There has been a call to ensure that new technologies such as biotechnology, digital technology and AI should serve human life and the human family, rather than the other way around.

A group of public intellectuals in the US and Britain released the statement “A Future for the Family: A New Technology Agenda for the Right,” on Wednesday, at the journal First Things. Signatories include leading Catholic academics such as Robert George and Patrick Deneen.

They write that public policy should protect families from harmful innovations while also directing the development of technology to support the flourishing of family life.

To those ends, they offer ten guiding principles for empowering families through technology.

Commenting on the statement, one of its authors Clare Morell, said an electoral coalition that joins pro-family and technological interests catapulted President Trump into the White House. Now, she says, these two groups must begin to govern together, providing the potential, “perhaps for the first time–for modern technology to be designed with the empowerment of the family in mind”.

Another author, Brad Littlejohn, also struck a balance between the beneficial and harmful possibilities. He noted biotechnologies, digital technologies, and AI promise new and “frankly horrifying” possibilities, but nonetheless, many “could be used to empower rather than dissolve the family”.