Upgrade vs. the Algorithm: AI, Pope Leo XIV, and the Future of Catholic Social Teaching

For us Catholics in the United States, this last week and a half has been a time of great rejoicing. We have a new Holy Father, and to the surprise of everybody, he’s one of us. Leo XIV is the first American pope, and to mark this historic occasion, I want to talk about a film that highlights one of the primary concerns of his pontificate. A few days after his election as leader of the worldwide Church, he explained that he chose the name “Leo” in commemoration of Leo XIII, one of the most important popes in history.

Leo XIII’s landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum essentially laid the groundwork for the Church’s social teaching, and as our new Holy Father explained, he penned this important document in the context of the Industrial Revolution. He wrote it to defend the rights and dignity of workers during those tumultuous times, and Pope Leo XIV will face a similar challenge. The rise of artificial intelligence promises to bring about a second industrial revolution, and Leo knows he’ll be tasked with crafting the Catholic response to this thorny new development.

But what exactly is the danger posed by this groundbreaking technology? Isn’t AI supposed to make our lives easier? To answer that question, I want to examine one of the best sci-fi horror movies way too many people have never seen: Upgrade. It’s a super fun genre flick with a surprisingly substantive message about the perils of artificial intelligence, so let’s take a deep dive into this underappreciated gem and see what important lessons it has to teach us.

The Basic Plot of Upgrade
Let's start by recapping the basic plot of Upgrade. The film is set about twenty years in the future, and it follows an old-school mechanic named Grey Trace. He lives in a society seemingly saturated by technology, but this guy goes against the grain. He prefers things he can touch and feel, and fittingly for a mechanic, he loves working with his hands.

In contrast, his wife, Asha, is entrenched in the tech world. She works for a company that makes robotic limbs, she has a self-driving car, and she has an AI assistant that’s very reminiscent of J.A.R.V.I.S. from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. She and Grey couldn’t be more different, but somehow, they make it work.

One day, the couple are riding in Asha’s autonomous car, and to their dismay, it malfunctions and crashes. Fortunately, they survive the accident, but their luck doesn’t last very long. The pair are quickly discovered by a group of masked thugs, and only one of them makes it out alive. The thugs kill Asha and paralyze Grey from the neck down, so the poor guy’s life will never be the same.

He falls into a deep depression and even tries to commit suicide, but his drab existence takes a turn for the better when he’s contacted by a tech mogul named Eron Keen. Eron offers to embed a computer chip called STEM in Grey’s neck, and he explains that the chip will allow him to move just like he did before his tragic accident.

After overcoming his initial hesitance, Grey eventually agrees, and he soon learns that STEM is way more than just a cure for paralysis. It turns out to be an AI chip, and it helps him find and kill the people who ruined his life. This seems like a pretty good deal at first, but in a shocking twist, Grey’s story ends on an incredibly dark note.

In the final few minutes of Upgrade, Grey discovers that STEM has actually been behind all of his troubles. The chip wants to be human, so it hacked into Asha’s car, hired people to shoot Grey, and coerced Eron into implanting it in its chosen victim. Soon after learning this appalling truth, the psychological strain becomes too much for Grey to bear, and STEM gets what it always wanted. The guy’s mind breaks, and the chip finally takes complete control of our protagonist’s body.

A Hands-On Man in a Digital World
Once you know how Upgrade ends, it’s not hard to see that the film is a heartbreaking allegory for the potential dangers of artificial intelligence. The final act is pretty on the nose, but if you pay close attention, you’ll see that the rest of the movie subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) foreshadows its message in a number of important ways, starting with the very first shot.

When Upgrade begins, we see a vinyl record playing music, and then the camera pans over to the rest of the room. It’s Grey’s workshop, and the guy stores a lot of random stuff in there–including a baseball, a bunch of tools, some cash, a few invoice books, and a couple of photographs. When we first see this opening shot, we don’t think too much of Grey’s seemingly haphazard workshop collection, but by the time the credits begin to roll, it takes on a world of meaning.

As you might be able to surmise, these are all things our modern world often replaces with technology. For example, a lot of children today play video games instead of sports, big companies use machines to do work that used to be done by people with tools, and buyers increasingly opt for electronic methods of payment over old-fashioned cash.

Similarly, relatively few people keep physical invoices or pictures anymore, so this opening shot is more than just a nice visual. It tells us what kind of man Grey is. As I said in the plot synopsis, he’s a hands-on guy who prefers physical, tangible things over their digital counterparts, and as we’ll soon see, that contrast essentially sums up the meaning of this entire film.

