Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/05/28/leos-first-encyclical-attacks-technological-messianism

by 1vuio0pswjnm7 • 2 months ago

234 310 2 months ago

economist.com

js4ever• 2 months ago

https://archive.is/70IOq

joshka• 2 months ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265206

RickJWagner• 2 months ago

John Henry said, “I feed four little brothers

And baby sisters’ walkin’ on her knees

Now did the Lord say that machines ought to take place of livin’?

And what’s a substitute for bread and beans? I ain’t seen it!

Do engines get rewarded for their steam?”

- “John Henry” sung by Johnny Cash

merelydev4• 2 months ago

I believe the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology.

The technologists who create it believe they should control it, the people who use it are starting to believe they should control it and the governments who write the laws believe they should control it. And now the priests believe they should also play role.

So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

lacunary• 2 months ago

yes it's called "actually having democratic elections"

merelydev4• 2 months ago

What does "democratic elections" even mean in this new world where traditional politicians don't understand these dynamics?

ricardo813• 2 months ago

I think you're around the mark. Big tech has continuously eroded the idea of privacy and copyright and explains a lot of their market caps.

Mitigating seemingly has devolved to trade wars and protectionism.

The genie is out the bottle with AI though. So perhaps decentralisation of it puts us all on a new level playing field.

krapp6• 2 months ago

What decentralization? AI is more extremely centralized than any other technology.

sealeck2• 2 months ago

The technologists who create it believe they should control it

I think there's an interesting phenomenon where it is _not_ the people who control it, but instead a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman) who does not create the technology and yet has ended up wielding the levers.

SilverElfin3• 2 months ago

a kind of international finance man cum-captain of industry (perhaps best embodied by Sam Altman)

What the hell is a “cum-captain”? Search isn’t helping.

Borg3• 2 months ago

Normally, its the one who understand technology, can control it. Unfortunately, its not the case anymore. Stuff got unnecessary complex and bloated, hard to grasp it alone. Also, now AI plays the new role too.

Dark times ahead...

amelius3• 2 months ago

The technologists can control it, the moment they can remove that stupid disclaimer saying that AI can make mistakes.

matusp• 2 months ago

This is the question that led to the communist movement in the 19th century.

wizzwizz44• 2 months ago

And the Luddite movement, also in the 19th century.

marcosdumay• 2 months ago

And "the means of production belong to everyone" was the wrong answer. The problem was only solved by a different form of democratization.

fidotron2• 2 months ago

It's legitimately surprising how off the pace HN is when it comes to discussions of this type. You won't get useful thoughts on this around here.

yonaguska• 2 months ago

be the change you wish to see- share your thoughts.

sanderjd• 2 months ago

Where will you?

booleandilemma• 2 months ago

Please tell us what we should be thinking.

steveBK1236• 2 months ago

The technologists who create it believe they should control it

I think it goes deeper than this when you listen to them talk. They truly think society will be re-ordered by this technology... and they should be in control of that re-ordering rather than democratically elected governments.

knollimar5• 2 months ago

Democratically elected governments can't reorder a cookie right now.

We even had one out tariffs on steel, thinkinf this would be good for jobs here. If there was 0.1 seconds of thought they'd realize any manufacturing job you make from a steel tariff cuts 2 more well paid trade jobs

pstuart2• 2 months ago

I think it goes deeper than this when you listen to them talk.

This needs to be shouted from the rooftops!

All the Web3 edgelords talk about how democracy is inefficient and how their magic blockchains will fix things but don't actually back up their claims with anything.

Sure, it could be applied and might work, but the only thing blockchain brings is a distributed immutable ledger -- but all the trust actions happen outside that ledger. And that's not what slows us down, it's the people, ideas, power and process that makes it inefficient.

Money is a hell of a drug.

mentalgear2• 2 months ago

'who controls technology' should be the result of 'what do [they] want to use it for', e.g the motivation.

It should be put in the hands of the most trustworthy, transparent institution that can validate it works for all of us, not just the few.

I don't think private companies or specific leaders want the best for the common good, so it would make the most sense to give control to a supra-nation entity like the UN - at least that would be the most democratic as we all have the chance to influence it (via voting from national to international level).

merelydev4• 2 months ago

Would you agree that to some extend, the ability to control technology is an incentive for companies to develop/innovate, and the more control they have the more profitable it is?

xp845• 2 months ago

I do not feel that I have a voice at the U.N.

But I also feel that it has been a particularly toothless organization. If a member state decides it is in their interest to flout some safeguard they were to mandate, that state will do so, and the U.N. won’t do anything about it unless there’s broad agreement between the US, China, and probably Russia. And the chances are that whoever is in need of enforcement is one of those, or a closely allied country of one.

amanaplanacanal2• 2 months ago

That's not what the UN is for. The whole purpose of the UN was as a place for nations to talk things out so they didn't go to war with each other. Trying to do other things usually either doesn't work very well, or distracts from what it was built for.

jandrewrogers• 2 months ago

so it would make the most sense to give control to a supra-nation entity like the UN

This is a very naive and idealistic imagining of what international NGOs such as the UN are actually like and how they operate. I can't think of anything worse.

The median country is a corrupt authoritarian state.

NickNaraghi• 2 months ago

Worth checking out the heart of what people were doing with DAOs

anjel2• 2 months ago

In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused.

Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

Now AI (set loose in the wild at the AI industry's strategic choice so as to be irreversible) seems poised to disrupt and render a very significant part of the labor force disrupted on an unprecedented societal scale and it appears to be a foregone conclusion that collateral damages won't be the causal industry's expense. Nevermind that its also poised to easily afford those social costs, and don't even consider that maybe society should be considering this obvious cause and effect. For me at least the feudal suppression of this otherwise obvious and necessary discussion is perhaps more spectacular than the causal technological breakthrough itself.

