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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with you. I recently watched a bunch of videos from a YouTuber 'Mike Okay' and he visits some random, obscure and non-standard countries to travel.
Most of the people he encounters are super friendly, welcoming and willing to bend over backwards to help him out. It's genuine human connection and willingness. He will speak to people from every possible background, including people in the Taliban and honestly at the end of the day, we're all humans and most people respect that.
Things have become blurred with social media, digital life, closed and private nature of the modern world but if you take a step back, you can realize humans are typically, very helpful, friendly and unique characters.
Arguably from very early on the Church has been at the forefront of "Serfs are of value to the Lord" if you will (St Lawrence, et al).
So far none of the AI stuff I've seen has really been about "the computer has no soul" and more around the danger that dehumanization can bring (which has been a refrain since the previous Leo, mind you).
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.
What rot. Tell that to native Americans who were forcibly converted and enslaved. Tell that to people in the inquisition. Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers. Tell that to all the children murdered in Christian and catholic schools.
Christianity and Catholicism doesn’t fool me. If you’ve ever wanted to see the mythical devil - look to those preaching and they legacy of hate that they carry.
There's really no argument against the institutional and historical hypocisy. There's no shortage of people and groups that have done or currently do horrible violence against others, sometimes even in the name of these ideas.
But I don't know if that takes away from the idea itself and what fruitful counterpoint it might play in modern discourse.
So your argument is that if some people who claim allegiance to an idea do evil things, that renders all who claim such allegiance, and even the idea itself, evil? That is a pretty poor argument. It's also one that I don't think you would actually accept in another context. I bet you anything that I can find some ideal you uphold which was espoused by some vile people at some point, and I also bet that you wouldn't go "ok, I guess I have to give that ideal up now".
If a group of people claim to be "divinely inspired" but then they do the same evil more or less as other groups, that leads me to conclude that they are not uniquely favoured by a god.
>Christianity and Catholicism doesn’t fool me. If you’ve ever wanted to see the mythical devil - look to those preaching and they legacy of hate that they carry.
Impressive, very nice, now say the same thing about Islam and Judaism.
Islam is worse than Christianity. They preach hate to begin with. At least Christianity started peacefully before being consumed by the conversion mafia.
Judaism I have nothing against as a religion. They don’t proselytize.
> > Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers
> Which people. There were Christians in India for 2,000 years. Some of my ancestors probably converted before the English did.
These Christians in India, who have been there for 2,000 years, are only the syrian christians or st thomas christians or malankara nasranis that follow eastern rite liturgies(syriac rites to be specific), and they all happen to be from the state of kerala or the malabar region only. The state itself has latin rite catholics as well as protestants which all started only since European colonial arrivals, though the syrian christians or st thomas christians or malankara nasranis are the majority of christians from that state. I am not trying to argue that all these people in India from european christianity(latin rite catholic and protestant) are forced converts or anything. Still, anytime this argument comes up, the syrian christians or st thomas christians or malankara nasranis are used as a shield, still, at the same time, in other cases, the community is also ridiculed as wrong christianity and the history of community as fake by the same people who use it as shield (the event of terming as wrong literally happened when portuguese came in the 15th century and force converted all to latin rite through synod of diamper which led to coonan cross oath leading to restoration of syriac litrugy but unfortunately permanently splitting the community into eastern catholics and orthodox denominations; even the british later came and tried to protestantise creating a small protestant faction also out the orthodox ones).
>>> 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.
This sounds a lot like an appeal to democracy, yet it often seems that religion is at odds with democracy in our world. And given the choice between living in a religious society or a democratic one, I'd choose the democracy any day of the week. Not just for my own prosperity, but for the overall welfare of everybody.
The one thing that has heartened me about the new Pope is that he has spoken favorably about democracy.
Modern democracy developed in societies dominated by religious values and at least partly because of those values.
What you describe as an appeal to democracy could also be described as a statement of Christian values. The idea that every individual matters and is loved by God is a core belief. There are some quotes in my other comments, but I think this is worth adding. https://biblehub.com/galatians/3-28.htm
This is indeed the paradox. I call it a paradox because it seems like religions value those things on paper but religious societies counteract them. I'm as puzzled as anybody as to the root cause.
The development of democracy may have been a reaction of religious people towards their own religions.
It depends on what you mean by a religious society. Do you mean theocracies ? Democracies with a religious electorate? Countries with an established religion?
Granted there are only so many countries, so it would be hard to see a clear statistical picture. And it's complicated by the fact that religion may be secondary to democracy as a predictor of well-being. But I don't know of a country right now (or a region in the US) where the influence of religion on governance is a cause for optimism about the future of democracy.
I prefer a more general version: (and keep <deity> out of the discussion)
= All life is precious =
For "life", you can read: any creature that potentially could be perceived as an individual that deserves a minimum of respect, a fair share of space/raw materials, not hurting, torturing or kill it without good reason, etc.
No need to go to extremes, but the above is imho a good starting point when considering the ethics on how to treat other creatures. Note that the question of whether something has a 'soul' or not, is not relevant there.
I'd be willing to consider including AI entities in that "life" category, if/when they cross that line between machine/tool and "creature with own personality, hopes, dreams, fears etc". Regardless of physical form.
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.
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.
