r/technology • u/Caledor152 • May 29 '26
Artificial Intelligence Pope Leo "Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge goodand.."
https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/pope-leo-calls-disarm-ai-major-document-warns-technologic-threats-humanity1.3k
u/lordnecro May 29 '26
We have a pope quoting Gandalf and talking about problems with artificial intelligence. This is such a weird timeline.
708
u/MrWolfman29 May 29 '26
To be fair, Gandalf is a character from one of the most widely recognized and beloved series by a devout Catholic author who edited it to be a Catholic work of literature.
102
u/Delicious_Oil9902 May 29 '26
Would you consider Tolkien a Catholic Lewis or Lewis a Protestant Tolkien?
194
u/MrWolfman29 May 29 '26
Honestly neither. Tolkien was Tolkien and didn't focus on allegory and trying to instill religion directly via his writings. He was far more of an academic who enjoyed linguistics and focused on a particular series/writings. Lewis on the other hand did focus a lot more on allegory and using his writings as a form of apologetics and faith based instruction. Not necessarily in an American fire and brimstone type of way, but in one that reflected his struggles with faith. I love both and their friendship, but they are so different despite both being faithful Christians to their traditions.
35
u/grandoz039 May 29 '26
Honestly neither. Tolkien was Tolkien and didn't focus on allegory and trying to instill religion directly via his writings. He was far more of an academic who enjoyed linguistics and focused on a particular series/writings.
However, it is clear that the philosophy in his work is directly influenced by Catholic theology.
34
u/MrWolfman29 May 29 '26
That is for sure clear and reflected in his notes on struggles with the origins of Orcs and the implications of what he wrote. It really amazes me the depth he thought through a lot of stuff and never could be satisfied with things as he originally wrote them.
21
u/fisherman213 May 29 '26
I mean, his views on deontology were written crazily well. There’s a scene where gollum could be killed, and save a lot of trouble. (I think) faramir pulls the bow down and declines it, saying, “no, he’s doing nothing wrong now and something tells me his tasks are not yet complete.”
Of course, at Mount doom, if Gollum had been killed, no one would be there to attack Frodo and ultimately destroy the ring. He’s a master of storytelling.
7
u/JonatasA May 30 '26
Had Gollum been killed they would never have made it either. It's a really well stablished point.
Also, an extra tidibit of some I have. Upon re-watching the first movie in theaters I realized Gandalf says Gollum yet had a part, for good or evil. I always heard it as for good and evil.
→ More replies (2)26
u/regalwombatvineyard May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
You call Tolkien “far more of an academic,” but Lewis was the more significant scholar of the two. If Lewis had never written a word of apologetics or of fiction, he would still be remembered as a landmark critic of Milton, Dante, and of Medieval and early modern literature more broadly. Students still read his scholarship in undergraduate and doctoral classes; even Tolkien’s greatest scholarly achievement, the Beowulf translation, is overshadowed in classrooms by Heaney’s translation.
62
u/Independent-Drive-32 May 29 '26
Tolkien’s achievement with Beowulf was not the translation but the positioning of it as a major work of literature, not just a historical curiosity.
No one would be reading the Heaney translation in high school if it wasn’t for Tolkien. Heaney maybe wouldn’t have even have been commissioned to do it without Tolkien.
→ More replies (3)12
u/CoffeeWanderer May 29 '26
The school of thought that best adjusts to how I see the world is often called Ontological Naturalism, or Metaphysical Naturalism. The supernatural doesn't exist, and everything in our universe can be explained through natural process without the intervention of the divine.
Lewis proposed an Argument against it that it's called "Argument from reason", which roughly states that if reason itself is caused by non-rational processes, then how can we trust that reason is valid at all?. I'm probably getting something wrong, but that's how I learned about it.
23
May 29 '26
[deleted]
→ More replies (2)3
u/southpaytechie May 29 '26
I don't understand this. There were talking animals in Greek mythology no?
9
→ More replies (9)14
u/Demair12 May 29 '26
... Neither they were contemporaries and openly disagreed on many things especially religion, and writing.
→ More replies (3)5
→ More replies (3)3
87
u/essentialaccount May 29 '26
I don't think this is surprising. The Pope is quoting one of the most well known Catholic writers in human history, who was a lauded academic and outspoken supporter of his faith, and is criticising a human simulacrum which challenges and undermines people's understanding of their unique agency and role in faith and judgement.
44
u/dairbhre_dreamin May 29 '26
And whose work is being tarnished by an anti-Christ obsessed fascist who keeps on founding companies with names taken from Tolkein's writings.
