It was very tempting to write about an A.I. apocalypse movie this week. I wanted this column to tie into Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas,” and it probably tells you where I stand that my first thought was “The Terminator” (1984). But as I read over the encyclical, the film that most came to mind wasn’t about artificial intelligence at all: “The Social Network” (2010).
Directed by David Fincher, written by Aaron Sorkin and based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires, “The Social Network” offers a dramatic (if not entirely historically accurate) account of the origins of Facebook. And while social media may not be the primary focus of “Magnifica Humanitas,” both the encyclical and the film ask the same question: What role does the human heart play in technological progress?
In the film Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) goes from lonely Harvard sophomore to the world’s youngest billionaire, changing human society in the process. We see his conflict with the preppy Winkelvoss twins (Armie Hammer) and Divya Narendra (Max Minghella), who accuse him of stealing the idea; his seduction by party boy entrepreneur Sean Parker (Justin Timberlake) and his betrayal of Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), his Facebook co-founder and only friend. There is a lot of coding, partying and litigation.
But “The Social Network” is most interested in the flesh-and-blood motivations of Facebook’s creator. Mark expresses his motivations in purely logical or economic terms, but his actions are driven by messy human emotion: heartbreak, jealousy, anger, desire. It’s not the technology or even the money that corrupts him. Mark is a victim of his own fallen nature—the flaws that crack every human heart.
Pope Leo is equally aware that technological progress exists side-by-side with human frailty, for better and worse. “In the abstract, technology in and of itself is not a solution to humanity’s problems, just as it is not inherently evil,” he writes. “In practice, however, technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it” (No. 9). It all comes down to how and why we use the tools at our disposal. The pope notes how technologies “that facilitate communication and access to resources can also support models that exploit the most vulnerable, create new forms of slavery and derive profit from conflict” (No. 240).
The promise of technology is transcendence: The right device will compensate for all of our weaknesses, make us more than human. But the risk is that we will become something considerably less than human. Pope Leo warns against “technocratic and post-humanist mentality that tends to regard the human person as an object to be manipulated or a resource to be optimized, removing all safeguards against the unchecked pursuit of profit” (No. 172).
That poisoned philosophy takes root in Mark. At the beginning of “The Social Network,” he is obsessed with gaining admittance to one of Harvard’s exclusive final clubs, believing that they are the gateway to a better life. But what he really wants is a better version of himself, to reverse polarity so that he will be the object of envy and desire. Facebook, and the wealth and power it affords him, eventually becomes his path to that goal. Along the way other people become tools to be used and manipulated. By the end of the film he is infinitely richer and more famous. But on a deeper level he is right where he has always been: in a room with his computer, alone.
“The Social Network” and “Magnifica Humanitas” warn against progress at the expense of our humanity. This is a pressing issue as the human experience becomes increasingly digitized. We use our devices to talk, to work, to shop, to learn, to create, to exercise, to flirt, to argue, to ease us to sleep and to signal us to wake. A.I. promises to make our lives even easier, streamlining our work, communication and decision-making. That is certainly tempting: Why spend hours learning to play an instrument, or finding the right words for an essay, when you can simply feed a prompt into an algorithm and refine the results?
But by removing all of the friction from life, we also lose the things that make us human. Any artist can tell you that in the process of creating something, you make miraculous discoveries— discoveries that shape and deepen the work. That only happens after a lot of failure and frustration and revision. As Pope Leo observes, “humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them.” He urges us to see our limitations as “a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship” (No. 118).
Progress may be inevitable, but the choices we make in the face of it are not. I chose to write about “The Social Network,” not an A.I. dystopia, because “Magnifica Humanitas” is a call to discernment, not despair. Whether these new technologies make us more or less human will depend entirely on how we choose to engage with them. In this regard, “The Social Network” offers a grim parable: When you try to transcend your humanity, more often you end up losing it.
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