Dogs show empathy towards not only dogs and humans, but even baby birds and rabbits - animals which one would expect to be viewed as pure caloric units, sans empathy.
Whales show empathy towards their young, and towards humans.
Male "loner" lions have been known to show empathic protection toward human and antelope young in the bush.
It's increasingly hard to define a clear difference between Humans and "mere Animals"; empathy is emphatically not a clear difference.
To date, fear of vacuum cleaners may well be the only known difference.
Sure, just like many other animals exhibit analytical intelligence and complex communication. The seeds are there. The distinction is by degree, but the gap is pretty wide in all three cases.
No other species has been shown to systematically display non-kin, non-mating-system altruism (for which empathy is probably an integral component). It seems likely you need systematic non-kin altruism to achieve the ubiquitous, complex cooperation humans exhibit. And that complex cooperation is probably a prerequisite to make our degree of intelligence evolutionarily profitable. Otherwise human-level intelligence should be more common than our immediate lineage. (Some cousin species may very well have been smarter or more cooperative than us; relatively speaking it could be homo sapiens found a more effective equilibrium. Nonetheless our immediate lineage seems to be the only one to break through the selfish gene bottleneck that restricts other species along these axes.)
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.
>And varrying degrees apply to post-industrial too - your human value did not meant much in very much industrial third reich fans hands.
Ho, certainly they did.
The scope of the ethics is then windowed on who’s deemed human, and who can be slaughtered like an animal for the glory of the great civilization one is part of.
Nothing specific to nazis, look at Rwandan genocide. Hutu extremists systematically referred to Tutsis as "cockroaches" and "snakes" in propaganda. Or even closer on a timeline perspective, Israeli leaders and media have used terms like "human animals" and described Gaza as a "city of evil" or a "nation of barbarians," while some Palestinian factions have used similar language against Israelis.
Dehumanizing "others" is the classic first step to get rid of any morale/ethical concern when interacting with them.
Nazi seen cruelty, violence and lack of empathy as manliness and virtue. Openly and specifically. You as a young man wanting to prove yourself would be beating and killing people, knowing they are humans and that violence toward humans is what made you manly in your peer group. They were not saying "it does not count". They were saying "I am great for doing it".
> The scope of the ethics is then windowed on who’s deemed human, and who can be slaughtered like an animal for the glory of the great civilization one is part of.
It was not a disagreement about who is human. Nazi did not killed just Jews and foreigners. They killed and tortured plenty of fellow Aryans, because those were their political opponents or to create fear in others. When a nazi tortured Aryan German to get names out of him, he knew full well he is torturing a human. It was not about whether they are human or not, it was simply that human life had less value.
Using animals and insects as insults does not mean there was any confusion about whether those being mistreated are humans.
> Dehumanizing "others" is the classic first step to get rid of any morale/ethical concern when interacting with them.
Actually believing they are not human is super rare and found only in some cults. Insults and degradations are how you work others to a rage, but they are not meant to be factual statements. And they are not interpreted as factual statements.
Happily, nazi left enough writing behind them, we know what they thought about human value.
> 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.
In fact, the value of those lives - in terms of their souls - was quite explicitly equal. Numerous pieces of Momento Mori and Apocalyptic artwork reinforced the notion that beggars, nobles, and even popes would appear equally before Jesus for a moral judgment, with the same chance to be found worthy or damnable.
And "the Conqueror Worm" would make sure all of them faced the same afterlife treatment, whether they were buried in silks or naked in a pauper's grave.
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?
Iran's prior government was a US-supported monarchy and torture regime, with Israel also credibly accused of state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing, rape and torture. Arab resentment of American and Israeli occupation is justified much in the same way as the occupied Raj demanding death to Britain.
What does that have to do with the Islamic Republic's bragging of conquering/ending Persian civilization in the name of Islam? A group should not celebrate conquering/ending a civilization. Especially so called religious leaders.
Iran is not Arab and is not occupied by Israel.
In your second statement you seem to callout the behavior, yet you defend it in the first? Calling for the death of random societal/structural groups, be that entire countries/societies, ethnic group, etc, is unacceptable behavior. It is especially unacceptable when it is done by powerful political leaders. It is outright evil when it is done by religious leaders.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I suggest a look at the recent economic development of Bangladesh, if you want something less abstract to illustrate the point that the reduction in poverty is very noticeable.
You would think that a great reduction in extreme poverty would give people pause, but it is almost always barely acknowledged. The strange conclusion is that people who tell you they care the most about poverty do not actually care about it in the slightest. It is just a vehicle for their resentment.
My last impression of Bangladesh was the fire accord stuff, i.e. build emergency exits and get garment factory owners to stop locking their workers inside since they keep going up in flames.
Maybe they've grown. Is Bangladesh at the stage where they outsource labour to other countries yet?
Bangladesh's Human Development Index (HDI) has shown a consistent upward trend, reaching 0.685 in the 2023/2024 report, ranking 130th out of 193 countries. It remains in the "Medium Human Development" category, marking a 72.5% increase in HDI value since 1990 due to significant improvements in life expectancy, education, and GNI per capita.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
“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.
If I meet someone and I tell them "I hope you're not dumb", would they assume I think they are dumb or should they take it as purely whimsical? It's also funny you got stuck on that vs on the document I shared, while dissing me for pointing it out.
