Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-05/pope-leo-xiv-first-encyclical-magnifica-humanitas.html

by cucho • 2 months ago

294 207 2 months ago

sneak• 2 months ago

Who is this for? Is this to promote AI to the general Catholic public, or is it some kind of cultural signal to potential conservative institutional customers that Anthropic isn’t just a stereotypical bunch of godless California hippies?

Normally when I see these sorts of things it’s obvious what it is for and why, but this one confuses me.

kelseyfrog2• 2 months ago

My guess is that it (re)affirms that LLMs don't have souls and only people do.

If you've read any Vatican publications, the theme is being the authority on the ontology of reality.

EDIT: A decree for bioethics https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... I'd expect a similar deal for AI.

abirch• 2 months ago

I have met many people who don't seem to have a soul.

dyauspitr• 2 months ago

It’s for me. It’s strange so I’m probably going to watch it. It helps that I generally like the modern Catholic church’s direction on things (besides abortion but I’m willing to overlook that).

bigyabai2• 2 months ago

It's part of the gradual agenda to label AI the antichrist.

sgc• 2 months ago

I hope you saw others' correction to the title here that indicate Olah is just a speaker at an event on the same day, not an author (although he almost certainly was consulted for his opinions while the Pope and his assistants were working on the Encyclical). So what matters here is what the Pope is trying to do, not Olah's intentions in his minor role.

The Pope has already spoken quite a bit about ai, and exhorted priests to keep ai out of their homilies, which should be a sacred fruit of prayer and study.

Just from what I have seen he said and my Catholic Theological background, I would say he will definitely be talking about at least a couple things: 1) the relationship between ai and our intellectual labor, and how to use it fruitfully to grow without losing ourselves in it (a very similar concern to many on hn as far as I understand); and more importantly for him and again for many 2) how to use ai in society in a way that everybody can enjoy the fruits of it, instead of just the elite few (similar to the priority of Rerum novarum). This Pope chose his name because of this theme, and has consistently demonstrated that social justice is amongst his highest priority concerns - to the point that he has asked the Church to stop focusing so heavily on sexual ethics because there are such weighty injustices in the world that require our focused effort and attention.

pavon• 2 months ago

The encyclical is for the Pope to express the church's view on AI and its impact to society to other Catholics. My guess for why Christopher Olah is there is to signal that Anthropic is the ethical AI company.

mrandish• 2 months ago

Who is this for?

For the shrinking Catholic church it's trying to regain relevance. For Anthropic it's PR.

ImJamal3• 2 months ago

The Catholic Church is growing not shrinking?

discreteevent• 2 months ago

There was an article in the FT a while ago about how confused and frustrated Trump was about the strait of Hormuz. The conclusion was that not everyone has a price but that concept was outside of the scope of his narrow mind.

alach11• 2 months ago

It's a tall order to live up to the impact of Rerum novarum, the encyclical by the former Pope Leo that greatly guided thinking out of the industrial revolution. Personally, I'm excited to read this. If we take the claims of most AI labs at face value, they believe their work will fundamentally change the relationship between humans and the economy. More involvement from faith leaders is a good thing.

boppo12• 2 months ago

I mean, the industrial revolution probably could have gone a little better.

eikenberry• 2 months ago

Hopefully this time we can avoid multiple, world wide wars.

solenoid0937• 2 months ago

Maybe, but it went pretty damn well. The AI revolution will be a success if it goes anywhere close to as well.

levocardia• 2 months ago

The intentional parallels are hard to miss:

- Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum; current Pope Leo XIV chose his name as an explicit gesture to his nominative predecessor

- This encyclical is a return to the earlier tradition of latin names (Magnifica Humanitas) for encyclicals, as opposed to many of Pope Francis' which used Italian (Laudato si')

- The official date it was signed was 135 years to the day since Rerum Novarum

- The Pope is personally appearing and speaking at the presentation; usually these encyclicals are just released at a small press conference without the Pope himself being there

Rerum Novarum intentionally tracked a third path, rejecting both socialism and laissez faire capitalism at the end of the 19th century. Gesturing so overtly towards it suggests that this new encyclical will also try to establish a "third way," grounded (as the title suggests) in human dignity.

Leo XIV has not published any encyclicals yet; this will be his first, and an extremely ambitious one at that. I also am very eager to read it.

david_shi• 2 months ago

It's interesting how natural historic mimesis seems to be in these vaunted roles.

Presidents have their favorite past counterparts, so did emperors, and clearly the Pope does as well.

Does this kind of imitation prevent truly creative action taking? Did Akhenaten have someone in mind when he declared his own religion?

buntsai2• 2 months ago

Don't forget the encyclical with the German ("Mit brennender Sorge") rather than Latin (Ardens curarum?) title written by Pius XII and promulgated by Pius XI.

thrawa8387336• 2 months ago

Yeah good propaganda, how much time after the Industrial Revolution was Rerum novarum?

