection: the rosary after dinner, daily Gospel reading at dailygospel.org, chastity as the engine of apostolic love, and the Cross as the means that actually works.
Notes
- AI apocalypse talk is real enough to dominate the news, but Peter says the nearer threat is not the end of the world. It is displaced workers, a distracted workplace, and the spiritual damage of always-on tech.
- Fear of automation is old: bank tellers feared the ATM, toll collectors feared E-ZPass. Some jobs go away; people should be given better work and often are kicked up to higher-level contribution.
- The deeper hit is interior. Constant texts, calls, and pings put professionals in a permanent state of distraction, so even when you turn everything off to pray it takes ten minutes just to shut down the files.
- Mark's practical fast: turn the technology off an hour or two a day. After dinner, pray the rosary. Its repetitive Hail Marys reverse the TikTok/Shorts rhythm and train you to contemplate one mystery at a time, with Mary as the great contemplative.
- The first reason to live chastity is joy. Nobody is proud of watching pornography. St. John Paul II in Love and Responsibility ties unchastity to walking away from the Church; without that virtue we cut ourselves off from the sacraments and the Eucharist.