More like, if you say “I hope this movie doesn’t suck” are you preemptively implying the movie is rubbish, or are you expressing your hope that it is worth witnessing? Taken out of context you can make a case for either. Luckily we have the rest of the post for that context so surely it’d be reasonable to base one’s interpretation on that.
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.
> 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.
I have not! Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for people who have spent extreme time and energy into researching anything, including works of fiction. I’m sure they are not dumb and are immensely more well read and focused on their area than I am!
The joke was meant to poke a little fun at superfans and not to belittle.
Yeah and if there was a global organization of Harry Potter PhDs that selected the best from all over the world for hundreds of years I'd probably think those guys were smart too and probably wouldn't have surface level takes about adjacent topics.
Given what we know about the origins of Harry Potter, you basically proved ryandrake’s point. Just because you put time into something does not make it worthy of attention.
Religions’ primary purpose is to facilitate tribal bonds, not experimentally seek truths and evaluate data for consistency. That is why almost all start with a set of tenets or immutable “facts”, such as the existence of an immortal component of a person (usually called a soul).
No vasco is saying if Harry Potter fans put a lot of study into astronomy, would you immediately discount their expertise in astronomy because of their devotion to Potterdom?
> 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.
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"
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.)
>he claims that the concept of "soul" is something that the wasn't really present in the Jewish worldview of Jesus' time
That's a broadly accepted take among religious historians, although it's off by a half century, roughly, if you include the Jewish diaspora. Philo of Alexandria did begin to integrate Jewish scripture with Greek philosophy on the soul during his lifetime.
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.
Yes, and this immortality is attributed to the immateriality of the intellectual faculties. According to this view, you can think of human death as more of an amputation of the body from the totality of the spiritual-bodily composite. Bodily resurrection is thus a restoration of the body.
Indeed, the Cartesian position is not the Catholic position and, in fact, directly contradicts the Catholic position.
The soul, according to an Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding, is the form of a living thing. Form is what makes a thing what it is. If you deny form, then you deny that things have any identity whatsoever and the world becomes unintelligible. Science itself becomes impossible.
So, the form is the formal cause of a thing's identity, and so everything that exists has a formal cause, because you cannot not have something that isn't something. In living things, we call this form the soul; we sometimes say that the soul is the form of the body. Accordingly, it is absurd to think of the soul and the body to be two things (like Descartes thought), just as it is absurd to treat the spherical shape of a ball of bronze as a distinct thing from the bronze. There is no sphericial-shape-as-such or bronze-as-such as things in the world.
While Descartes denied the consciousness of non-human animals, this was never the Aristotelian-Thomist position. In fact, it is taken to be flatly wrong. So denial of the consciousness of non-human animals is not really traditional at all. It is very much modern.
You might find a spectrum to be more useful framing than a binary. Asking when does consciousness seem more present? Are there different aspects of consciousness that can individually be validated as apparent or not? That sort of thing.
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.)
With regard to souls its intelligences vs animals rather than human vs alien intelligences. I doubt there will be a definitive position in AGI until we known what a true AI is like.
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.
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.
I think you’re being unfairly down-voted. While a lot of people here seek out more news, what I see normal people exposed to on TV is basically that – stocks, and if gas prices are high, that and quarterly jobs reports discussed in relation to stocks. To a first approximation, “did your retirement find gain or lose?” really sums it up for all but my father-in-law and the two of us. This is why it’s such a common trope not to think politicians talk about the real economy because your lived experience really varies based on how much stocks affect your life.
You might consider whether this is a little too reductive. After all the values of the stock, bonds, and mutual funds are directly related to the profits and capital flows through and health of the economy.
The economy is complicated and those high-level indexes are gross simplifications of a mass of complexity, but they're not entirely unrelated to whether people have money to spend and whether our liberalized economy is functioning. In fact, I'd suggest that our economy is increasingly suffering from the population's inability to participate and drive the maximal capital flows and prosperity that are possible. There is an additional distributive and concentration problem which we have been solving even more poorly lately.
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.
> 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".
> 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.
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.
“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.
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?
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
> 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.
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.
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).
In 1971 the government declared an unlawful state of emergency that stayed in force for 6 years suspending civil liberties, suppressing press freedom and giving the executive wide powers. The constitution was updated, by the parliament, the same constitution prolonged the current government mandate for two years without elections.
What you're talking about are the events of 1978.
And, as you probably know, during the 80s, that presidential and authoritarian shift only got worse.
But my point stands, 1970s Sri Lanka, is still to date, the last parliamentary republic to turn authoritarian. Didn't cite this randomly.
In 1971 there was an insurrection that nearly succeeded in overthrowing the government so the emergency was initially justified.
I think we have different definition of authoritarian: yours is broader. Sri Lanka did continue to have elections and changes of government even at its worst, but I would only call it authoritarian in the period when there was clearly a lack of freedom of the press (when journalists risked being disappeared).
My definition strengthens your point as by that time Sri Lanka had a presidential system.
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.
> 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.
“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.
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.