At least they didn't pick Dario lest he burst in flames

aidenn03• 2 months ago

About 50 years by Wikipedia's reckoning.

thrill• 2 months ago

I bet it will be 100 AI written, with guidance, natch, just because...

torben-friis5• 2 months ago

For anyone concerned about the growing power of giant corporations, the fact that they're doing joint statements with religious leaders is...wow.

Regardless of content, it seems an extra step in solidifying where power lies.

sudobash12• 2 months ago

That is just what the (edited) title makes it sound like. The article states that Christopher Olah will be a speaker present at the encyclical release. It does not imply that he had any hand or influence in the content.

torben-friis5• 2 months ago

Well yeah, private companies influencing doctrine would be far more scandalous for believers I guess. The point is the church making connections with companies straight away, sidestepping heads of state.

joenot443• 2 months ago

I think in the case of Anthropic, it shows they’re at the very least willing to engage with the most important people in the philosophical and theological realm they’re in the midst of disrupting.

When the question asked is roughly of “can an AI ever be considered a human soul?”, there isn’t a philosopher alive whose individual opinion would be considered more meaningful than Pope Leo’s.

It’s unlikely that the church’s opinion would influence the future business choices of Anthropic. I think it still remains a positive business move to publicly engage with the church.

torben-friis5• 2 months ago

I don't think you got my point. I'm not criticizing anthropic for deciding to engage with the pope, I'm pointing at the state we're at where a for profit company is doing individually the work of understanding how their disruptive tech should fit in the wider world.

Saving distances, it's like Glock engaging with spiritual leaders to figure out when it's ethical to kill. This should not be their area of decision, and if it starts being so there is clearly a giant gap for the entities that should be leading this instead.

notepad0x902• 2 months ago

I don't know enough to disagree with this specifically, but reductionism and generalizing is its own problem. A PR stunt is far cry from a power grab. Reductionism favors addressing large trends, and large boogeymen, classes, groups, etc.. instead of doing the diligent work of finding root causes, nuanced as they might be, and addressing those.

If what you say is right, I would challenge that by still insisting the corporations can only do what governments let them. You might say they run governments behind the scenes, to which I would say, who let them? They keep influencing elections? Then elections don't seem to be working, that's the root cause perhaps? In all the major political issues, that's the trend I'm seeing, democracy failing, but then I'll challenge myself and ask why is it failing?

The old sentiment of "if it can't be fixed, it isn't a problem" seems rampant. Modern democracy itself is a fix for some other sets of problems. In the US at least, it is in theory designed to be mended and fixed. Perhaps the real cause is lack of political will power by everyone pursuing politics, to even talk about changing the way the government is architectured, altering constitutions, talking about parting ways with land and population (secession), or incorporation of some. Perhaps the population just isn't that interested in educating themselves on matters of civics, therefore how democracy works needs a rewrite at its core?

Either way, I rambled on, i know, but it's with a point i hope is obvious: the common political sentiment around billionaires, corporations, oligarchs (or similar "woke" or "DEI" dogwhistles on the right) simply don't address root causes. They're reductive by design, not accident.

lanyard-textile• 2 months ago

Thoughtful and well written.

I tend to agree -- Even if I'm not sure what that quite looks like, and even if I'm not sure if that's better than what we already have.

torben-friis5• 2 months ago

I don't think it's reductive, the root cause you ask for is relatively obvious: no system can indefinitely tame a set of forced that are at near peer powers.

If private entities have as much power as the sum of common citizens to influence public opinion, policy, or the action of elected officials, then they overtake the system, whatever it is, however it's been designed.

An upper bound on individual power is then the only thing that maintains the system working.

sudobash12• 2 months ago

The title seems to be editorialized. To me, it makes it sound like Christopher Olah (the mentioned Anthropic co-founder) is a co-author. Instead he is going to be one of several speakers present when the encyclical is released.

awinter-py• 2 months ago

yeah 'anthropic employee to appear on panel'

make32• 2 months ago

sign of the times

embedding-shape• 2 months ago

Agree, the introduction from article:

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, on preserving the human person in the age of artificial intelligence, will be released on May 25. A presentation event with the Pope and various speakers is scheduled for the same day at the Vatican.

Among the "various speakers" is Christopher Olah. But hard to express under 80 characters I bet.

pimlottc• 2 months ago

It made me think that the founder wrote their own encyclical with AI

Barbing• 2 months ago

Didn’t even think they made encyclicalpedias anymore

tclancy• 2 months ago

“Claude, today you will be speaking ex cathedra …”

Actually I may try that as a prompt. Last week I was having git commit messages all be in iambic tetrameter to see if anyone noticed but it annoyed me to death after the first two.