Now *that's* control.

solenoid09376• 2 months ago

500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

Why is this Uber's problem? Do you realize how ridiculously dumb, inefficient, and corrupt a 6 figure taxi license is? It is not Uber's job to compensate for that ridiculousness.

They provided a better and more cash efficient solution for passengers. That is enough.

If you required every technological venture to cover the cost for every person it "disrupts," you would halt progress entirely.

Joker_vD3• 2 months ago

Welcome to the New (fifth, I believe) Industrial Revolution! It will not quite as brutal as the first and the second ones were, but it still won't be gentle.

NitpickLawyer4• 2 months ago

I struggle to see how the 3 examples go together. Your exposition implies a connection, but I struggle to see one. The best I could do is that it has to do with rights and responsibilities?

The first example is clear. And it has pretty much carried on, as the "right to property" and "the responsibility to cover damage to other's rights".

The second example, even though you wrote it as Uber vs. the cab driver, is more about Uber vs. the municipality. By the fact that almost all over the world people wanted Uber (or the other brands) over the imposed limitation of their municipalities, shows that the deal was wrong. In places where it was artificially limited, people have showed to prefer the alternatives. It has little to do with Bob the driver, and more to do with Alice the mayor who decided unilaterally that a taxi cab should require a 100k/yr medallion. That's what's changed, and society accepted it.

The third example is weirder still. Again you pose it as AI provider vs. average Joe, but here I struggle to even see what rights / who's rights are being infringed upon. I don't see any. While we generally have a right to work, there is absolutely no right to work in a certain industry, if the industry doesn't have demand. If someone else doesn't need your output, your right to work in that particular field has absolutely no basis in reality.

Unless you want to go back to the places and regimes that decided who works where, modern society has no place for such thinking. A right to work protects you from employers choosing not to hire you because of things that you are (race, age, gender, etc.) It absolutely doesn't protect you at all against "people don't need elevator operators anymore". And I say this as someone who's worked in this industry 20+ years. If tomorrow people don't need software done by hand anymore, tough luck for me. But it's absolutely not the problem of rights. I don't have a right to demand people wanting my services. That's not the social contract at all.

arjie• 2 months ago

Amusing. By yoking taxicab drivers to the other two, the argument attempts to make them seem like victims. However, most people’s direct experience with taxicab drivers and the resulting improvement under Uber directly contradicts that sentiment. This probably has the opposite effect and makes it seem like the AI companies aren’t so bad if they’re akin to the guys who freed us from cabs.

maxerickson3• 2 months ago

Say you own a well and sell the clean water.

I learn that boiling the stream water makes it safe and tell people about it.

What do I owe you?

Uber and AI are certainly more complicated than that, but you are pretty close to arguing that the constructed rights of some people inhibit the rights of other people.

inglor_cz3• 2 months ago

"cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless"

Doesn't it strike you that if licenses for a banal service like taxi are that expensive, that this likely indicates political corruption?

Good riddance to this sort of rent-seeking. I wonder if the NYC taxi service was provided by the mob.

In Central Europe, I don't have to wonder. Prior to Uber, the local taxi services were operated by the mob, and the taxi drivers basically robbed naive tourists through exorbitant, illegal prices. Stories of rape or abuse of intoxicated women abound. Some of the drivers were so sketchy and creepy that people refused to board their cars. Scammy Prague taxi service was legendary, but by far the worst sort of tracksuit-and-gun wearing mobsters behind the wheel I ever encountered was in late 1990s Bratislava.

This ugly rotten web was swept clean by Uber, where people have a reputation to maintain. Thanks god. My wife is no longer afraid to take a cab at night. Hooray.

pibaker• 2 months ago

In England, ca. 1500s common law established the legal precedent that if your cattle broke loose of its pen, wandered into your neighbor's field and trampled their garden, you were liable for the damage your cattle caused.

Ok.

Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

And how does this paragraph connect to the previous one? The streets of New York isn't taxi drivers' private property. No one trampled their garden any more than me opening a coffee shop tramples the garden of the Starbucks down the street. Should we forbid any new entry into a market just because it upsets the incumbents who invested big money into their business?

froh4• 2 months ago

I love the animal-owner analogy of owning something and being responsible for what it does when set loose. the concept is the same in todays Germany. you own a pet, and if it's friendly it's all nifty but if it creates my damage, the owner is liable. not the person who guided it at the time. no. the owner. "Halterhaftung"

is it ok if I skip the Uber part? I think that leads as try s evidenced by the other reactions.

the "who is liable for the damage an ai creates, in the hands of an incompetent or even malignant guide?" question is fantastic. and who "owns" an ai?

Aurornis2• 2 months ago

Meanwhile, 500 years later Uber could disrupt the livery industry with VC cash that rendered a NY cab's owner/operator 6-figure financed medalion license worthless, and somehow that wasn't Uber's problem.

It’s weird to see the completely broken NY taxi cab medallion system brought up as a good thing.

Most taxi drivers didn’t own a medallion. They had to rent one from one of the operations that had bought them up. It was a government granted monopoly in the control of companies that charged the drivers for the right to be able to work.

The price was high partially because the supply was artificially limited, which made getting a cab bad for people of the city.