If you're in a country where war is occurring, it doesn't matter if it's a world war or not. There are conflicts in pretty much every continent. North America is waging war in the Middle East. Europe has a multiyear conflict threatening to spill across more borders. Several countries in Africa are in conflict even if they are civil wars. North America, while not waging outright war, is in conflict with a South American country. The Asian continent is nearly routinely going through border skirmishes. Antarctica doesn't count. The Australian continent seems the only one without active conflicts. So 5/6 continents capable of being part of world war is in warlike conditions.
- 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.
Whatever he had in mind there is surely a warning in how rapidly his efforts were reversed once he passed from the scene.
This is not merely a matter of "favorites" or "imitation" but one of legitimacy. Rome was not built in a day and so forth. Often the most successful paradigm-shifting leaders are ones who can deftly command the legitimacy of the past while adapting their society to a new future. But attempting the latter while disposing of the former usually fails, as in the case of Akhenaten.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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 [...]
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.
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 :).
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.
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."
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".
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.
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.
Mueller wasn’t some hero and I don’t need to like things Trump does in order to realize that the American left is running a dehumanizing campaign of their own eventual destruction.
Oh, not a whataboutism. Just wanted to be sure you were hypocritical with your critique.
The left is the problem and celebrating death. But with the king well, you merely don’t have to agree with everything he says.
The fact that I didn’t even need to say who made that quote yet you knew the author also shows me that you aren’t ignorant of the facts, just hyper partisan.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think Glock sounds silly because it's a relatively small weapon and company. But I wouldn't think it at all strange if you used, say, Oppenheimer engaging with the pope around nuclear weapons at the start of the nuclear age. Or maybe even better Enrico Fermi when he was developing nuclear reactors, since those had both the potential for cheap, clean energy and the spectre of nuclear weapons, which feels more analogous to the state of AI right now to me.
Those are actually wonderful examples to my point, because it was the state leading the manhattan project. It is the role of the state to engage with issues such as how to handle the new discovery in terms of national security, constitutional rights, etc.
I would even argue that, for such a disrupting discovery, some sort of international approach should be considered - everything from monoply risks through energy usage to economical risks if massive unemployment is possible. We instead have private interests dealing with (or ignoring) these issues by themselves.
It's something that already misfired with the advent of social networks, where many of the current issues could have been avoided if the state had actually showed up to engage with the problem.
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.
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.
I agree, and most people agree too. Upper bound on power though, not wealth. This has been an issue for a long time. In the 30's business men tried to overthrow FDR and got a slap on the wrist for example. Something about the structure of government doesn't account for them, and expects politicians and voters alike to be noble and honorable on default.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I agree with you. I recently watched a bunch of videos from a YouTuber 'Mike Okay' and he visits some random, obscure and non-standard countries to travel.
Most of the people he encounters are super friendly, welcoming and willing to bend over backwards to help him out. It's genuine human connection and willingness. He will speak to people from every possible background, including people in the Taliban and honestly at the end of the day, we're all humans and most people respect that.
Things have become blurred with social media, digital life, closed and private nature of the modern world but if you take a step back, you can realize humans are typically, very helpful, friendly and unique characters.
Serfs were of value to the lord, and they were usually not treated that badly compared to many workplaces today.
Arguably from very early on the Church has been at the forefront of "Serfs are of value to the Lord" if you will (St Lawrence, et al).
So far none of the AI stuff I've seen has really been about "the computer has no soul" and more around the danger that dehumanization can bring (which has been a refrain since the previous Leo, mind you).
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.
What rot. Tell that to native Americans who were forcibly converted and enslaved. Tell that to people in the inquisition. Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers. Tell that to all the children murdered in Christian and catholic schools.
Christianity and Catholicism doesn’t fool me. If you’ve ever wanted to see the mythical devil - look to those preaching and they legacy of hate that they carry.
There's really no argument against the institutional and historical hypocisy. There's no shortage of people and groups that have done or currently do horrible violence against others, sometimes even in the name of these ideas.
But I don't know if that takes away from the idea itself and what fruitful counterpoint it might play in modern discourse.
So your argument is that if some people who claim allegiance to an idea do evil things, that renders all who claim such allegiance, and even the idea itself, evil? That is a pretty poor argument. It's also one that I don't think you would actually accept in another context. I bet you anything that I can find some ideal you uphold which was espoused by some vile people at some point, and I also bet that you wouldn't go "ok, I guess I have to give that ideal up now".
If a group of people claim to be "divinely inspired" but then they do the same evil more or less as other groups, that leads me to conclude that they are not uniquely favoured by a god.
>Christianity and Catholicism doesn’t fool me. If you’ve ever wanted to see the mythical devil - look to those preaching and they legacy of hate that they carry.
Impressive, very nice, now say the same thing about Islam and Judaism.
Tier-0 whataboutism argument.
Islam is worse than Christianity. They preach hate to begin with. At least Christianity started peacefully before being consumed by the conversion mafia.
Judaism I have nothing against as a religion. They don’t proselytize.
> Tell that to native Americans who were forcibly converted and enslaved.
Tell that to those were were protects by the influence of the Church. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protector_of_the_Indians
> Tell that to people in the inquisition.
Which inquisition? Do you by any chance mean the Spanish Inquisition? An agency of the Spanish government.
> Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers
Which people. There were Christians in India for 2,000 years. Some of my ancestors probably converted before the English did.
> Tell that to all the children murdered in Christian and catholic schools.
