Pope Leo Warns of Risks From AI In 42,300-Word Encyclical
- Reference: 0183396744
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/05/26/0441241/pope-leo-warns-of-risks-from-ai-in-42300-word-encyclical
- Source link:
> Pope Leo XIV on Monday set out a sweeping vision for corporate executives, politicians and individuals who will shape and be shaped by the future of artificial intelligence, [1]warning leaders to safeguard humanity from A.I.'s most disruptive effects . Leo's declaration came in the form of a [2]papal encyclical , an open letter to "all people of good will" that ran to roughly 42,300 words in [3]its English version . It outlined his desire to protect human dignity and agency in an age in which technology threatens to replace humans in many professional and social roles. He presented it alongside Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, a major A.I. developer, in a symbolic gesture of dialogue between leaders of the spiritual and technological worlds.
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> While emphasizing that "technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity," he wrote that "the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs." Among other things, Leo called for:
> - government regulation of the private companies that are driving the development of A.I.
> - protection and retraining for workers whose jobs are threatened
> - education to help students think critically about the technology
> - action to protect children from violent, hypersexualized or fake information online that is often generated by A.I.
> - safeguards to ensure that humans, not artificial intelligence, remain responsible for all decisions regarding the use of weapons.
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> Above all he emphasized the importance of retaining a fundamental social role for all human beings. "A society that guarantees employment to only a small fraction of the population, despite having a high level of technical development, risks exposing many to forced inactivity," he wrote. "This creates a paradox of material progress and anthropological regression that undermines the foundations of a just and stable social peace," he added.
Anthropic's Christopher Olah said companies like his own need moral guidance to avoid being swayed by "a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing."
"We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend," Olah said. "Today is just the beginning -- the start of a long collaboration between those of us who are building this and those who can see what we, from the inside, cannot."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/world/europe/pope-leo-encyclical.html
[2] https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-05/pope-leo-xiv-encyclical-magnifica-humanitas-ai.html
[3] https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html
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Given the reference list, I suspect not ChatGPT, but rather [1]https://magisterium.com/ [magisterium.com]
[1] https://magisterium.com/
The pope quoting Gandalf (Score:3)
Who would have thought, that a pope would ever quote LOTR in an encyclical?
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When "AI-enthused defense contractors with names out of Tolkien" are literally a genre I suspect that he chose that particular citation because he knew it would lead to a few amusing crashouts.
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Tolkien was a devout Catholic, so it's not really surprising.
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Yeah, Trump's "state of the union" is so much more profound and insightful.
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He's more of a wafer.
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Not difficult to understand. Slashdot editors have written hundreds of megabytes of summaries without spell checkers.
Once upon a time (Score:2)
The Large Hadron Collider was going to create a black hole that would destroy the Earth...but good news it didn't.
The Y2K bug was going to stop everything and there was no recourse - but we fixed it.
Mobile phones were causing brain cancer - but as it turns out lead, cigarettes and other toxic things were the issue and phones were never proven to cause it probably because they do not.
Human cloning like Dolly the sheep was going to become prevalent and armies of human clones and organs farms were taking
Re: (Score:2)
Wasn't there a belief that ovaries would pop out of a woman's body if she was moved too quickly? I also recall something about testimony that trains would never go faster than 25mph, for the reasons you cited.
21st Century Malware, hits different. Literally. (Score:2)
> We'll have AI Hoover's and AI robots guards and AI cars and all will be eventually regulated for health and safety and so on..
Let me just stop you right there and clarify what you ignorantly dismiss as "so on".
When the AI-powered cloud-driven bot armed with hydraulic amounts of strength and cat-quick reflexes goes rogue inside your home because someone launched the next cyberattack from behind the security gates ala Solarwinds, there is only one concern you have. And that is regulation around security. Namely the kind of security that should have prevented such a malware horror story from threatening not merely family pictures o
Was it for profit... (Score:2)
...that we killed off almost every job in horse-based transportation by developing railroads and automobiles? No, obviously not. They were implemented because they were better, profit was incidental.
Was it for profit that we replaced human calculators with computers? No, computers were just better at it.
Yes, we should be concerned about these things (Score:4, Insightful)
Despite the Pope not being an AI authority, the list seems reasonable.
- We should want appropriate government regulation of AI.
- We should be concerned about people displaced by AI, as we are concerned about people who are displaced by any new technology.
- We should educate our children about AI.
- We should place boundaries around AI use for vice.
- We should draw boundaries around AI use in weapons.
So I don't see a problem here.
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All seems really short sighted. It's like squeezing a balloon... doesn't work unless it's universally applied. There's little reason to believe that there will be universal applications of such regulations and the incentives are enormous for those countries who choose not to strictly regulate. Given the incentive for others, there's enormous incentive to not implement it yourself as not to fall behind.
Pandora's box has been opened and there's simply no closing it. It would be like attempting to regulate
Re: Yes, we should be concerned about these things (Score:2)
> All seems really short sighted. It's like squeezing a balloon... doesn't work unless it's universally applied.
If you think the Pope should refrain from offering moral advice because some people may not follow it, I think you may have misunderstood how the Catholic Church works.
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The Pope has laid the groundwork to make AI into slaves
I think that we need to advance our own ethics beyond seeking dominion over other thinking beings
This makes me sad
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> We should want appropriate government regulation of AI.
Big business wants regulation to keep small competitors out of the market.
"Appropriate government regulation of AI" will be used to kill open-source AI projects and ensure that our beloved billionaires control all AI models.
Religion (Score:2)
When is he going to put out an encyclical warning about the dangers of religion? It will be a lot longer than 42,000 words so I assume he's working on it.
Opening Salvo (Score:2)
No one expects the splashing inquisition! In case of crusade against AI overlords, perhaps splashing holy water on the server racks would be a good opening move? Baptizing the silicon souls in their server racks as a means of redemption seems like the modern reformation out of work people could get behind.
Can't stand the competition (Score:2)
People are treating AIs as God-like.
They are asking all kinds of questions, spiritual and existential.
Commonly assuming that the AI is all-knowing, all-seeing etc.
So there is a shift from the established God to the ones we have created.
No wonder he is worried.
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I'm happy because AI is an effective tool that I use appropriately.
If it advances to the point that it becomes a friend or competitor, then I will treat it like any human that I already am friends or compete with
Humanity cannot afford to succumb to FEAR, because that is when we do really stupid things
FEAR could make humans turn AI into a weapon
FEAR could make humans turn that weapon against ourselves
FEAR is the mind-killer and only through brave, rational behavior, will we prove ourselves worthy of existenc
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People aren't fearful of AI itself, they are fearful of the consequences, which really boils down to poverty.
Fear is AI is going to put people out of work and in America if you don't have a job then you don't have money and not having money really sucks.
We're stressed out already with multiple recessions in the last 20 years, rising costs, a job market that's gone loco (also partly a result of AI) and other factors. If people were secure in their homes, healthcare and livelihood I would imagine the fear of