Now to look up “load-bearing” in Latin, just in case.

Izikiel432• 2 months ago

This reminds me of the second half of the Hyperion cantos by Dan Simmons

hungryhobbit• 2 months ago

I <3 the sci-fi gods like Herbert, Heinlein and Asimov, and they all had great sci-fi takes on religion ... but Hyperion has THE best take on sci-fi religions IMHO.

SV_BubbleTime4• 2 months ago

It seems that is the first in his series but is that a good one to start after Dune? I’m on the last book there and, man, the pacing is questionable.

akkartik• 2 months ago

You mean the Endymion books, or Fall of Hyperion? I'm rereading the latter right now..

Izikiel432• 2 months ago

For the religion bits, if I remember correctly, it was a bit of Hyperion but mostly the Endymion books, which are the latter half of the cantos.

cdelsolar• 2 months ago

Amodei seems apropos

ilaksh• 2 months ago

I'm an atheist, but most of what I have heard from popes in recent years seems like sound and possibly needed advice.

Also, even though I feel AI and robotics are very important for progressing humanity, I think that much of the world has long since lost a proper sense of intrinsic human value. It's really gone from overt exploitation to slightly more mild exploitation where we pretend the system is really merit based.

And as AI and robotics remove the need for human labor, I hope that someone like the pope can convince people that we should value human beings inherently and more fairly. Inexpensive labor and intelligence should make this feasible.

I hope the speech isn't something dumb like "remember only humans have souls" because I think that's really premature and pretty obvious that AIs are not people at this point.

The really convincing and somewhat deeper simulations of humans are probably only a few years down the line though.

Which comes back to the Rovelli dualism article that was on the front page before. I think we should not be in a hurry to try to duplicate humans in depth (such as imitating emotions, pain, stream of consciousness, self-preservation, etc). It's just completely unnecessary to go that far to get useful AI, and obviously unethical to subject a real human emulation to slavery.

orochimaaru2• 2 months ago

Human value has rarely existed. Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing.

Post-industrial world needed human capital. Hence, the need for human value. If you notice most of this "need" has arisen out of then need for industrial expansion.

Post-AI will be interesting. Will we go back to pre-industrial or get something better.

mrcwinn• 2 months ago

I also wonder if it’s just harder to rule a much larger population in the modern world than in those times. Any jackass can show up and say that he was chosen to lead by some higher power. But you must still convince enough people that that is the case or at least have a military large enough that you can control.

atq2119• 2 months ago

I don't think this is factually accurate. What it really boils down is a question of scale of societies.

Most of us humans inherently value each other. There are exceptions, and small communities can get nasty. But for the most part, small human communities tend to be supportive and valuing each other.

This really only stops being the case when you get large-scale societies that allow humans to view others through an overly abstract lens. Combine that with an unchecked accumulation of power, and you have the potential for those in power to view the rest as without value.

GalaxyNova• 2 months ago

Serfs were of value to the lord, and they were usually not treated that badly compared to many workplaces today.

swatcoder2• 2 months ago

It's telling how blithely you're missing the point of what the pope(s) mean by human value. Their intended meaning is that far gone from modern consciousness, even among people who meant to champion some kind of human value themselves.

They're not talking about the economic value of humans or even the psychological value of humans as subjects with experiences and a right to liberty or care or something. The idea they're trying to recall and reinvigorate is a sense of human value that transcends that temporal, material noise altogether and that is truly universal. It's the human value that welcomed slaves, prostitutes, wretches, merchants and kings as peers in something grander than economy or state or lineage or tribe or creed.

Now, you can make a well-developed case that that's hogwash and that the human value that matters is the one that alleviates suffering or grants liberty or even the one that grants material reward for some virtue or bloodline or whatever, but that's not what these guys are talking about. They mean a human nature that is always there and always worthy, just as much when it's experiencing temporal poverty/suffering/abuse as when it's basking in temporal wealth/success/freedom.

The idea is that Christian or not, Catholic or not, it does good for everyone to think of human value that way and the critique -- for a long time now -- is that for all the flash and glimmer of technology and its material benefits, it sometimes makes it very very easy to forget.

pryce• 2 months ago

If my definition of 'value' was something that was totally contingent on both post-industrial society and an ultracapitalist approach to production, and it made me deduce that human being's lives over thousands of years or in other societies were worth "nothing", I think I would interpret this as a 'reductio-ad-absurdum'. That is, by deducing an absurd conclusion from the premise, that makes a strong argument that my definition of 'value' must be so narrow as to be effectively broken. I would respond by looking for a different, more wide definition of value, among the various ones that have been proposed.

wahern2• 2 months ago

The concept of fundamental human rights is certainly new, but our notion of intrinsic human value (and intrinsic value of other life and things) arises from our empathy, which at least in its degree is perhaps our most important defining trait as a species. (Our empathy may have been a prerequisite for the emergence of our intelligence.)