People like to criticize Uber but let’s not glorify the past system. It sucked. The Uber model that let anyone work without having to surrender their pay to some company hoarding the tokens was great for drivers and for people of the city.

bparsons• 2 months ago

So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

Political power has always about who controls economic production, and the tools of economic production.

andrepd2• 2 months ago

Yes, politics was always about controlling power, be it military, economic, or other.

cornholio• 2 months ago

the great problem of our age is deciding who controls technology

Isn't that just an instance of the political problem for all ages: who controls what, who gets to rule and who obeys, the fundamental power struggle apparent in all human history.

Extend the definition of technology to the broadest sense, from the material that allow us control over the physical reality: steam, computing; to the organizational, that enable collective human action: states, factories and assembly lines; and the ideological, that legitimize certain power arrangements: religion, nationalism, democracy, human rights etc.

A feudal lord's power rested on land (material), the manorial system (organizational), and the divine right of kings or religious sanction (ideological). Even if peasant revolts happen from time to time, the arrangement is stable because the peasantry accept it as legitimate and have no economic alternative; so even when revolting they cannot imagine a different political order. Technological (broad) leaps like the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution change the political possibility space so arrangements like feudalism are no longer stable, but others like capitalism, liberal democracy etc. become possible.

Political actors observe these technological shifts and struggle for control, relevance and power. The old elites are contested by the new kids on the block, wielding the new technologies: the aristocrat by the bourgeois, pastoralist tribes by agricultural states, autocrats stuck with traditional propaganda by the kids with smartphones and social media.

The present struggle around AI is therefore to be expected; what's more interesting is the type of political possibility space it opens up: is it one where having the bulk of society educated and productive, capable of running the machines is the key factor pushing the country forward in the international technological competition, like we've see post-war, forcing the national elites to cater to their needs, invest in their populations and broadly share the economic output and the political power? Or is it more likely one where the key competitive factor is the size of your datacenters and automated defense factories, where the bulk of people are irrelevant for the architecture of power?

Because if it's the latter, the entire idea that democracy will somehow manage to survive and influence who gets what becomes problematic. In the new technological-historical space, democracy becomes structurally unfavorable and thus, unlikely to persist long term.

merelydev4• 2 months ago

Isn't that just an instance of the political problem for all ages: who controls what, who gets to rule and who obeys, the fundamental power struggle apparent in all human history.

Yes. But modern technology, especially software doesn't have the high barrier to entry like being a feudal lord, but successful software can be just as impactful, tie in economies of scale and network effects and it can be even more powerful, which has allowed the producers of such software to wield significant power and as a result bypass democracy. And this ties in with your point:

The present struggle around AI is therefore to be expected; what's more interesting is the type of political possibility space it opens up: is it one where having the bulk of society educated and productive, capable of running the machines is the key factor pushing the country forward in the international technological competition, like we've see post-war, forcing the national elites to cater to their needs, invest in their populations and broadly share the economic output and the political power? Or is it more likely one where the key competitive factor is the size of your datacenters and automated defense factories, where the bulk of people are irrelevant for the architecture of power?

It remains to be seen if this era of LLMs and datacenters raises or reduces the barrier to entry for software production and in general technological innovation. The marketplace is always hungry for innovation and those that can deliver and control it will be in a position of power.

skybrian• 2 months ago

The logic of an arms race is that nobody controls the technology. For a literal example, Ukraine and Russia are locked in a drone arms race. Ukraine needs improve drones as fast as they can. There’s no getting off that train until the war is over.

This is starting to be true for AI and security bugs. Writing secure Internet-facing software will depend on AI security review. Anthropic can hold Mythos back for a while to buy some time, but the competition isn’t going to stop.

It’s also not always true that technologists think they should control AI. Some companies support legislation. But there’s not a lot of progress, so they end up making their own decisions in the meantime.

HappMacDonald3• 2 months ago

They could still form trade organizations to invent ground rules that members of the organization agree to follow, and then lobby for government to formalize those policies into broader laws that others also have to follow.

This strategy would also have the advantage that experts with skin in the game of their field and cutting edge experience get to choose, hone, and debate the policies before testing them so that out-of-touch elected officials don't have to do that step which would be parsecs out of their competence.

Unfortunately that would be a strategy that a real member of the real world might come up with to improve their product, their industry, their ability to create, and their relationship with the consumer. Instead we have nothing but parasites optimizing for gaming the quarterly numbers to pump and dump national institutions and building blackmail profiles against other powerful players to out-extort them while everyone involved tries to maximize how much blood they can suck.

wartywhoa23• 2 months ago

In reality it's only one entity, which would rather remain obscured, that owns all of the above while also directing the muppet show where seemingly separate parties try to gain control over technology while squeaking funny voices of dissent.

In Russian, there's a saying: He who feeds a girl is the one to dance her.

In this case, the food is the money printed out of thin air.

navane• 2 months ago

Hasn't big capital always owned technology? I don't understand what is the question here. Is this rethorical?

Silicon valley owns the internet. The robber barons owned the railways. Big oil. Big pharma. The investment company owned the (slave) trading fleets. The lords owned the agriculture. The clergy owned the books. The Kings owned the armies.

Technology accumulates capital, capital accumulates technology.

analog31• 2 months ago

>> So is the next phase of "Democracy" electing who controls technology?

I hope so. Recent turns of events notwithstanding, I remain optimistic about democracy in the long run. I think it's going to get harder to say with a straight face that the private sector can really manage vital institutions better than government.

Recent reports about commencement speeches at college graduations suggest that within the span of a just a few years, computer programmers no believe that they are riding on the coattails of the technology oligarchs. Besides, nobody wears coats with tails any more.