AFAIK these are mostly allegations that have never ben substantiated.
> > Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers
> Which people. There were Christians in India for 2,000 years. Some of my ancestors probably converted before the English did.
These Christians in India, who have been there for 2,000 years, are only the syrian christians or st thomas christians or malankara nasranis that follow eastern rite liturgies(syriac rites to be specific), and they all happen to be from the state of kerala or the malabar region only. The state itself has latin rite catholics as well as protestants which all started only since European colonial arrivals, though the syrian christians or st thomas christians or malankara nasranis are the majority of christians from that state. I am not trying to argue that all these people in India from european christianity(latin rite catholic and protestant) are forced converts or anything. Still, anytime this argument comes up, the syrian christians or st thomas christians or malankara nasranis are used as a shield, still, at the same time, in other cases, the community is also ridiculed as wrong christianity and the history of community as fake by the same people who use it as shield (the event of terming as wrong literally happened when portuguese came in the 15th century and force converted all to latin rite through synod of diamper which led to coonan cross oath leading to restoration of syriac litrugy but unfortunately permanently splitting the community into eastern catholics and orthodox denominations; even the british later came and tried to protestantise creating a small protestant faction also out the orthodox ones).
>>> 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.
This sounds a lot like an appeal to democracy, yet it often seems that religion is at odds with democracy in our world. And given the choice between living in a religious society or a democratic one, I'd choose the democracy any day of the week. Not just for my own prosperity, but for the overall welfare of everybody.
The one thing that has heartened me about the new Pope is that he has spoken favorably about democracy.
Modern democracy developed in societies dominated by religious values and at least partly because of those values.
What you describe as an appeal to democracy could also be described as a statement of Christian values. The idea that every individual matters and is loved by God is a core belief. There are some quotes in my other comments, but I think this is worth adding. https://biblehub.com/galatians/3-28.htm
This is indeed the paradox. I call it a paradox because it seems like religions value those things on paper but religious societies counteract them. I'm as puzzled as anybody as to the root cause.
The development of democracy may have been a reaction of religious people towards their own religions.
It depends on what you mean by a religious society. Do you mean theocracies ? Democracies with a religious electorate? Countries with an established religion?
Yes. ;-)
Granted there are only so many countries, so it would be hard to see a clear statistical picture. And it's complicated by the fact that religion may be secondary to democracy as a predictor of well-being. But I don't know of a country right now (or a region in the US) where the influence of religion on governance is a cause for optimism about the future of democracy.
I prefer a more general version: (and keep <deity> out of the discussion)
= All life is precious =
For "life", you can read: any creature that potentially could be perceived as an individual that deserves a minimum of respect, a fair share of space/raw materials, not hurting, torturing or kill it without good reason, etc.
No need to go to extremes, but the above is imho a good starting point when considering the ethics on how to treat other creatures. Note that the question of whether something has a 'soul' or not, is not relevant there.
I'd be willing to consider including AI entities in that "life" category, if/when they cross that line between machine/tool and "creature with own personality, hopes, dreams, fears etc". Regardless of physical form.
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.
Then you wouldn't like Ayn Rands novels.
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.
Dogs show empathy towards not only dogs and humans, but even baby birds and rabbits - animals which one would expect to be viewed as pure caloric units, sans empathy.
Whales show empathy towards their young, and towards humans.
Male "loner" lions have been known to show empathic protection toward human and antelope young in the bush.
It's increasingly hard to define a clear difference between Humans and "mere Animals"; empathy is emphatically not a clear difference.
To date, fear of vacuum cleaners may well be the only known difference.
Sure, just like many other animals exhibit analytical intelligence and complex communication. The seeds are there. The distinction is by degree, but the gap is pretty wide in all three cases.
No other species has been shown to systematically display non-kin, non-mating-system altruism (for which empathy is probably an integral component). It seems likely you need systematic non-kin altruism to achieve the ubiquitous, complex cooperation humans exhibit. And that complex cooperation is probably a prerequisite to make our degree of intelligence evolutionarily profitable. Otherwise human-level intelligence should be more common than our immediate lineage. (Some cousin species may very well have been smarter or more cooperative than us; relatively speaking it could be homo sapiens found a more effective equilibrium. Nonetheless our immediate lineage seems to be the only one to break through the selfish gene bottleneck that restricts other species along these axes.)
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.
>And varrying degrees apply to post-industrial too - your human value did not meant much in very much industrial third reich fans hands.
Ho, certainly they did.
The scope of the ethics is then windowed on who’s deemed human, and who can be slaughtered like an animal for the glory of the great civilization one is part of.
Nothing specific to nazis, look at Rwandan genocide. Hutu extremists systematically referred to Tutsis as "cockroaches" and "snakes" in propaganda. Or even closer on a timeline perspective, Israeli leaders and media have used terms like "human animals" and described Gaza as a "city of evil" or a "nation of barbarians," while some Palestinian factions have used similar language against Israelis.
Dehumanizing "others" is the classic first step to get rid of any morale/ethical concern when interacting with them.
Nazi seen cruelty, violence and lack of empathy as manliness and virtue. Openly and specifically. You as a young man wanting to prove yourself would be beating and killing people, knowing they are humans and that violence toward humans is what made you manly in your peer group. They were not saying "it does not count". They were saying "I am great for doing it".