Conflating the two is why some people have trouble understanding why religions like Buddhism and Christianity seemed to tolerate so much inequality and violence; or more generally just assumed people writ large were historically more callous and uncaring than today.

Arguably one of the downsides, though, to a focus on rights vs intrinsic value is that rights are typically couched in materialist terms. Most of the time that's probably for the better, but sometimes maybe not.

watwut2• 2 months ago

People really should stop making up history from childrens books. People were valuing people to various degrees and tool seriously the human value question in every single period we have records from.

And varrying degrees apply to post-industrial too - your human value did not meant much in very much industrial third reich fans hands.

pasquinelli• 2 months ago

what do you know about the pre-industrial world, really?

graemep12• 2 months ago

Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing.

Not true. Serfs had rights that varied a lot between societies and over time. Religions mostly teach a value of human life, and Christianity teaches equal value: "when Adam devlved and Eve span who was then the gentleman", or "the first shall be last and the last shall be first" or "it is easier for a rich map to pass through the eye of the needle".

There were all sorts of people in between. Free people who were not serfs. Skilled people who were members of guilds.

grebc• 2 months ago

When it’s necessary for the pope to tell the orange one to calm down about wiping out a civilisation, you know things are bad.

b00ty4breakfast2• 2 months ago

This would be more of an indictment if we were closer to the 19th century rather than 5 popes deep into public denouncements of American militarism.

_DeadFred_3• 2 months ago

Are you talking about the 40 years of 'death to America, death to Israel' calls from the Islamic Republican of Iran? The same regime that bragged 'we defeated/destroyed Persian culture/civilization' when they took over Iran?

jdkoeck2• 2 months ago

A cursory look at the fall of extreme poverty across the world, over the last few decades, is enough to refute the idea that the world is largely based on exploitation.

hamandcheese• 2 months ago

Has wealth been distributed from exploiter to exploited? Doesn't seem like it. It just seems like the 99% are being exploited a little more evenhandedly.

sheepolog• 2 months ago

I agree that things are getting better, but your sentiment feels a bit premature; exploitation is still alive and well in many supply chains. The people who manufacture the products you buy often live much harder lives than you.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o...

taosx• 2 months ago

You assume that exploitation and material improvement can not coexist. You can be exploited just as well, by that I mean you're not getting a fair share for what you contribute to the system.

b00ty4breakfast2• 2 months ago

"UM ACTUALLY THOSE SWEATSHOP WORKERS ARE LUCKY TO BE WORKING FOR PENNIES AN HOUR TO MAKE MY OVERPRICED CONSUMER ELECTRONICS AND THESE FLY-ASS Js"

psychoslave3• 2 months ago

That’s really depending on which scale one use. Those who define the terms like "rich" and "poor" are already setting the frame to let the narrative almost only able to go into their specific envisioned perspectives.

graemep12• 2 months ago

A big chunk of it was the improvement in China, which started with a recovery from a previous disastrous decline.

The last 100+ years have also been atypical. Two world wars which disrupted economies in ways that lead to redistribution, huge changes from the end of European empires, the fall of the Soviet Union and communism, and technological advances that automated work but created may new jobs.

I would be very reluctant to assume a continuing trend from that.

senectus1• 2 months ago

yeah I'm not impressed. Its not like the worlds religions have consistently held the moral high ground.

That catholic church has a long and sordid history of protecting its own.

andai2• 2 months ago

Unfortunately some approximation of a human emulation (a slice of it) comes out of emulating Common Crawl. They do have neurons for emotions because those are necessary to predict next token.

Whether that implies anything about subjective experience... I think that question is unknowable by definition. Either substrate matters (in which case things have to be made of carbon for some reason?), or it doesn't (in which case... God only knows what that implies. Windows XP might have subjective experience).

throwaway27448• 2 months ago

Emotions exist outside of immediate reaction. This is necessary for stuff like motivation.

vasco3• 2 months ago

I hope the speech isn't something dumb like "remember only humans have souls" because I think that's really premature and pretty obvious that AIs are not people at this point.

It really is en vogue to have this attitude that everyone in church is stupid for believing but it's a huge disservice to yourself to not understand the Vatican is full of the equivalent of the best PhDs sourced from all over the world centered around their specific topic of interest, theology.

Also for the time being you can see that the Vatican understands AI much better than you already, just have a read here: https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... [0]

ANTIQUA ET NOVA Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence

rounce2• 2 months ago

“I hope X isn’t Y” is far from the same thing as “X is Y”. Seems like you’ve put words in their mouth so you can argue against some anti-religious straw man.

psychoslave3• 2 months ago

Intelligence is orthogonal to the tendency to blind obedience to some dogma, or its practical indistinguishable behavioral equivalence no matter what one actually think inwardly.