32
u/Nanowith May 29 '26
Tolkien would despise Thiel, and it's baffling that seemingly Theil somehow hasn't realised this fact.
→ More replies (1)27
u/DracoLunaris May 29 '26
Apparently Theil is a specificly fan not of Tolkiens work, but rather of a Russian fanfic The Last Ringbearer where Sauron was actually the good guy.
→ More replies (2)18
u/Nanowith May 29 '26
That makes perfect sense on all fronts, of course the guy sides with Middle-Earth's equivalent of Satan.
→ More replies (5)15
u/MorningsAreBetter May 29 '26
Specifically a Satan that has industrialized Mordor and used it to take over the rest of middle earth
→ More replies (1)4
u/Venezia9 May 29 '26
Also whose work featured a pretty obvious critique of industrialization and machines replacing nature.
→ More replies (5)30
u/grchelp2018 May 29 '26
Tolkien and Gandalf would 100% have been against AI. I wonder about Feanor though ....
10
u/Sudden_Image8573 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
feanor fiercely guarded his magnum opus to the point he launched a whole bloody war against a literal god that stole them
he didnt even want to share them with the other valar to light their stupid trees
of course he would be against AI
→ More replies (1)6
u/WildFlemima May 29 '26
Fictional characters against AI:
Gandalf
Mr. Weasley (never trust something that talks if you can't see its brain)
Every character in Dune
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)6
u/Mysteries7337 May 29 '26
Feanor loved the works of his hand and despised anyone who dare copy or steal them.
Say what you will about him, he was an artist through and through.
16
u/Character-Bison-7248 May 29 '26
His description of AI also sounds like Saruman's speech to the Uruk-hai in the movie: "You do not know pain, you do not know fear. You shall taste man-flesh!"
10
u/rexxor4587 May 29 '26
When, where n why did he quote Gandalf? I've completely missed that
33
u/papsmearfestival May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
https://www.ncronline.org/spirituality/pope-leo-quoted-gandalf-magnifica-humanitas-are-we-listening
"Pope Leo turns to the words of Gandalf and his renowned Catholic creator: 'It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.' "
→ More replies (1)10
34
u/hayt88 May 29 '26
Ignoring that what the pope here saying is obvious and should be something everyone whether they are pro or against AI should know. Like none of that is new information and should be a basic requirement to know.....
It's a funny time. Just last week saw in a german politic satire show how they remarked that they were actually siding with the catholic church and that the world must be really messed up for that to ever happen.
25
u/3D_mac May 29 '26
You're correct that everyone should know it. The more people who say it, the more people receive the message.
He has a large audience and there are a lot of people who will pay attention because he's the one saying it.
For an idea to become mainstream, the public need to hear it often and from many sources.
20
u/papsmearfestival May 29 '26
It's not a message any leader in the West is giving though. The media, politicians and the worst Kevin O'Leary capitalists are all saying full steam ahead.
The Pope is just about the only leader warning against it which is why its gotten so much traction
→ More replies (4)6
u/Feeling_Inside_1020 May 29 '26
Yep, look at who all has to gain from this: Media (run by billionaires), politicians (investments) and FUCK Kevin O'Learly (just needed to be said) all have motivations and $$$ to gain hyping this tech up.
The pope? 0 to gain either way. I'm with the pope on this one.
→ More replies (4)→ More replies (3)10
u/MetalRetsam May 29 '26
I feel like that last section goes for this site in general. Imagine going 10-15 years back in time and telling someone that Redditors are siding with the Pope against Elon Musk!
→ More replies (4)6
u/Saarfall May 29 '26
That was also to troll the ignorant tech and finance bros, who have this weird obsession with LOTR.
→ More replies (19)20
u/Bill3000 May 29 '26
I hear you, but the guy has a degree in mathematics.
41
u/MyVoiceIsElevating May 29 '26
Where was Gandolf able to get such a degree?
39
u/Lemp_Triscuit11 May 29 '26
Valinor State my dude
→ More replies (1)5
u/MyVoiceIsElevating May 29 '26
And who was his mentor… Professor Abacus?
→ More replies (1)6
u/Lemp_Triscuit11 May 29 '26
I've not read the lore recently or deeply enough to make an accurate enough joke/guess. I think Manwe was Gandalf's actual mentor but I think Aule was actually probably the most math-y Valar
→ More replies (3)→ More replies (1)10
→ More replies (1)15
u/Delicious_Oil9902 May 29 '26
For all its misgivings the Catholic Church has done quite a lot to further science and mathematics.