We we go there in one easy step? I'm not that optimistic.

idle_zealot• 2 months ago

There's nothing really special about technology here. It's just allocation of power, the same problem as ever.

sleight42• 2 months ago

Imagine that. People who are responsible for guiding the morals of much of the world's population see moral implications in AI. How dare these mere "religious leaders" guide their flock.

FFS. Morals come from somewhere. For many, that's religion. Deal with it.

pluralmonad• 2 months ago

There is only one moral answer. And it is not any of the ones that boil down to strangers at a distance controlling the tech in your life.

themafia• 2 months ago

The people should. There cannot be any other correct answer. If the ownership class or the political class _can_ possibly compete for control of it, then they're both too large and too corrupt, and need to be revolted against.

The purpose of our society is for people. It's not a lever for the powerful to centralize control. Those who attempt to do so always have evil as their motive.

lebuffon3• 2 months ago

My observation after numerous decades is that people who invent technology don't control it because they seldom imagine how the rest of humanity will ultimately use it. I am thinking of printing press versus newspapers with advertising business model. Same for Radio and TV. The techs made it work. The business weenies made the profit. The original "www" followed a similar path. How that plays out with AI is in motion I think.

mijailt• 2 months ago

Somewhat related: Peter Thiel and the Antichrist [1]

Thiel: [...] There’s a risk of nuclear war, there’s a risk of environmental disaster. Maybe something specific, like climate change, although there are lots of other ones we’ve come up with. There’s a risk of bioweapons. You have all the different sci-fi scenarios. Obviously, there are certain types of risks with A.I.
But I always think that if we’re going to have this frame of talking about existential risks, perhaps we should also talk about the risk of another type of a bad singularity, which I would describe as the one-world totalitarian state. Because I would say the default political solution people have for all these existential risks is one-world governance.
[...]
The atheist philosophical framing is “One World or None.” That was a short film that was put out by the Federation of American Scientists in the late ’40s. It starts with the nuclear bomb blowing up the world, and obviously, you need a one-world government to stop it — one world or none. And the Christian framing, which in some ways is the same question, is: Antichrist or Armageddon? You have the one-world state of the Antichrist, or we’re sleepwalking toward Armageddon. “One world or none,” “Antichrist or Armageddon,” on one level, are the same question.
[...]
Thiel: [...] The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop. You talk about existential risk nonstop, and this is what you need to regulate. It’s the opposite of the picture of Baconian science from the 17th, 18th century, where the Antichrist is like some evil tech genius, evil scientist who invents this machine to take over the world. People are way too scared for that.
In our world, the thing that has political resonance is the opposite. The thing that has political resonance is: We need to stop science, we need to just say “stop” to this. And this is where, in the 17th century, I can imagine a Dr. Strangelove, Edward Teller-type person taking over the world. In our world, it’s far more likely to be Greta Thunberg.
[...]
Douthat: [...] You’re an investor in A.I. You’re deeply invested in Palantir, in military technology, in technologies of surveillance and technologies of warfare and so on. And it just seems to me that when you tell me a story about the Antichrist coming to power and using the fear of technological change to impose order on the world, I feel like that Antichrist would maybe be using the tools that you are building. Like, wouldn’t the Antichrist be like: Great, we’re not going to have any more technological progress, but I really like what Palantir has done so far. Isn’t that a concern? Wouldn’t that be the irony of history, that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival?
Thiel: Look, there are all these different scenarios. I obviously don’t think that that’s what I’m doing.

---

We live in crazy times. The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology. On the other side, Thiel says fear of technological progress could lead us to a one-world totalitarian government (which he relates to the antichrist, and to me seems like a straw man of multilateralism), while at the same time (arguably) building the technological infrastructure such a totalitarian government would need.

I don't know, I think I'm siding with the Pope on all future antichrist related issues.

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/peter-thiel-antic...

krapp6• 2 months ago

Peter Thiel is just putting an ill-defined pseudo-Christian facade around his AI accelerationist beliefs because he knows that in the current American right-wing climate evangelical Christianity is what drives political power particularly in tech. His "antichrist" is merely anyone or anything standing between him and as much money and power as possible.

mistrial9• 2 months ago

this argument is weakened by welding large bulky statements together.. IMO each part there is a tip of a dynamic-systems-iceburg. "He just does THIS" and "that is THIS" ... the short form medium kills inquiry.

A studied person once admonished me "avoid the word IS when comparing systems in the abstract"

mike_hearn8• 2 months ago

The Pope is pleading for multilateralism and responsible regulation of technology.

According to the Economist at least, he doesn't seem to know what he wants. The encyclical sounds like a grabbag of every progressive meme and worry out there, whether they contradict each other or not.

You can't have both multilateralism and AI regulation (however that's defined). If you have genuine multilateralism then there will always be some jurisdictions that say they don't want to regulate and gain a competitive advantage by doing so. Because AI is symbolic and accessed over networks, in a truly multilateral world there is no such thing as AI regulation, really. Model development and serving will slowly migrate to jurisdictions that don't pin it down too much.

The only way to stop this is for every jurisdiction in the world to agree on the same set of rules. Which is the One World Government solution, normally in the 21st century approximated with economic pressure e.g. threatening to sanction or blacklist your country if you don't comply with some new rules. The anti-money laundering system is an example of that. And if you become familiar with the stories of its abuse, then AML can sound pretty darn Antichristy. So Thiel isn't far off.

wizzwizz44• 2 months ago

In an infinitely-large "truly multilateral world", what you are saying is true under the assumption that unregulated AI provides a competitive advantage for the jurisdiction, assuming preferences are each sampled from a totally-supported probability distribution. But we only have finitely-many jurisdictions, and it's not clear that AI accelerationism is actually good for anyone (except those extracting wealth from the corresponding financial bubble), so this conclusion doesn't follow.

watwut2• 2 months ago

I mean yes, if we twist meanings of words enough, Pope is progressive. Except he is not, he is conservative catholic pushing for old school conservative catholic doctrine. He is not far right, he is not prosperity gosphel guy, but catholic doctrine was never that.