It doesn’t take a high academia credential to develop a critical mindset about established institutions, and quite the opposite seems more likely.

ryandrake3• 2 months ago

the Vatican is full of the equivalent of the best PhDs sourced from all over the world centered around their specific topic of interest, theology.

I’m sure there are Harry Potter and Lord Of The Rings superfans who have put in a PhD level of time and research into their favorite “topic of interest” as well.

dolmen2• 2 months ago

  > ANTIQUA ET NOVA
  > Note on the Relationship Between Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence
  > https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20250128_antiqua-et-nova_en.html

Dated 2025-01-28

Let's see how the direction evolves with the new Pope and 1.5 years later.

pelasaco• 2 months ago

Martin Heidegger discussed it already. Technology isn't just a tool, but the way we shape the World. The question with technology and AI should not be only "what should we do with it", but beside it, "what does technology do with us"

bananaflag• 2 months ago

I hope the speech isn't something dumb like "remember only humans have souls"

This is the position of the Catholic Church, so don't expect anything different.

My hope is that, within those boundaries, he may find something interesting and meaningful to say.

CoastalCoder2• 2 months ago

I've recently started listening to a podcast from a retired Anglican Bishop, "Ask N.T. Wright Anything".

IIUC, he claims that the concept of "soul" is something that the wasn't really present in the Jewish worldview of Jesus' time. Rather, it's something that later theologians (Aquinas?) picked up from Greek philosophy (Platonism?).

I wonder if that means Wright would have a different take on the whole "only humans have souls" idea. (Beyond just differing on the choice of terminology, I mean.)

buntsai2• 2 months ago

Is that really the position of the Catholic Church or what is a caricature of what people think it believes? The nice thing about the Catholic Church is that required beliefs have a formal spec. For something has important as this, there would be a clear and unambiguous references. Catholic Catechism / church council / papal encyclical. Do you have a quotable reference?

What I can find is only Aquinas that all living things have souls (anima). Humans have rational human souls. Animals have animal souls...

Descartes believed that only humans have souls. But that definitely represents a clear alternative to traditional Catholic beliefs. Many modern philosophers might argue that only humans have "consciousness" in a way that implies animals do not have souls.

throw0101c• 2 months ago

Non-human intelligences has been considered over the centuries / millennia:

* https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/aliens-and-...

I'm not sure there's a 'definitive' statement as of yet as to AI, but things tend to be leaning towards needing to be biological:

* https://www.catholic.com/audio/caf/can-artificial-intelligen...

* https://www.ncregister.com/interview/the-mind-and-the-machin...

Not sure if this means carbon-based or not:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemi...

Some thoughts from a philosophy professor (who is Catholic):

2. “But neurons do what logic gates do. So we know that computers can be intelligent, because they are essentially doing what our brains are doing.”
No, they aren’t. True, there are causal relations between neurons that are vaguely analogous to the causal relations holding between logic gates and other elements of an electronic computer. But that is where the similarity ends, and it is a similarity that is far less significant than the differences between the cases. Logic gates are designed by electrical engineers in a way that will make them suitable for interpretation as implementing logical functions. No one is doing anything like that with neurons. In particular, no one is assigning an interpretation as implementing a logical function, or any other interpretation for that matter, to neurons. (The point is simple and obvious, but commonly overlooked precisely because it is so obvious, like the tip of your nose that you never notice precisely because it is right in front of you.)
That brings us to a second difference […]

* https://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2019/03/artificial-intellig...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Feser

He has a few books, including one entitled Philosophy of Mind (A Beginner's Guide), so has thought about this.

KoolKat23• 2 months ago

This is a great point, further to your point on AI. Another perhaps worse offender is our focus on "the economy", at times the focus is always on "what about the economy?!" Forgetting "the economy" is merely a tool intended to improve the human condition. Sometimes I feel people lose sight of this original intention, be it unintentional or otherwise.

ryandrake3• 2 months ago

When Media Talking Heads say “the economy,” what they are really talking about is just rich people’s investments and old people’s retirement. Basically, for reporters, the economy = only stocks, bonds, and mutual funds.

dfxm12• 2 months ago

People are coerced into losing sight of this via capitalist-backed mass media, think tanks and politicians. In the context of popes in recent years as OP says, Pope Francis was particularly an opponent of trickle down economics and consumerism. Leo doesn't seem to be much different, based on his continuation of Francis' critique of modern capitalism as an economy of exclusion.

lo_zamoyski4• 2 months ago

Sometimes I feel people lose sight of this original intention, be it unintentional or otherwise.