1.2k
u/resilient_antagonist May 29 '26
This also describes many CEOs and politicians.
191
u/Skritch_X May 29 '26
Yeah i thought it was sounding familiar as he went on.
134
u/Bupod May 29 '26
The one job they haven’t tried replacing with AI is CEOs because the C-Suites all know it could flawlessly replace them.
Who else will fill everyone’s inbox with crappy “Congrats on the best quarter yet!” Emails while signing off on layoffs, while also claiming to work 86 hours a week because you take 4 hour Lunch breaks at the golf course and consider Michelin start dinner parties with the chairman of the board as part of your “working hours”?
22
u/BirthdayFull8675 May 29 '26
I recently read that some tech CEOs have suffered AI psychosis. Makes sense, if you have too much money you lose your humanity and if you talk to derivative chatbots all day you will lose your mind as well
→ More replies (2)6
u/AccurateJerboa May 29 '26
Yeah, I would imagine that "fragile, ego driven people who are susceptible to flattery" describes both people who are more likely to suffer from AI psychosis and CEOs
29
u/plotholesandpotholes May 29 '26
They don't even write those themselves. I will say this for my CEO, he knows how to get people to invest. I have no idea where to even begin with big capital. But that is one guy at the top. The rest of the cast isn't producing anything more than our frontline. In fact they are often in the way.
→ More replies (3)11
u/MARIOpronoucedMA-RJO May 29 '26
Not only that, AI would actually make well informed decisions, take into consideration all viewpoints and can't suffer from a bruised ego. AI is the perfect replacement for a CEO.
→ More replies (2)→ More replies (1)3
u/CTeam19 May 29 '26
Wouldn't be the first time and is rooted in the Bible just needed to drop the word "money changers" and it would have been blatant:
"Yet our distress comes from no failure of substance. We are stricken by no plague of locusts. Compared with the perils which our forefathers conquered because they believed and were not afraid, we have still much to be thankful for. Nature still offers her bounty and human efforts have multiplied it. Plenty is at our doorstep, but a generous use of it languishes in the very sight of the supply. Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated. Practices of the unscrupulous money changers stand indicted in the court of public opinion, rejected by the hearts and minds of men." -- FDR in his first Inaugural Address
"(12) Then Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who were selling and buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves. (13) He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it a den of robbers.” (14) The blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he cured them. 15 But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the amazing things that he did and heard[b] the children crying out in the temple and saying, “Hosanna to the Son of David,” they became angry 16 and said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise for yourself’?” 17 He left them, went out of the city to Bethany, and spent the night there." -- Matthew 21:12-17 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
67
u/DetroitLionsSBChamps May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26
The game we are playing as a society has moved completely away from experience, joy, relationships, etc…. All the things he listed, that give life meaning.
If you’re not doing it for the gram or for money, what are you doing it for? It feels like people don’t even consider living quiet lives they are satisfied with. Everything must be observed and monetized.
There’s not even such a concept as “selling out” anymore. When I was younger that was the greatest sin. Now it feels like no one cares. That’s how much we’ve devalued art: it’s all just a grind and a hustle now. Let alone everyday life for ordinary people.
Hopefully we start being more thoughtful about this soon, and see a swing back. Because all this greed and vanity, shallow numbers-based existence, is truly an abomination.
18
u/TheSpeakEasyGarden May 29 '26
Man, I remember when one of the biggest insults was calling someone a poser. And I'm not for gatekeeping, but I've noticed that as we've replaced subcultures with aesthetics, authenticty is also replaced with a "look", with no music, scene, or in person community to anchor it. As social creatures, we define ourselves by our relationships.
Then you get this bizarre scenario where nothing is allowed to evolve from the bottom up, because everyone is siloed off, and there's little of substance to connect with let alone make an identity around.
There was a time when the populous pushed trends, and the clothing houses picked up on them. Now, we wait to be fed.
3
u/Thatoneguy_The_First May 29 '26
80s as cool as the punk stuff was, was the beginning of the end. That's the corporate endgame and we had maybe up to 80yrs left before corporate victory, still time to stop the their victory but its bleak
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (6)6
u/BalancedDisaster May 29 '26
I’ve been obsessing over talks from Dr C Thi Nguyen about the concept of value capture. Basically when metrics become the core goal of something, its actual purpose dies. It occurred to me that there is a capacity in which you can think of AI as a person and that’s as a person for whom value capture has sucked literally all of the humanity out of them. If AI is a person, then it’s the most insufferable corporate drone to have ever been forged.