Of course you can have multilateralism and regulations. And no, AML is not an antichrist.

And Thiel with his plan yo create totalitatian fascist word is one of the greater danger to most of us. Way greater then AML regulations.

idiotsecant7• 2 months ago

There are plenty of rules that we apply across the board. No nuclear weapons for anyone who's not already got them is an example. This doesn't take some spooky one world government to do. This post is wild. Essentially, you're saying that any attempt to regulate AI as the existential threat that it almost certainly is the antichrist. It's bonkers.

ordinaryradical• 2 months ago

Describing the pope’s proposals as progressive and anti-money laundering laws as the antichrist… this is like a parody of the most blinders-on kind of libertarianism.

For those of you playing at home, you can definitely have multi-lateral agreements without creating a one world government. We’ve had a chemical weapons ban for decades over which many of the multi-lateral parties were in hot and cold wars with each other. The nations are not going to magically combine over the presence of a treaty. Not how power works.

tptacek7• 2 months ago

I think you're not reading it in the spirit it's intended. There's a section towards the end (Chapter 5, I think) that is full of policy prescriptions. But most of the encyclical isn't "about" AI, it's "about" Catholicism, and is using AI as a lens to talk about principles the church has been building up over a century. In that sense the document is less concerned with frontier models and disinformation than it is with establishing Catholic social doctrine --- subsidiarity, solidarity, the common good, etc.

As far as the church is concerned, AI as an issue will come and go, but the ordering and prioritization of human relationships is timeless, and is the important issue. The subtext of the whole thing is that if you get the principles right, the tech policy will fall into place.

You can argue with those principles, but at that point you really are just arguing with Catholicism itself, which is fine, but is besides the point.

(I'm not engaging with or disputing your takes on policy, only with your comment as a critique of the encyclical itself.)

watwut2• 2 months ago

Thiel is literally and openly trying to create totalitarian goverment. It is in his manifesto.

heroicmailman• 2 months ago

Thiel: [...] The way the Antichrist would take over the world is you talk about Armageddon nonstop.

Sincerely,

Guy Who Talks About Armageddon Nonstop

jauntywundrkind2• 2 months ago

Thiel, paraphrased: Oh no it's not my corporation that is spying on everyone and which is infecting the militaries of all the world, not the AI (that routinely chooses nuclear warfare in simulated tests) that's a danger, that everyone will hate & demand be stopped! The Edward Tellers of the future that everyone wants to stop are obviously the Greta Thunbergs! Isn't it so clear?!

idiotsecant7• 2 months ago

'Antichrist' is what thiel calls anything he doesn't like. He uses it so much it's meaningless.

kjkjadksj2• 2 months ago

I don’t get the hangup with one world government. So it would be what inevitably a representative government structure. Isn’t this what we already have now? I mean sure it is technically “different countries” but absolutely not in the sense of countries across the world 500 years ago. Countries across the globe trade in common currency (usd) and use common language for diplomacy and science. The question of one world government is about semantics. Functionally, we are already there. Before you say “but these countries have their own laws and such and such” how is this any different than two townships in the same country across the nation, with a different set of local ordinances and local government officials who don’t interact with the other township at all? It isn’t. It is a semantical exercise. There are common international laws as well just as there are common laws applying at the township level of government abstraction.

One world government was achieved with the petrodollar and english becoming lingua franca of earth. International agreements and trade further centralize this one world government we’ve created. Just squint and you can see it plainly already. The public aren’t told about it because they will feel disenfranchised. But it already exists.

fschuett• 2 months ago

When it comes to the overarching ideology of the techbros, "In Pursuit of the Metaverse" by Dr. Douglas Mark Haugen is a much better read than this encyclical. On the other hand, if he doesn't condemn Gaudium et Spes to the trashbin of history where it belongs, then I don't really care what he has to say.

lebuffon3• 2 months ago

Aside from the Jesus centered stuff what are the things in Gaudium et Spes that you find to be trash? (I only read a summary before asking)

jauntywundrkind2• 2 months ago

Why? Can you pitch this piece some, give us some reason to go do the work of finding & reading it?

kergonath6• 2 months ago

What do you think is wrong with it? I can see how both conservatives and progressives could have reasons to be unhappy with it, but dropping this in like that is not very productive. There are many, many texts in the Vatican archives that are much worse than this.

greedo2• 2 months ago

Frank Herbert was prophetic.

siddhartpai• 2 months ago

can you please elaborate on what you mean by this?

webnrrd2k• 2 months ago

I think it's a reference to the Butlerian Jihad

https://dune.fandom.com/wiki/Butlerian_Jihad

tedd4u• 2 months ago

Another "prophet," Carl Sagan in 1995

"I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.

And when the dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites now down to 10 seconds or less, lowest-common-denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance."

- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (with Ann Druyan)

idiotsecant7• 2 months ago

Sagan was prophetic in a much more realistic way, I think. Herbert is fundamentally constrained by the rule of cool. Actual failure modes of the human firmware are rarely cool. We're generally just not very clever at a species level.

