The Pope wasn't late to the AI conversation. We were. | LinkedIn
The Vatican wasn't waiting for an invitation Author's note: I kept seeing people say "the Pope has entered the AI conversation" yesterday, as if the Vatican had just discovered the thing existed. It's not a small error, it's the kind of error that makes the governance problem worse, because if you t
I just finished reading the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, presented today by Pope Leo XIV.
Here are a few highlights and thoughts:
- Your AI is material: “Nothing in the world of AI is immaterial or magical. Every seemingly immediate and flawless response is the result of a long chain of mediation, involving vast networks of natural resources, energy infrastructure and, above all, people.”
- A personal joy was finding the core of my own work reflected in this passage: “A significant part of the digital economy’s functioning relies on the silent work of millions of people engaged in essential yet largely unseen activities, such as data labeling, model training and content moderation, often involving disturbing material. In many cases, these workers are young people, predominantly women, working under demanding conditions for minimal wages.”
- Power concentration: “In a world where data, computational resources and regulatory influence remain in the hands of a few, to speak of the common good means exposing this new form of epistemic, economic and political asymmetry and naming the new monopolies of AI.”
- Technology “is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it.”
- AI doesn't equal productivity: “while AI promises to boost productivity by taking over mundane tasks, it frequently forces workers to adapt to the speed and demands of machines (...) Current approaches to technology can paradoxically de-skill workers, subject them to automated surveillance and relegate them to rigid and repetitive tasks”
- War and the risk that “technology, detached from ethics and responsibility, will render decisions about life and death more rapid and impersonal, and will present the use of force as an immediate and viable option.”
Now...it would be refreshing to see a Pope (or any powerful figure) state things many of us have argued for years, such as: “A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few,” if he were not saying them while sitting next to one of those very few: Chris Olah. It is hard to believe Leo is unaware of Anthropic’s cooperation with Palantir, or of Claude’s use in Venezuela, Iran, and against migrants in the US.
It is also hard to imagine that Leo writes about the hidden labor powering AI without knowing that Anthropic outsources much of its data work under conditions very similar to those already exposed in relation to OpenAI and Meta.
And the warning about trans- and posthumanism inevitably recalls what Timnit Gebru and Émile P. Torres have written about TESCREAL ideology, from which Anthropic is hardly exempt.
Finally, it is difficult to read a text that echoes so many of the things many of us have been saying for at least a decade, while still covering them with a veil of inevitability. As if the only alternative were to imagine an AI aligned with the social doctrine of the Church, without leaving room to ask ourselves if we need AI at all. | 23 comments on LinkedIn
All I'm gonna say about this official Vatican + Anthropic mandate, is that I guess it was only a matter of time before the religion of effective altruism, worshipping so-called artificial general intelligence, merged with entrenched religious institutions.
I didn't expect leaders of the Vatican, an organization endowed with billions, to go against the hype. I expected them to jump on the bandwagon of the dudes who are about to make billions with their IPOs. Did you know that the Vatican actually has a venture capital arm investing in Silicon Valley companies? They may have even invested in Anthropic for all I know.
What I've learned in the nonprofit space is that all of these people you thought were independent from each other, hang out in the same places, Davos or a bunch of closed door meetings for the world's power brokers. Leaders of corporations, foundations, governments, entrenched religious institutions, they hear from each other much more so than anyone else. They're all in the same echo chamber.
It's the same lesson I learned about academia and industry, Stanford and Silicon Valley being the same, etc.
The only one who fights for your rights is you. Don't look to anyone powerful to do that, they only respond to your pressure.
The Vatican could have told Anthropic to stop stealing data, exploiting labor, killing the environment, deceiving us with anthropomorphic designs and lying about product "capabilities." Instead they partnered with them, like partnering with the Sackler family to discuss the harms of oxy.
The Vatican could have partnered with the exploited data workers fighting for their rights, the people whose water is polluted fighting data centers, or the many other victims around the world. But no, they featured ANTHROPIC, giving them their endorsement with this feature. "Vatican washing", like greenwashing. | 112 comments on LinkedIn
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