> The scope of the ethics is then windowed on who’s deemed human, and who can be slaughtered like an animal for the glory of the great civilization one is part of.
It was not a disagreement about who is human. Nazi did not killed just Jews and foreigners. They killed and tortured plenty of fellow Aryans, because those were their political opponents or to create fear in others. When a nazi tortured Aryan German to get names out of him, he knew full well he is torturing a human. It was not about whether they are human or not, it was simply that human life had less value.
Using animals and insects as insults does not mean there was any confusion about whether those being mistreated are humans.
> Dehumanizing "others" is the classic first step to get rid of any morale/ethical concern when interacting with them.
Actually believing they are not human is super rare and found only in some cults. Insults and degradations are how you work others to a rage, but they are not meant to be factual statements. And they are not interpreted as factual statements.
Happily, nazi left enough writing behind them, we know what they thought about human value.
what do you know about the pre-industrial world, really?
> 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.
In fact, the value of those lives - in terms of their souls - was quite explicitly equal. Numerous pieces of Momento Mori and Apocalyptic artwork reinforced the notion that beggars, nobles, and even popes would appear equally before Jesus for a moral judgment, with the same chance to be found worthy or damnable.
And "the Conqueror Worm" would make sure all of them faced the same afterlife treatment, whether they were buried in silks or naked in a pauper's grave.
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.
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.
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?
Iran's prior government was a US-supported monarchy and torture regime, with Israel also credibly accused of state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing, rape and torture. Arab resentment of American and Israeli occupation is justified much in the same way as the occupied Raj demanding death to Britain.
Today, the Likud regime recycles this same language specifically to foment racial violence in occupied territory, which should be sanctioned by America but isn't: https://www.jta.org/2026/05/14/israel/death-to-arabs-chanted...
What does that have to do with the Islamic Republic's bragging of conquering/ending Persian civilization in the name of Islam? A group should not celebrate conquering/ending a civilization. Especially so called religious leaders.
Iran is not Arab and is not occupied by Israel.
In your second statement you seem to callout the behavior, yet you defend it in the first? Calling for the death of random societal/structural groups, be that entire countries/societies, ethnic group, etc, is unacceptable behavior. It is especially unacceptable when it is done by powerful political leaders. It is outright evil when it is done by religious leaders.
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.
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.
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...
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.
"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"
I suggest a look at the recent economic development of Bangladesh, if you want something less abstract to illustrate the point that the reduction in poverty is very noticeable.
You would think that a great reduction in extreme poverty would give people pause, but it is almost always barely acknowledged. The strange conclusion is that people who tell you they care the most about poverty do not actually care about it in the slightest. It is just a vehicle for their resentment.
My last impression of Bangladesh was the fire accord stuff, i.e. build emergency exits and get garment factory owners to stop locking their workers inside since they keep going up in flames.
Maybe they've grown. Is Bangladesh at the stage where they outsource labour to other countries yet?
Bangladesh's Human Development Index (HDI) has shown a consistent upward trend, reaching 0.685 in the 2023/2024 report, ranking 130th out of 193 countries. It remains in the "Medium Human Development" category, marking a 72.5% increase in HDI value since 1990 due to significant improvements in life expectancy, education, and GNI per capita.
https://data.undp.org/countries-and-territories/BGD
What does that have to do with exploitation?
Wow, in 36 years of scientific and technological progress, life expectancy went up and so did raw economic output?
Again, what does that have to do with exploitation?
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.
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.
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.
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).
Emotions exist outside of immediate reaction. This is necessary for stuff like motivation.
Yeah, and we're making them extremely motivated the past year.
> 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
“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.
If I meet someone and I tell them "I hope you're not dumb", would they assume I think they are dumb or should they take it as purely whimsical? It's also funny you got stuck on that vs on the document I shared, while dissing me for pointing it out.
More like, if you say “I hope this movie doesn’t suck” are you preemptively implying the movie is rubbish, or are you expressing your hope that it is worth witnessing? Taken out of context you can make a case for either. Luckily we have the rest of the post for that context so surely it’d be reasonable to base one’s interpretation on that.
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.
> 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.
And I'm sure you have never even tried to acquire a PhD :p.
I have not! Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for people who have spent extreme time and energy into researching anything, including works of fiction. I’m sure they are not dumb and are immensely more well read and focused on their area than I am!
The joke was meant to poke a little fun at superfans and not to belittle.
Yeah and if there was a global organization of Harry Potter PhDs that selected the best from all over the world for hundreds of years I'd probably think those guys were smart too and probably wouldn't have surface level takes about adjacent topics.
Given what we know about the origins of Harry Potter, you basically proved ryandrake’s point. Just because you put time into something does not make it worthy of attention.
Religions’ primary purpose is to facilitate tribal bonds, not experimentally seek truths and evaluate data for consistency. That is why almost all start with a set of tenets or immutable “facts”, such as the existence of an immortal component of a person (usually called a soul).
No vasco is saying if Harry Potter fans put a lot of study into astronomy, would you immediately discount their expertise in astronomy because of their devotion to Potterdom?
> Religions’ primary purpose is to facilitate tribal bonds
That's what religion does, but so does "working in Silicon Valley for a tech company". What religion is is another matter entirely.