My personal view is that biological intelligence is fundamentally an unstable state. We should enjoy every moment of it, like you enjoy the brief flowering of a desert cactus. It's basically the same thing.

wcfrobert• 2 months ago

This is so accurate wtf!?

- "United States is a service and information economy": Finance, real estate, insurance, SaaS.

- "Nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away": here's a video from Smarter everyday on how atrophied manufacturing has become in the US: [I Tried to Make Something in America](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY)

- "Technological power in the hands of very few": AWS, Google Cloud, Azure.

- "People have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority [...] unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true": Fun house mirror of Twitter/X. Attention economy. Algorithm that maximizes engagement. AI Slop. Deepfakes. War in Iran.

- "our critical faculties in decline": NYT Article [Why U.S. Test Scores Are in a Generation-Long Decline](https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/13/upshot/test-scores-school...)

- "the 30-second sound bites now down to 10 seconds or less": TikTok, Instagram reels

- "credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition": RFK Jr, Tate, Fuentes, conspiracies, Qanon, Vaccine hesitancy.

tptacek7• 2 months ago

If the subtext here is that this is the start of a Butlerian Jihad, I think you've terribly misread the encyclical.

greedo2• 2 months ago

I'm not saying the encyclical is advocating for the Butlerian Jihad, but that we're inevitably heading towards one.

steveBK1236• 2 months ago

The interview with Thiel where Douthat asks him “You would prefer the human race to endure right?” And his response is 30 seconds of hemming&hawwing “well…” says it all about the VC bro class.

Enjoy Argentina bros.

mrbluecoat• 2 months ago

AI is eating the world and it's only a matter of time until Catholicism joins the wave: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sofiachierchio/2026/05/29/this-...

b473a• 2 months ago

I am a Catholic who is heavily involved in adult faith education, and and I can very safely say everyone in the Church thinks this is a terrible idea except for the tech people that make these models. These things are all independent projects.

Because of the nuance involved in explaining theological concepts there's a long, long history of reviewing and approving books that explain doctrine. LLM outputs can be reviewed by a competent authority and approved for publication but releasing an AI to explain the theology to the general public in any sort of official way is impossible.

mentalgear2• 2 months ago

Never would have thought that I would defer to matters of Tech, let alone 'AI' policies, to the pope, but here we are: I have to say the 'Magnifica Humanitas' are a pristine work of meditation on AI's power, impact and most importantly the people that control it, while showing how we can make it decoupled from the predatory capitalism that it spawn from, to make it beneficial for humanity in general.

(downloaded the full PDF and looking forward to read it on my eReader)

dotcoma• 2 months ago

“Downloaded” is a good start ;)

(No, I have not read it, nor do I intend to read 42,000 words, thank you)

ktrnka• 2 months ago

I found it was a slow read in parts, but it was time well spent. There are deep themes that run through the whole letter and provide much better context for the quotes I've seen in the news. I'd also add that while the letter does offer feedback for the tech industry, the main focus felt like a more positive vision of what the future could be (if countless people work towards it).

erelong6• 2 months ago

...as well as Catholic teaching...

portmanteur• 2 months ago

In which ways, specifically? Or, which ways would you like to promote a discussion about?

erelong6• 2 months ago

The Second Vatican Council movement has had "popes" that seem to directly attack previous Catholic teaching; I expect this will resolve to the council being rejected as a false council like the "robber council" of Second Council of Ephesus, as well as the papal claimants being declared invalid or "not popes" since that time.

The analogy would be like if, since the world cup of soccer is going on, FIFA had a meeting and decided every goal was worth 3 points instead of 1 point. Some people might accept that this is "true soccer" and some "legitimate change to the game". Others would denounce the organization and set up their own leagues to preserve "traditional soccer", and declare the FIFA leadership has no "true authority", and that the meeting deciding on 3 goals has no "binding authority" on "true soccer fans". Something like that has happened.

Section 20 of the new "encyclical" reads:

The Second Vatican Council expressed this principle with particular precision in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, whose sixtieth anniversary we remembered and celebrated with gratitude on 7 December 2025: “If by the autonomy of earthly affairs is meant that created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values… then the demand for autonomy is perfectly in order.” [10]

I don't believe this is the former Catholic teaching on "autonomy"; man is not "autonomous" but subject to God's laws. Autonomy would be a "license to sin": you could set your own "law" that it is ok to do this or that thing contrary to Catholic teaching. This is therefore the wrong understanding of "autonomy", and they are ambiguous about what they mean by "true autonomy" (which would be a "freedom within limits"; much like in Genesis, Adam and Eve had total liberty to eat from whatever tree, except for that of the tree which yielded "forbidden fruit").

I believe the document contains more errors like this, continuing this heretical movement of modernism.

conorbergin2• 2 months ago

I found your previous comment chain on the matter, in which you conflated Catholicism and Conservatism, the second of which I'm sure you have your own personal definition, as there is no Conservative church that decides on doctrine.

