To my Catholic friends, I sincerely hope today brought you closer to your faith. It is my hope that you received comfort from Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical, Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.
I myself look forward to reading all 42,000 words of it on an airplane tomorrow. My reader application’s AI says it should take me two hours and thirty minutes. Already the tools have opinions on my study.
I can’t say I fully understand the relationship between the knowledge and teachings put forth by the Pope and a Catholic’s personal faith.
I have very little exposure to Catholicism that isn’t entirely academic so please do not take anything I say seriously or personally, as I’m a mere Protestant.
The Vatican said that Leo had signed the new encyclical on May 15, 135 years to the day since the pope’s namesake, Pope Leo XIII, signed the landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum (“Of New Things”) on the rights of workers amid the Industrial Revolution. I understand is a crucial modern document in Catholic social doctrine
I read his namesake’s encyclical long ago when I studied economics in Chicago (not very far from where the Pope himself studied) so I am looking forward to comparing the documents once I have had a chance to read the new encyclical.
It’s very hard to have an opinion on a document written by a faith leader to whom I do not defer myself so please hold your judgement as I have held mine.
Without careful study I hesitate to say much beyond my initial impressions of the media circus surrounding the encyclical’s release and the social context of several attendees of the event around the signing.
The document is officially addressed not only to Catholics but to “all people of goodwill,” calling on us to seek the “protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.”
I feel this is an invitation to us all to consider the document seriously. Silicon Valley has been anticipating its release for sometime, with both excitement and trepidation.
There has also been a significant amount of discussion over the last several years as to the role a movement which calls itself effective altruism has played in the development of artificial intelligence.
In particular, there is concern as to whether the movement itself has become its own theology complete with a singularity eschatology.
I make no secret of my concerns around the EA community, its scandalous financial frauds and its intellectual roots in Benthamite utilitarianism.
They aim to be “less wrong” and take a rationalist approach to moral questions. At first glance this appears to be a kind of technocratic solutionism but has millenarian tendencies in singularity thought.
Several years ago an internecine split developed in Silicon Valley with a faction “meme schism” jokingly calling itself effective accelerationism. I myself professsed a preference for their approach as I am neither a utilitarian nor a rationalist.
E/acc encouraged an approach to technological development which focuses the benefits of material progress in reducing human harms while warning of the harms of the precautionary principle.
Neither are real philosophical traditions in any meaningful sense, but rather competing narrative memetics that came out of the diverse group of technologists making industrial progress from nuclear to computing chips and algorithms.
My concern today came from the highly visible corporate representation at the New Synod Hall in the Vatican during the press release. Past encyclical rollouts were normally handled only by curial officials. This was much flashier and included the Pope.
Further, the Vatican chose to highlight large language model developer Anthropic, and one of its many cofounders Christopher Olah. Both the man, and the corporate entity he represents, are part of an explicitly effective altruist world.
That only one frontier lab with a very particular viewpoint was put front and center as an emissary from the technical community may end up sending an unintended message. Or more worryingly, a very deliberately intended message. Only time will tell.