It's more than a matter of losing sight. This is endemic to liberal hyperindividualism which places the individual and "consumer utility" at the center of economic activity. This ideological presupposition actively works against human flourishing - and even the viability of an economy at all - as a precondition for successful economies is so-called "normal social reproduction". Our consumerist economic order is actively hostile to stable family formation and fecundity (as evidenced by precipitous demographic decline) and thus to the health of society in general.

The economy is indeed supposed to be in the service of human flourishing. Modern economics instead optimizes for "utility maximization".

Muromec• 2 months ago

/Forgetting "the economy" is merely a tool intended to improve the human condition

Paraphrasing and old soviet joke -- and I also saw the human whose condition it improves

latexr2• 2 months ago

I feel AI and robotics are very important for progressing humanity

Why? And what does “progressing” mean, exactly? I’m not trying to be combative or flippant, I’m genuinely asking because the rest of your comment is a great argument for the opposite view.

I’d argue humanity will “progress” when we collectively learn to treat each other and our environment with respect and care. When we have a sense of community with our fellow people instead of placing undue value on individuals and personal gain.

Technological advance could be a boon for humanity if those were our shared values, but as it stands it seems pretty obvious that what it does instead is consolidate power in the hands of those who should never have it.

We already have the technology and resources to improve the lives of everyone, they’re just not fairly distributed.

lo_zamoyski4• 2 months ago

And what does “progressing” mean, exactly?

Indeed. This is characteristic of a reflexive and unthinking Progressivism that presumes the reality of some kind of nebulous, arbitrary, and ill-defined "progress", but very often denies the very basis that makes progress of any kind possible, which is teleology. In other words, Progressivism is one of the modernist idols in Nietzsche. The modern haughtily throws off the "old metaphysics" and the "old religion", but fails to notice how it has sawed off the branch it is sitting on. Its peculiar form of worship, its peculiar focus, is hollow because it has been gutted of the concepts that it draws a residual parasitic strength from. Hence, the twilight of the idols...

Postmodernism is to a large degree a reaction to the emptiness of modernism. Postmodernism is also self-refuting, but to its credit, it does respond to something very true about modernism. We are witnessing postmodernism bury the last vestiges of modernism along with itself. It is an ideological kamikaze.

pcooper• 2 months ago

“Progress” can be of the Steven Pinker kind, where the long term trend of things like infant mortality, deaths from violence, etc. are going in a direction that most people would agree is good.

Technological advance could be a boon for humanity if those were our shared values, but as it stands it seems pretty obvious that what it does instead is consolidate power in the hands of those who should never have it.

Why can’t it be both? I’m optimistic that AI and robotics will produce innovations that will benefit all of humanity, even if the financial gains are concentrated among the few.

snaking0776• 2 months ago

I’m pretty skeptical that we’ll have actual convincing simulations of human brains any time soon. We’re still in the phase of trying to figure out how mice decide to turn left or right in a maze. Not to mention that the ethical/allowed ways of collecting human neural data are incredibly coarse especially the most common forms like fMRI or EEG (maybe some BCI will improve this but it’s still pretty rough technology). Most of our data as well is collected in incredibly controlled conditions (even “naturalistic” stimuli) so the data we operate on is still not particularly indicative of how people act in the real world. Maybe you mean simulations of a “mind” which behaves like people even if it’s not particularly accurate to the brain? What did you mean by this?

toasty228• 2 months ago

We could do that without waiting for """AI""", actually I see absolutely no reason why """AI""" would move this topic in a good direction.

Factories were supposed to deliver us from work, automation was supposed to deliver us from work, computers were supposed to deliver us from work, now it's """AI""", tomorrow it'll be "quantum computers", the next time it'll be "cold fusion". It does not work and will never work, because it's not a bug in the system, it is the system

manoDev• 2 months ago

I hope the speech isn't something dumb like "remember only humans have souls" because I think that's really premature and pretty obvious that AIs are not people at this point.

I hope it is, because we already have the likes of Dawkins spilling opinions like “machines are conscious”.

So here we have a figure of authority saying humans are soulless but machines are conscious, furthering the argument that it’s okay to exploit humans, there’s nothing special about them if we can replace them with a machine.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 2 months ago

The world is getting real tired of these tech bros.

nilkn• 2 months ago

I'm not religious and haven't been since 2008. However, the world today is very different from then. It's fragmented, far more authoritarian, much more dangerous, with "us vs them" mentalities just gaining more and more traction in general in so many countries. There are almost no political leaders left in the world offering a vision that is distinct from mere survival instinct or domination or some mixture of the two. In the last decade we've seen the rise of multiple world-historical tyrants. Meanwhile, many major religions have lost all moral credibility due to continued decades of horrible violence. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it'd be nice to see some real, genuine world leadership from the Pope right now.

epolanski2• 2 months ago

I have long come to the conclusion, backed by data, that presidential and semi-presidential systems are deeply flawed.