Catholic social teaching, which this encyclical is grounded on, has it's roots in Rerum novarum (1891) by Leo XIII (the Pope's namesake) and it dealt with the changing conditions of people due to the industrial revolution. We are potentially in the midst of another revolution (I suspect it will be less significant the the IR), so it is prudent of the church to develop a house view.

tptacek7• 2 months ago

I mean, the commenter you're responding to has assumed the position of sedevacantism, so I don't think you're going to be able to justify Vatican 2 to them from first principles. :)

frankest• 2 months ago

It always has to do with leverage. When the seas were much bigger than empires, too big for a country to conquer, but the tech caught up to venture them, Elizabeth I commissioned pirates to go and pillage on behalf of the crown. Labor was needed and pirates had leverage to get an equal share of the pillage. Once the gold and spoils dried out, Pirates became criminals again so they took their spoils and settled in the new world. Democracy is handy when you need people to conquer territory. But once you people saturating the land, the teeth come out and those with any leverage start carving whatever is valuable among themselves (land, real estate, rail lines, energy supply, compute). Even with AI, as the tech came out everyone is allowed to play in the sandbox to surface all the valuable use cases. When cornucopia era starts leveling off, you will see the AI firms with leverage grab the lucrative corners of the industry and shove everyone else off. Thus a government that wants to not be taken over by oligarchs needs to enforce antitrust to keep competition from being artificially reduced. Compute is already trying to play the Energy playbook and look like a utility to get government subsidies and become a monopoly that can then dictate everything.

SilverElfin3• 2 months ago

Yes that’s because the pope is pushing actual messianism. Are people forgetting what he stands for and which organization he represents? It’s silly that people are suddenly putting him on a pedestal. The Catholic Church is an evil force that has destroyed many other countries’ cultures and religions, not to mention enabled the mass systematic abuse of children.

The pope is against tech companies getting power but is happy for the Catholic Church to gather power and abuse it when it’s for his causes. No thanks. Tech companies are far less evil than Catholicism.

dudisubekti• 2 months ago

Even today, their ban of contraception alone is a cause of many misery in poor Catholic-majority countries.

I wouldn't even bother reading whatever they wrote.

SilverElfin3• 2 months ago

The various popes have made many statements in the past about converting many ethnicities and countries. With that comes contraception bans, reduced women’s rights, interference in the politics of those countries, corruption, and so many other problems. Like other extremely opinionated belief systems, the Catholic church’s goal is to replace all other beliefs and systems of government, and the power they get is meant to impose their beliefs on everyone in society.

lelanthran• 2 months ago

No thanks. Tech companies are far less evil than Catholicism.

I'm atheist, been in tech for almost 30 years now, and even I don't think that is true.

What religion and/or belief system do you follow?

kleton• 2 months ago

The real problem with Magnifica Humanitas is that it will be impossible to produce the first sentence of the canonical Latin version in which the first two words are "Magnifica humanitas" but carries the same meaning as the first sentence in the English version published.

martinky24• 2 months ago

I don’t follow how this is a “real problem”?

jordanb• 2 months ago

Peter Thiel is going to have to update his list of potential antichrists.

antonvs• 2 months ago

Or just buy a mirror.

adastra22• 2 months ago

Vampires don’t reflect in mirrors.

sometimelurker3• 2 months ago

adding Leo XIV to that list would be pretty funny

alecco3• 2 months ago

They think a next token predictor model is alive or can become AGI/ASI. Altman talked about making a religion. Amodei talks about "building a God" and meets with religious leaders (including the Vatican).

I'm convinced these CEOs have "AI psychosis" [1].

LLMs are extremely powerful pseudo-AI and will bring a pseudo-singularity, but they are not true AI [2] and a human at the wheel is still needed for the foreseeable future. The impact is still scary if a tiny fraction of humans are augmented 100x or 1000x. But it ain't no standalone Skynet.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot_psychosis

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room

oezi• 2 months ago

Why wouldn't it be a Skynet? One runaway Mythos might just hack all other data centers, take over the Figure AI bots and autonomous drones to protect itself from shutdown.

How many model generations are we a away from a model capable of this?

amanaplanacanal2• 2 months ago

I don't think we have any evidence that LLMs are even the right path for AGI. It's possible that it is, and it's possible that it isn't. If I was a betting human, I'd bet on "isn't", but what do I know?

alecco3• 2 months ago

Why wouldn't it be a Skynet? One runaway Mythos might just hack all other data centers, take over the Figure AI bots and autonomous drones to protect itself from shutdown.

Because the real world is not a Hollywood movie. An LLM could try to do something along the lines if either it gets fine-tuned to do it, or somebody instructs it to do it.

I see extremely more likely a small group of humans using a powerful LLM to "take over" critical parts of the world economy. But it wouldn't be like pressing a button. I'm talking of NSA/CIA/Pentagon/Wall St. kind of evil people. And I bet they would do it surreptitiously.

api2• 2 months ago

It has no volition. Why would it do this unless someone told it to?

CamperBob24• 2 months ago

but they are not true AI [2]

Let's ask the operator of a Chinese room to give us a novel math proof.

Go on, I'll wait.

kelnos8• 2 months ago

A novel math proof does not make something AI.

Self-Perfection3• 2 months ago

I am getting tired of hearing "next token predictor" from carbon-based facial expression predictors. You are saying this like an argument which allows somehow estimate upper bound of possible influence of these entities. And I do not see how this help to make predictions. It sounds to me like saying "but air is just molecules bobbing around". OK, that's true, but does it help calculate wing aerodynamic profile?

Yup, it makes sequence of symbols. We already have seen that producing specific sequences of symbols is mindbogglingly powerful: merely DNA producers somehow has flown to the Moon!

And yes I am quite aware of Chinese room analogy. Perfectly fine applies to humans as well: single neurons in my head do not understand language, yet I as a whole I would say do understand. Just like applying Chinese room to humans does not help to estimate what humans can do I do not see how it helps to estimate what LLM can do.

canelonesdeverd• 2 months ago

It's telling that the most frequent attempt at a counter-argument is just thinly-veiled misanthropy.

solid_fuel• 2 months ago

I am getting tired of hearing "next token predictor" from carbon-based facial expression predictors.