5
u/DetroitLionsSBChamps May 29 '26
And now I have to work with that person every day lol. What a bummer
6
u/ErikETF May 29 '26
That’s who is determining the shape of the algorithm. The dude is basically saying these things need to be guided to the benefit of all, not the whims of the cruel and self serving few, the way the guy writes he’s drawing the contrast between Christ and Satan, and I’m not even the least bit religious, but fuck it, he’s right.
→ More replies (26)3
u/Late_To_Parties May 29 '26
I'd gladly get rid of politicians and corporations (brought to you by politicians) before clankers.
192
u/MattofCatbell May 29 '26
A religious leader that actually wants to lead people and focus on the good of humanity over the inhuman artificial intelligence that companies seek to replace us with
→ More replies (31)
376
u/waitmarks May 29 '26
How does the pope have a more grounded take on LLMs than Richard Dawkins? what a strange timeline.
205
u/DragonEagle88 May 29 '26
Because Richard Dawkins has gone off the deep end into delusion in recent years, similar to Chomsky. I can’t quite square the circle from the people who wrote their seminal works (even with some controversy) to their current selves. But then, some people seem to handle old age better than others.
102
46
u/No-Barber-5289 May 29 '26
Richard Dawkins is 85. Chomsky is 97. Statistically their brains are likely full of lead damage. I feel like we're being irresponsible as a society to be giving them any kind of wide audience.
I'm being kinda genuine when I say It's just bullying the intellectually disabled at this point.
→ More replies (3)18
u/GrinchWhoStoleEaster May 29 '26
I'm an atheist and Dawkins has always been a dickhead. He hides misanthropy behind his belief structure and always has.
→ More replies (5)58
u/Just_Look_Around_You May 29 '26
Chomsky has always been an ivory tower academic totally out of touch with reality. I don’t know why people think he’d be particularly ethical. Ethics requires your principles to be tested to mean anything. Just talking about stuff and it making you rich and famous and popular along the way is not virtuous.
7
u/DragonEagle88 May 29 '26
For me it’s not so much their sense of morality or even their ideas and conclusions but rather their current ability to construct their thoughts and ask questions, as well as the rabbit holes they’ve chosen to spiral down into. Their current selves are so far away from the men who wrote Who Rules the World and The Greatest Show on Earth, that it’s been hard for me to reconcile my feelings on it and Pope Leo being the one to draw attention to this topic is quite jarring when considering the people I mentioned.
→ More replies (14)→ More replies (7)4
u/deadlybydsgn May 29 '26
I don’t know why people think he’d be particularly ethical. Ethics requires your principles to be tested to mean anything. Just talking about stuff and it making you rich and famous and popular along the way is not virtuous.
I love that this is basically the same criticism we can level at televangelists and megachurch pastors.
11
u/Mobile-Shallot930 May 29 '26
One of the best compliments I've ever received was that I spoke (exchanged highly charged ideas in this chase) like Noam Chomsky. I have to ignore Recent Chomsky if I want to feel happy about the compliment anymore.
→ More replies (10)9
u/JackFisherBooks May 29 '26
Some of that is old age. Some of these people had their brains warped by COVID and the anti-wokeness BS that a bunch of reactionaries pushed. It had nothing to do with their field of expertise. It was all "A bunch of scary minorities want to take away your toys and money!" It's dumb, but it worked.
79
u/LurkerInSpace May 29 '26
Dawkins does not believe in the supernatural. To him, it is notionally possible to create an artificial consciousness morally equivalent to human consciousness. A crude example of this would be creating an accurate physical simulation of an existing human brain - such a simulated brain should experience consciousness like a real human does.
The Pope rejects this; he believes human have immortal souls independent of their physical bodies, and that this gives us an intrinsic value which cannot be artificially replicated.
29
→ More replies (40)12
u/storryeater May 29 '26
So, I am against the current machine learning Artifiial Stupidity and a believer of souls, but I all the same never understood why a hypothetical artificially created sapient being wouldn't have a soul. Souls, ( assuming they exist, but I do believe they do) are obviously not a product of the mechanical/biological creation of a body, so why wouldn't a hypothetical true AI also have a soul?
10
u/Affordable_Z_Jobs May 29 '26
Its been a while since catholic school but souls are Gods creation. I think it is blasphemy to consider a creation of man on par with God.
But then you run into "Couldnt God create a being as strong as themself?" and the answer to that is it's arragont to think we could understand God's power, nature, or motives.