There's a reason why not a single country turning authoritarian in the last 50 years has been a representative parliamentary democracy. The last one has been Sri Lanka in the 70s. Not a single one since then.

Electing single individuals to power instead of parties and coalitions is a terrible idea.

They are all, and I want to emphasize all, presidential or semi presidential. From Belarus to the Philippines, from Russia to Nicaragua, from Turkey to Tunisia the list is entirely composed by presidential or semi presidential republics.

There are several reasons why this happens, and why it tends to kill pluralism and proper democracy with winner-takes-all mechanics (which also tends to aggregate people across very few/two parties).

graemep12• 2 months ago

The last one has been Sri Lanka in the 70s

Sri Lanka did not become authoritarian in the 70s. It did adopt a presidential system.

SilverElfin• 2 months ago

Another weird thing is this religious group trying to exert control over the AI companies:

https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Techisturningincreasinglytore...

Why are the AI companies meeting with them at all? Just seems uncomfortable and suspicious.

ChrisArchitect2• 2 months ago

Why does this seem like it came out of a meeting where someone kept saying "how can we leverage AI?"

zeckalpha• 2 months ago

Not at all. The Rerum Novarum timing is too intentional.

losvedir2• 2 months ago

Even more, the pope took his "Leo" name explicitly to indicate he would be doing this.

sailfast• 2 months ago

This is very much trying to create a consensus around what being human means and why it’s valuable in an age where it will be easy to dismiss the intrinsic value of a human. Probably a bit more important than a marketing stunt.

cratermoon• 2 months ago

I wonder if the encyclical will incorporate material or take guidance from “Antiqua et nova”[1], the 2025 doctrinal note of the Catholic Church co-issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture. The Note addresses “the anthropological and ethical challenges raised by AI—issues that are particularly significant, as one of the goals of this technology is to imitate the human intelligence that designed it.” I sincerely hope it builds on it.

[1] https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu...

ChrisArchitect2• 2 months ago

Title is: Pope's first encyclical on preserving the human person in AI age coming May 25

erelong3• 2 months ago

My expectations for the "encyclical": some kind of take on AI that poses as "conservative" while pushing views strongly opposed to Catholicism.

SV_BubbleTime4• 2 months ago

I did rather enjoy New Pope talking the horrors of deportations and walls… considering the Vatican has ultra-strict immigration and walls.

Quillbert182• 2 months ago

While the Vatican does have walls, anyone can pretty much just walk on through them with perhaps a trip through a metal detector, so not sure what you mean.

The Catholic Church also does not teach that there cannot be restrictions on immigration, it simply says that we should treat people with dignity while enforcing such restrictions.

bonzini• 2 months ago

That's a deep thought worth of x.com.

ImJamal3• 2 months ago

Neither Francis nor Leo (not sure which you mean by New Pope) have stated deportations or restrictions on immigration are wrong. Unfortunately, they are often taken out of context or do not provide clear statements which leads to confusion like you are experiencing.

henry2023• 2 months ago

Thankfully we have you to tells us what true Catholicism is like. Maybe the Pope could come learn a little bit from you.

triceratops5• 2 months ago

What does Catholicism have to do with "(American) conservative"?

Some beliefs of Catholic faith are agreeable to American "conservatives" - "homosexuality bad, no abortion, no euthanasia". Others are music to the ears of American "liberals" - "help the poor and downtrodden, love the foreigner and everyone else, no capital punishment". But the church is the church. I don't see it as liberal or conservative. I suspect if you asked the pope, or cardinals or bishops, most would say the church is beyond such secular concerns and labels.

It has been around for far longer than any political movement or country. And I'd bet good money that it outlasts all of them.

pushing views

A religious leader espousing religious views? Shocker.

strongly opposed to Catholicism

Literally wrong. Only the Pope can tell you what Catholicism is. You can take it or leave it but that's how it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_supremacy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papal_infallibility

erelong3• 2 months ago

So to add to what you're saying here, a pope cannot teach error in specific infallible declarations on faith and morals, because then the whole Church would fall in to error.

Ergo, some like St. Robert Bellarmine have argued for example if a pope were to teach heresy, he would immediately cease to be a pope; others have argued it impossible for a pope to ever teach heresy at all as this was something they believed God wouldn't allow.

So, if you were to see someone claiming to be pope and teaching error on infallible issues of faith and morals, you'd have to conclude logically they could not be a Catholic pope, from a Catholic standpoint.

nvader2• 2 months ago

This article needs to be retitled, as it stands it's misleading.

Papal Encyclicals[0] are solely authored by the Pope, even if there has been secular scholarship involved in the writing. It is never "presented" by anyone else, and to frame it as presented primarily by Christopher Olah "alongside" the pope is to betray an ignorance of what's officially going on.