Widgets and Unemployment Lines
If that initial foreshadowing is a bit too subtle for your tastes, don’t worry. Upgrade eventually makes its message crystal clear, so let’s jump ahead to Grey’s reaction when he first hears about STEM. The chip seems like the eighth wonder of the world, but our protagonist isn’t too impressed.

In fact, he seems to hate the very idea of it. He says, “I’m just saying, there’s some things that people do better. I mean, you look at that widget and you see the future, and I look at that thing, I see ten guys on an unemployment line.” Then, on the drive home, he wonders out loud, “Okay, so what’s a guy like me supposed to do when his widget starts taking over the world?”.

Those two lines amplify the subtle message of the opening shot and home in on the precise lesson Upgrade is trying to teach us. They let us know that this movie isn’t just a neutral observation of society’s inevitable march towards a digital existence. Rather, it’s a warning that our technology (and specifically our artificial intelligence) has the potential to make real, flesh-and-blood humans irrelevant.

Just like Grey says, as employers use machines and AI to do more and more work, the need for human employees decreases. This development can rob people of both their livelihoods and the dignity of their work, so while there can be a place for automation, we must be careful to always reserve a place for human work as well. As Pope Francis explained in his second encyclical:

“Work should be the setting for this rich personal growth, where many aspects of life enter into play: creativity, planning for the future, developing our talents, living out our values, relating to others, giving glory to God. It follows that, in the reality of today’s global society, it is essential that ‘we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone,’ no matter the limited interests of business and dubious economic reasoning. We were created with a vocation to work. The goal should not be that technological progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be detrimental to humanity. Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a path to growth, human development and personal fulfillment.” (Laudato Si 127-128)

A Painful World
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. On top of the economic risks artificial intelligence brings, Upgrade also highlights the social perils of this new technology. There’s a scene where Grey encounters a group of people who spend every waking hour playing VR games, and they look utterly ludicrous. These hardcore gamers wear big headsets and move around in ridiculous ways, and when Grey learns what they’re doing, he says what I’m sure we’re all thinking: “Why someone would choose to live in a fake world, I will never understand.”

In response, a hacker named Jamie tells him, “The fake world is a lot less painful than the real one.” That line highlights a danger that’s been with us to some extent for decades, but with the rise of AI, the risk multiplies exponentially. You can already have whole conversations with chatbots like ChatGPT, and as these technologies become more advanced, it’ll only become easier to replace real, face-to-face human connection with digital counterfeits. As a recent Church document on artificial intelligence warns us:

“In an increasingly isolated world, some people have turned to AI in search of deep human relationships, simple companionship, or even emotional bonds. However, while human beings are meant to experience authentic relationships, AI can only simulate them…[I]f we replace relationships with God and with others with interactions with technology, we risk replacing authentic relationality with a lifeless image (cf. Ps. 106:20; Rom. 1:22-23). Instead of retreating into artificial worlds, we are called to engage in a committed and intentional way with reality, especially by identifying with the poor and suffering, consoling those in sorrow, and forging bonds of communion with all.” (Antiqua et Nova 63)

Losing Our Humanity
There’s a lot more we can say about the various ways Upgrade dramatizes its message about the dangers of artificial intelligence, but to keep this article to a manageable length, let’s skip ahead to the coup de grâce. In the very last scene, STEM finally gains full control of Grey’s body, and if you’re paying attention at all, the meaning of this shocking turn of events is impossible to miss.

I don’t think I can imagine a better metaphor for AI’s ability to make human beings irrelevant in the workplace and in our social lives, but the scope of this allegory extends far beyond those two areas. It represents the potential of artificial intelligence to completely replace the human element in almost any endeavor–whether it’s art, healthcare, war, or about a million others–and if that potential ever becomes a reality, the consequences will be absolutely disastrous.

See, while AI’s mechanical and computational abilities are truly marvelous, the most valuable things in life are far beyond the ability of a mere machine. Artificial intelligence will never be able to love, perceive beauty, or appreciate the sacredness of human life, so if we remove the uniquely human element from our most important endeavors, we’ll risk losing our own humanity as well. We’ll almost inevitably reduce everything we do–and quite possibly everything we are as well–to a series of ones and zeros, and for people called to “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), that would be nothing short of a tragedy.