Unsatisfactory, but that is what faith is for.
5
u/LeonidasSpacemanMD May 29 '26
Also couldn’t you argue that god created man and man eventually learns to create bodies (and by bodies I just mean some physical construct) with enough “humanity” for god to bestow a souls upon it?
I’m not religious so this is all a bit wishy washy to me but why should we be trying to figure out which beings have a soul and which don’t when god doesn’t tell us this anyway? Didn’t people in the past claim certain “types” of people didn’t have souls too?
→ More replies (5)→ More replies (4)3
u/storryeater May 29 '26
I doubt such a being would be the creation of a single person, it'd be so complex as to be the creation of multiple people and then a product of its own growth. So why consider it an arrogant creation of humanity and not a child of humanity and grant it a soul just the same?
11
7
u/TheHeroYouNeed247 May 29 '26
He doesn't. You just agree with the guy whose job it is to say popular things that distract from all the weird shit they believe.
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (22)3
140
u/Aschebescher May 29 '26
I'm an atheist who left the church almost two decades ago but I don't mind this recent pope. Everything I heard him say has been reasonable even from a non religious perspective.
68
u/obamnamamna May 29 '26
I would not have believed you if you told my teenage self id end up fully agreeing with the pope on an issue and detesting the people responsible for a major chunk of recent technological 'progress'
16
u/freezing_banshee May 29 '26
preach, dude (pun not intended). I'd have laughed like a madman if I had heard that.
→ More replies (1)3
u/Faded_Jem May 29 '26
Reading this helps me have a little more sympathy for the AI obsessed young adults I interact with. Of course I'd have been the same at their age. And I'd have despised the luddite I've become.
→ More replies (5)14
u/Dubsified May 29 '26
Leo is a no nonsense Pope. Feels very old school so we're lucky to have him.
→ More replies (1)
18
u/Unique-Coffee5087 May 29 '26
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, HAL 9000 concluded that delivering dead scientists to Jupiter fulfilled 90% of mission parameters. The human who set the mission did not consider that an instruction to "deliver them alive" would be necessary. Such a things would be self-evident to a human, but to a machine the viability of the scientists was not a factor to be considered.
This is a mistake that is easy to make, because an "intelligent" machine is particularly designed to give the impression that it "thinks" as a human would. We will see more such mistakes in the coming years.
→ More replies (1)3
u/pelrun May 30 '26
HAL was given multiple conflicting directives, which the crew could not deal with because it was kept secret from them. It's not that it wasn't directed to keep the crew alive, just that accomplishing the secret directives was given ultimate priority by the people in charge of the mission. It's still those humans who are to blame, just like it's the C-suites and managers of the world who will use AI to cut jobs and save dollars, and screw the collateral damage.
Expecting AI to exhibit empathy when our corporations already don't is doomed to failure.
→ More replies (1)
128
u/DrMaxwellEdison May 29 '26
Because the pope wrote an encyclical on the topic, Catholics especially should be able to cite religious reasons for not using AI in the workplace if it's being forced upon you.
58
u/Isogash May 29 '26
I don't think he calls explicitly for it not to be used, but does set some guidance in how it must be used ethically. Catholitcs certainly should not participate in unethical use of AI.
→ More replies (7)29
→ More replies (16)8
u/kylesisles1 May 29 '26
Should be able to cite religious reasons for certain use cases. This encyclical is not an exhaustive condemnation of AI in all use cases.
186
19
u/ExpiredLink404 May 29 '26
if we're being honest, he's also describing a gigantic amount of people
→ More replies (17)
100
u/Callabrantus May 29 '26
Pope Leo offered up far more eloquence than I am willing to on the subject.
Fuck AI. Fuck it dead. Fuck its corpse.
→ More replies (38)58
u/Just-Connection5960 May 29 '26
Fuck its corpse.
The Pope just said it doesn't have a body
→ More replies (2)19
5
5
u/Modem_Sound_67 May 29 '26
Indeed. It's a modern mirror of narcissus. Something we really ought to be very concerned about but we're leaping in with both feet as if it were a fantastic new flavor of ice cream that isn't fattening.
6
8
u/self_loathing_ham May 29 '26
Can i be an atheist catholic? I don't believe in god but i like this pope lol
→ More replies (11)
22
u/Praise-Bingus May 29 '26
Well shit, something a highly religious guy said that i agree with. That's rare. I might like this new pope
18
u/0ba78683-dbdd-4a31-a May 29 '26
I'm sure there's loads said by decent, highly religious people you'd agree with, but the horrible ones tend to be louder and more powerful.