Not sure how we arrived at the present title, "Anthropic co-founder to present AI encyclical alongside Pope Leo XIV", but it makes as much sense as "Iceberg nearly completes mainden voyage across Atlantic, with famous ship as passenger."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical#Catholic_usage

nnutter• 2 months ago

On top of that, submissions are not supposed to modify titles. Original is "Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25".

cucho• 2 months ago

Not sure how we arrived at the present title

It was me. Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Chris Olah co-authored the encyclical with the Pope. I just found it noteworthy that there was someone from the “industry” at the encyclical presentation on May 25, which I think is a first. Usually, they are all clergy or academics.

nvader2• 2 months ago

Ah, I appreciate that. I agree with you that Chris Olah's presence might be noteworthy for this audience. It's just phrased a little unfortunately.

colmmacc• 2 months ago

Chris Olah, one of Anthropic’s co-founders, got in touch. What followed was, by McGuire’s own description, mind-blowing. “They basically were asking for direct help from the Vatican to convene and help the industry, because the industry was going so fast down this road,” he recalled.

nztaps123• 2 months ago

It will be interesting to see how the Pope's more human centered view clashes with Anthropic's rhetoric around replacing humans with AI

make32• 2 months ago

Anthropic is a bit like a grass-fed animal slaughterhouse, equally a threat to the existence of a middle class as OpenAI but with better branding

mvdtnz• 2 months ago

Who gives a shit what some religious fanatic is doing?

bigstrat20033• 2 months ago

You should welcome wisdom wherever it is to be found. Judge the document when it is available, not the source.

moralestapia• 2 months ago

Hmm, there’s probably a good reason for this, but it feels weird to involve people who are openly atheist and, moreover, against religion in an event like this.

I hope it's some sort of covert invitation to convert/repent. The doors are always open for those who want to cross it :).

8bitsrule• 2 months ago

We don't need popes or effing machines to tell us what we're doing wrong. We all already know that.

What we do need is a lot more ordinary people to do something about it.

aidenn03• 2 months ago

"Ordinary people" can be moved to action by moving statements from people they look to for leadership.

Abh1Works• 2 months ago

Can someone explain to me what encyclical is, and what is it significance in the history of the Catholic Church?

shannifin• 2 months ago

Just a letter from the pope, often about how Catholic teaching relates or applies to some modern issue. They present nothing new in terms of Catholic teaching itself, but, through the pope's authority, serve as important guidance for the faithful.

bigstrat20033• 2 months ago

And honestly, even people outside the Catholic Church sometimes look to the pope for guidance on topics like this - see this very thread. The influence of the pope in the world isn't as strong as it once was, but he still has enough influence that he can do some good with it at times such as these. I think many are hoping for something on the level of Rerum Novarum - I know I am, though of course that's a very tough act to follow.

aidenn03• 2 months ago

It's an open letter from the pope. An encyclical will often clarify Church doctrine on a topic, or set of topics. See e.g. Humanae Vitae[1] for an example of one that has resulted in, essentially, a lay rebellion — at the time it was issued many clergy, including Bishops opposed it, but the Church itself has gradually become far more conservative (perhaps as a reaction to Vatican II) in the intervening years.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanae_vitae

arjie• 2 months ago

Fairly disappointed that it’s not Amodei/Amor Dei there. A terrible blow for nominative determinism.

boredhedgehog• 2 months ago

I wonder what language the encyclical was written in. Could it be the first one originally English?

1718627440• 2 months ago

The name of an encyclical is the start of it. Does "Magnifica humanitas" sound like English to you?

Antibabelic• 2 months ago

I think the parent comment is wondering if it was originally drafted in English and then translated to Latin.

rambambram• 2 months ago

Preaching to the choir.

hypnodrones• 2 months ago

I greatly enjoyed Pope Francis thoughts on relationship with AI, looking forward to Pope Leo publication. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu...

andrepd3• 2 months ago

Interesting document from last year. Still Francis papacy, but not written by the pope.

https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu...

foofyter• 2 months ago

Praise the lord! Finally we get a pope young people, even atheists love!

dolmen2• 2 months ago

  > Magnifica humanitas will be presented on the day of its release at 11:30 a.m. at the Vatican’s Synod Hall.
  > [...]
  > The Pope will be present, along with several speakers:
  > [...]
  > Christopher Olah, co-founder of Anthropic (USA) and head of research on the interpretability of artificial intelligence [...]

marviio• 2 months ago

To get a sneak peak you could read Antiqua et nova from January last year. It focuses on the anthropology and also what sets human intelligence apart from simulated intelligence.

Someone on HN wondered if that text could be the Magna Charta for the AI age.

Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25

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