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12748a.htm
Dated 2025-01-28
Let's see how the direction evolves with the new Pope and 1.5 years later.
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"
> 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.
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.)
>he claims that the concept of "soul" is something that the wasn't really present in the Jewish worldview of Jesus' time
That's a broadly accepted take among religious historians, although it's off by a half century, roughly, if you include the Jewish diaspora. Philo of Alexandria did begin to integrate Jewish scripture with Greek philosophy on the soul during his lifetime.
Interesting. Thanks!
> although it's off by a half century, roughly, if you include the Jewish diaspora.
Mind expanding on this part?
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.
Only humans have immortal souls. From the Catechism (1703):
> Endowed with "a spiritual and immortal" soul, The human person is "the only creature on earth that God has willed for its own sake."
https://www.vatican.va/content/catechism/en/part_three/secti...
Yes, and this immortality is attributed to the immateriality of the intellectual faculties. According to this view, you can think of human death as more of an amputation of the body from the totality of the spiritual-bodily composite. Bodily resurrection is thus a restoration of the body.
Indeed, the Cartesian position is not the Catholic position and, in fact, directly contradicts the Catholic position.
The soul, according to an Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding, is the form of a living thing. Form is what makes a thing what it is. If you deny form, then you deny that things have any identity whatsoever and the world becomes unintelligible. Science itself becomes impossible.
So, the form is the formal cause of a thing's identity, and so everything that exists has a formal cause, because you cannot not have something that isn't something. In living things, we call this form the soul; we sometimes say that the soul is the form of the body. Accordingly, it is absurd to think of the soul and the body to be two things (like Descartes thought), just as it is absurd to treat the spherical shape of a ball of bronze as a distinct thing from the bronze. There is no sphericial-shape-as-such or bronze-as-such as things in the world.
While Descartes denied the consciousness of non-human animals, this was never the Aristotelian-Thomist position. In fact, it is taken to be flatly wrong. So denial of the consciousness of non-human animals is not really traditional at all. It is very much modern.
You might find a spectrum to be more useful framing than a binary. Asking when does consciousness seem more present? Are there different aspects of consciousness that can individually be validated as apparent or not? That sort of thing.
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.
With regard to souls its intelligences vs animals rather than human vs alien intelligences. I doubt there will be a definitive position in AGI until we known what a true AI is like.
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.
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.
I think you’re being unfairly down-voted. While a lot of people here seek out more news, what I see normal people exposed to on TV is basically that – stocks, and if gas prices are high, that and quarterly jobs reports discussed in relation to stocks. To a first approximation, “did your retirement find gain or lose?” really sums it up for all but my father-in-law and the two of us. This is why it’s such a common trope not to think politicians talk about the real economy because your lived experience really varies based on how much stocks affect your life.
Precisely.
You might consider whether this is a little too reductive. After all the values of the stock, bonds, and mutual funds are directly related to the profits and capital flows through and health of the economy.
The economy is complicated and those high-level indexes are gross simplifications of a mass of complexity, but they're not entirely unrelated to whether people have money to spend and whether our liberalized economy is functioning. In fact, I'd suggest that our economy is increasingly suffering from the population's inability to participate and drive the maximal capital flows and prosperity that are possible. There is an additional distributive and concentration problem which we have been solving even more poorly lately.
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.
> 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".
/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
> 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.
> 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.
“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.
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?
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
> 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.
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.
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).
> 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.
It did, under Bandaranaike.
In 1971 the government declared an unlawful state of emergency that stayed in force for 6 years suspending civil liberties, suppressing press freedom and giving the executive wide powers. The constitution was updated, by the parliament, the same constitution prolonged the current government mandate for two years without elections.
What you're talking about are the events of 1978.
And, as you probably know, during the 80s, that presidential and authoritarian shift only got worse.
But my point stands, 1970s Sri Lanka, is still to date, the last parliamentary republic to turn authoritarian. Didn't cite this randomly.
In 1971 there was an insurrection that nearly succeeded in overthrowing the government so the emergency was initially justified.
I think we have different definition of authoritarian: yours is broader. Sri Lanka did continue to have elections and changes of government even at its worst, but I would only call it authoritarian in the period when there was clearly a lack of freedom of the press (when journalists risked being disappeared).
My definition strengthens your point as by that time Sri Lanka had a presidential system.
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.
yeah 'anthropic employee to appear on panel'
sign of the times
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.
It made me think that the founder wrote their own encyclical with AI
Didn’t even think they made encyclicalpedias anymore
“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.
Funniest HN comment on religious topic ever. Literal LOL.
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.
I mean, the industrial revolution probably could have gone a little better.
Hopefully this time we can avoid multiple, world wide wars.
You can hope… but there is a matter of global debt and account that sooner or later will be settled.
If you're in a country where war is occurring, it doesn't matter if it's a world war or not. There are conflicts in pretty much every continent. North America is waging war in the Middle East. Europe has a multiyear conflict threatening to spill across more borders. Several countries in Africa are in conflict even if they are civil wars. North America, while not waging outright war, is in conflict with a South American country. The Asian continent is nearly routinely going through border skirmishes. Antarctica doesn't count. The Australian continent seems the only one without active conflicts. So 5/6 continents capable of being part of world war is in warlike conditions.
>The Australian continent seems the only one without active conflicts.