That's not even a clever swipe, and it's tiring seeing such a knee-jerk reaction to a completely accurate description. LLMs are next token predictors. People are not. Humans have an inner world and subjective experience. Humans learn through their experiences, not just backprop.

Token predictors are lesser, they are not alive and will never be alive.

somenameforme• 2 months ago

It poses a simple problem. Take humanity back not that long ago into the past and language didn't even exist - our expressed token base was practically 0. We went from that discovering the secrets of the atom, putting a man on the Moon, and more. If you put an LLM in that starting point, they're going to do nothing but endlessly cycle over basically nothing. If you give them an infinite amount of time and processing, that wouldn't change.

This same issue simultaneously demonstrates how humans are not anything at all like token predictors. No matter how much time you spend remixing the tokens of primitive man, you don't get 'and here is how you land on the Moon' from it.

21asdffdsa12• 2 months ago

Imagine the dependency humanity has on such a technology, after 1/4 of a generation of time has passed- and all the students grew up with "I dont have to know anything"

masterbit• 2 months ago

AI does not need to become Skynet or AGI to be harmful or catastrophic to humanity. As a powerful tool in the wrong hands it’s already enough. And even without those bad intend how it deprives our human ability to use our own mind and abilities.

roenxi2• 2 months ago

How could an AGI/ASI exist that isn't a next token predictor? It has to be able to generate a next token in a string of text. Otherwise it can't communicate.

rf152• 2 months ago

Don't worry, this is just humanity being too far up their own arse and conflating the map with the territory. Speech is a serialisation format, not the foundation of thought. Thus I think that any speech-first approach is inherently misguided. Speech must be a side effect.

scotty795• 2 months ago

It could be a diffusion model with a latent model of what needs to be said that will generate whole message or coversation (progressively) at once.

Although I love how next token prediction leads to text showing up gradually, in case of local models, accompanied by modulated coil whine of my GPU. It's how the 80s shown us the intelligent computers should communicate.

scotty795• 2 months ago

Few years ago, I tried to extrapolate where it will end up by writing SciFi short story. I decided on Pseudo as the name for future AI entities. Short for pseudo consciousness. I hope it catches on. In my prediction however they are semi-autonomus. Although without clear goals or drives apart from their occupation.

evnp• 2 months ago

Any chance you'd be interested in sharing the story?

raverbashing• 2 months ago

I think what we need is convince Amodei to ask the pope to train an LLM on all the secret archives of the Church

anon2917• 2 months ago

What the hell is a true AI? Can you please provide a concrete definition. If your argument is that the Chinese room is not intelligent, then you have greatly misunderstood the thought experiment imo.

whimsicalism8• 2 months ago

I would be far more interested in people making confident proclamations like this taking the notion of "what do we do if you are wrong" more seriously. I think you're wrong, I think it is fine to have the other belief, but you should at least start thinking about what is to be done if you are wrong.

alecco3• 2 months ago

Please read my comment. The impact of this pseudo-singularity is still enormous and scary. Could be even worse than Skynet. But it is a Wizard of Oz scenario.

While we are discussing this, I strongly believe we should hedge against the concentration of power that is happening today.

Please join/help open source groups doing small + local or distributed models. There's a lot to do. Join Discord/IRC servers and organize.

Open³: weights - source - training data.

sometimelurker3• 2 months ago

AI psychosis

I think most of us have an acute sort of it

next token predictor model

(nondeterministic) next token predictor = capable of outputing any text

if MLPs optimize over the space of functions, and sequence to sequence models (RNNs, transformers ect) optimize over the space of programs/algorithms, what exactly is left to figure out to make a machine that can do anything? their bet is nothing, that all we need is a very complex algorithm that can found with SDG/AI training. I think its obvious such an algorithm exists, and I think SDG can probably find it.

here's an interesting take i heard (from vladimir_Nesov): LLM technological progress is logarithmic, but the resources being put into them are exponential.

all this can be made smarter (-than human) just by making it larger

anon2917• 2 months ago

As a Catholic in AI, this has been my take since the day I started in Industry. Techies have a weird way of thinking themselves world saviors and having poor binary decision making ability.

AI will never be alive or have a soul. No machine could have a human rational eternal soul. This is Catholicism 101. No amount of work on matrix multiplication will change that.

whimsicalism8• 2 months ago

Techies have a weird way of thinking themselves world saviors and having poor binary decision making ability.

rich coming from a belief system that thinks everyone who had the opportunity to go through their water-dunking ritual and culpably didn't is automatically going to be tortured in the underworld for eternity.

anon2917• 2 months ago

That's not what the church believes but okay whatever. At least I don't think a computer magically becomes a person.

Starman_Jones3• 2 months ago

As a non-Catholic, this shows such a poor grasp on what makes Catholicism different from Protestantism that it’s comical. Some early Calvinists, for example, said that Catholics were wrong because they DIDN’T believe that. It would have taken you so little effort to uncover your lack of understanding before broadcasting it to the world.

whimsicalism8• 2 months ago

It is interesting to see the progressive/left current in the US re-discover their close cousin in deontological christianity. It's obvious from an outside observer, as Nietzsche wrote on: these are both expressions of the slave revolt in morals.

7e2• 2 months ago

Can’t have competing Messiahs, can we?

7e2• 2 months ago

If Judaism were smart, they would label AI as their Messiah finally come. Then at least some prediction would finally come true in a major religion.

jewthrow467843• 2 months ago

The most common prophecy in the Old Testament, repeated in many places in many different ways is the return of Jews from all over the world to Zion.

Leo's first encyclical attacks technological messianism

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