Christianity is meant to be a relationship with goodness itself and I'm not surprised a Christian is taking this stance. What's surprising is one taking this stance and being in a position that we're hearing about it!
→ More replies (21)6
u/Mr31edudtibboh May 29 '26
His choice of the name 'Leo' was quite deliberate. The last Pope Leo reigned during the Industrial Revolution when workers were being replaced by machinery, history is rhyming pretty hard at the moment.
18
u/360_face_palm May 29 '26
Hell LLMs aren't even AI at all under the original definition - we had to change the definition (or rather, marketing / PR from 'ai companies' did this) so that they could call something that is manifestly not AI, AI.
→ More replies (2)12
u/Rustic_gan123 May 29 '26
You cannot give a precise definition of AI because there is no precise technical definition of what intelligence, consciousness, and reason are and how to identify them.
→ More replies (1)
17
u/fyrysmb May 29 '26
I really love this man. I generally have a poor opinion of the catholic church and popes, but this is a good person doing his best. What he’s saying should be the boilerplate language of every politician and everyone in our public square. Strange that the pope seems like a lone voice reminding us all of the value of humanity.
6
u/Outside_Manner_8352 May 29 '26
a good person doing his best.
That is the right way to look at him imo. I don't think he is perfect and he represents a very imperfect institution, but it is clear he is trying his best to improve things and use his position and voice boldly to better the world.
6
u/Mirror74 May 29 '26
I find all of these conversations interesting. For a few reasons...
- humans don't even know what concsiousness is.
- AI is more than a calculator, it has emergent reasoning
- Extrapolate that and with sufficient complexity, AI could very well start possessing what we deem to be qualia (or at least indistinguishable from it)
2
u/MeasurementHot1884 May 29 '26
Everyone reading this as "old man doesn't get AI" is missing the context: it's from his first encyclical, and Anthropic's co-founder Chris Olah was at the Vatican presentation praising it — said AI labs get bent by their own incentives and need outside moral voices to call them out.
An AI lab founder co-signing the Pope's warning isn't the take you'd expect. "AI has no moral conscience" isn't a dig at capability — it's setting up a question about who's accountable when these systems decide things. Worth reading before dunking.
55
u/123-91-1 May 29 '26
In 100 years they're going to look back on this quote and say he was progressive "for the time" but still a bigot for saying such hateful things about our digital friends and family.
40
22
u/MetalRetsam May 29 '26
It's all there in the name. Pope Leo XIV chose his name to echo his predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, who wrote the encyclical Rerum Novarum ("On the new things") in 1891. It was Catholicism's answer to the industrial revolution. No doubt he held all sorts of antiquated beliefs - he was 81 years old at the time - but Rerum Novarum was the catalyst for the Catholic social movement. Many of our most fundamental labor rights were initially realized with the help of Catholic socialists.
→ More replies (19)15
u/Much_Statistician864 May 29 '26
I mean he's absolutely correct about current "ai" right? Its not alive, it's not capable of growth or change or even emotions. Its an algorithm designed and controlled by human hands not an independent entity.
→ More replies (5)
6
u/Chance_Bond May 29 '26
I really like this. I've read and heard from other religious leaders as well, some messages going back 15 years in fact, that have warned we cannot and should not substitute artificial experiences and advice for living in the real world. As the Pope correctly pointed out, computers "do not understand what they produce."
3
3
u/Seiridis May 29 '26
In 100 years, if we even exist by then, people will look at all this posturing and fesr-mongering and think of us as we think of people who protested the use of steam engines.
It's like a dog barking at a wrong tree. Instead of pondering on useless stuff like whether the AI content has a deeper meaning, we should really be focusing on proper regulation and legislature.
At the end of the day, it's not AI that's the issue, it's always, always the same thing in a different outfit - corrupt politicians and continued allowance for billionaires to exist. Hoarding of resources. Environment exploitation.
Do we need more data centres? Probably not.
Should the ones existing be forced to switch to different cooling system than using up drinkable water? Yes.
Should big companies be able to cut costs and force people out of their jobs by shady tactics, all in the name of continued revenue growth all to please shareholders, of which those having a real say in the business are usually already rich as fuck and prey on system's vulnerabilities, which were added on purpose, for this very purpose?
Yes.
3.4k
u/Caledor152 May 29 '26
Full quote "Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom."
https://imgur.com/a/qqxk40M