Yeah, but they did loose the great emu war.
Maybe, but it went pretty damn well. The AI revolution will be a success if it goes anywhere close to as well.
too bad about Lake Eerie
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.
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?
Whatever he had in mind there is surely a warning in how rapidly his efforts were reversed once he passed from the scene.
This is not merely a matter of "favorites" or "imitation" but one of legitimacy. Rome was not built in a day and so forth. Often the most successful paradigm-shifting leaders are ones who can deftly command the legitimacy of the past while adapting their society to a new future. But attempting the latter while disposing of the former usually fails, as in the case of Akhenaten.
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.
German text too. That was in exceptional circumstances to enable rapid secret distribution of the text
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
About 50 years by Wikipedia's reckoning.
Related: https://observer.com/2026/03/the-catholic-priest-who-helped-...
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.
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.
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...
Can someone explain to me what encyclical is, and what is it significance in the history of the Catholic Church?
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.
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.
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
It will be interesting to see how the Pope's more human centered view clashes with Anthropic's rhetoric around replacing humans with AI
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
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.
"Ordinary people" can be moved to action by moving statements from people they look to for leadership.
Praise the lord! Finally we get a pope young people, even atheists love!
I wonder what language the encyclical was written in. Could it be the first one originally English?
The name of an encyclical is the start of it. Does "Magnifica humanitas" sound like English to you?
I think the parent comment is wondering if it was originally drafted in English and then translated to Latin.
Aren't popes generally fluent in Latin? Being mastermind theologians and all?
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...
Title is: Pope's first encyclical on preserving the human person in AI age coming May 25
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 :).
This reminds me of the second half of the Hyperion cantos by Dan Simmons
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.
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.
Yeah, and here I'm thinking that we're entering Dune's timeline…
You mean the Endymion books, or Fall of Hyperion? I'm rereading the latter right now..
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.
Interesting document from last year. Still Francis papacy, but not written by the pope.
https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu...
Preaching to the choir.
Fairly disappointed that it’s not Amodei/Amor Dei there. A terrible blow for nominative determinism.
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
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".
> 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.
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.
The world is getting real tired of these tech bros.
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.
Who gives a shit what some religious fanatic is doing?
You should welcome wisdom wherever it is to be found. Judge the document when it is available, not the source.
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.
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.
I have met many people who don't seem to have a soul.
Heretic!
> Ankh-Morpork! Brawling city of a hundred thousand souls! And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people.
-- Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
All of the people who I agree with are ensouled, all of them I disagree with are not.
It makes celebrating their murders and assassinations just like so much easier to cheer for!!
(Yeah, it’s a problem, but they can’t see it)
What is your opinion on this quote?
“Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
Mueller wasn’t some hero and I don’t need to like things Trump does in order to realize that the American left is running a dehumanizing campaign of their own eventual destruction.
Nice WHATABOUT though?
Oh, not a whataboutism. Just wanted to be sure you were hypocritical with your critique.
The left is the problem and celebrating death. But with the king well, you merely don’t have to agree with everything he says.
The fact that I didn’t even need to say who made that quote yet you knew the author also shows me that you aren’t ignorant of the facts, just hyper partisan.
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).
It's part of the gradual agenda to label AI the antichrist.
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.
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.
> Who is this for?
For the shrinking Catholic church it's trying to regain relevance. For Anthropic it's PR.
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.
Amodei seems apropos
Why does this seem like it came out of a meeting where someone kept saying "how can we leverage AI?"
Not at all. The Rerum Novarum timing is too intentional.
Even more, the pope took his "Leo" name explicitly to indicate he would be doing this.
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.
I bet it will be 100 AI written, with guidance, natch, just because...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I think Glock sounds silly because it's a relatively small weapon and company. But I wouldn't think it at all strange if you used, say, Oppenheimer engaging with the pope around nuclear weapons at the start of the nuclear age. Or maybe even better Enrico Fermi when he was developing nuclear reactors, since those had both the potential for cheap, clean energy and the spectre of nuclear weapons, which feels more analogous to the state of AI right now to me.
Those are actually wonderful examples to my point, because it was the state leading the manhattan project. It is the role of the state to engage with issues such as how to handle the new discovery in terms of national security, constitutional rights, etc.
I would even argue that, for such a disrupting discovery, some sort of international approach should be considered - everything from monoply risks through energy usage to economical risks if massive unemployment is possible. We instead have private interests dealing with (or ignoring) these issues by themselves.
It's something that already misfired with the advent of social networks, where many of the current issues could have been avoided if the state had actually showed up to engage with the problem.
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.
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.
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.
I agree, and most people agree too. Upper bound on power though, not wealth. This has been an issue for a long time. In the 30's business men tried to overthrow FDR and got a slap on the wrist for example. Something about the structure of government doesn't account for them, and expects politicians and voters alike to be noble and honorable on default.
My expectations for the "encyclical": some kind of take on AI that poses as "conservative" while pushing views strongly opposed to Catholicism.
I did rather enjoy New Pope talking the horrors of deportations and walls… considering the Vatican has ultra-strict immigration and walls.
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.
That's a deep thought worth of x.com.
Thankfully we have you to tells us what true Catholicism is like. Maybe the Pope could come learn a little bit from you.
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
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.