9 ms·

Artificial Intelligence and Peace

122 points by sirpenguin 3y ago

bjornlouser 3y ago
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avipars 3y ago
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thepasswordis 3y ago
This is probably the best thing I’ve read by a world leader on AI. It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. Catholicism is an institution implementing and developing a religious philosophy that has a profound love of humanity, creativity, and understanding. > The inherent dignity of each human being and the fraternity that binds us together as members of the one human family must undergird the development of new technologies and serve as indisputable criteria for evaluating them before they are employed, so that digital progress can occur with due respect for justice and contribute to the cause of peace. Technological developments that do not lead to an improvement in the quality of life of all humanity, but on the contrary aggravate inequalities and conflicts, can never count as true progress. [8] The entire thing is worth reading, but this particularly summarizes my feelings. AI is good, but only insofar as it advances and centers the beauty of humanity.
- monkeynotes 3y ago
  > It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. What are these misconceptions? Catholicism uses shame to induce conformity, has had numerous priests abuse children (and protecting the offenders), has a long history of violence against non-adherents, historically deeply homophobic, and so on. All of that is factual. Edit: Oh! And now I remember, they killed and buried hundreds of children in Canada at their "schools" for indigenous people. Graves unmarked, families never knew what happened to the kids. But it's OK! Pope here said sorry, sort of, after being pressured, for decades. Also they found graves. Canadian govt. couldn't give a rats ass because the church is as powerful as governments. But remember! We love all of God's children.
  - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
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    - monkeynotes 3y ago
      So what if it's not unique to Catholicism? I was asking specifically what the misconceptions are. You've redirected.
      - ben_w 3y ago
        > So what if it's not unique to Catholicism? I was asking specifically what the misconceptions are. You've redirected. As someone who left Catholicism for Wicca and then eventually gave up on religion in general, I think it's valid to point out that these flaws are not unique to Catholicism. I would say that in pointing at all those things it has done wrong, you are implicitly saying that that these traits are unusual — but we're all a bunch of monkeys, it's really hard to get us to be nice to each other, and it's really easy for Machiavellian sadists to rise to power in every institution.
        monkeynotes 3y ago
        > I think it's valid to point out that these flaws are not unique to Catholicism. In what way? Does pointing it out change the facts? Why can't we have a discussion about how Catholicism is objectively hypocritical and not have to discuss all of the other things that are wrong in the world?
        ben_w 3y ago
        In the specific way I wrote in the very next sentence. You're welcome to point out the flaws and hypocrisies all you like, though I know from my experience as an angry bisexual Wiccan teenager that had to go to a Catholic school and study the bible as part of my education, that it does little good unless you have the goal of looking pompous — especially when the very line you were quoting was > It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. rather than > It makes me immensely sad that people don't realise Catholics are uniquely perfect. The former does not imply perfection, nor even an absence of hypocrisy.
- gdcbe 3y ago
  I’m from Belgium, traditionally a catholic country, and from that POV pretty certain that the biggest issue is that the catholic church as an institution has a pretty bad historical rep (still going on today) of abuse of power, and covering up where they see fit. So might help if they clean house, change policies and find ways to amend the victims. Just to say that I don’t agree that it’s always about misconceptions but more often about mistrust or not feeling accepted. That said there have been signs of a more open environment and their ceremonial texts can often be an interesting read.
  - InCityDreams 3y ago
    Their 'apologies" are often fun to read, too.
- deleted 3y ago
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- MeImCounting 3y ago
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  - dang 3y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ugleer 3y ago
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  - monkeynotes 3y ago
    Let's not forget about the abortion.
    - DagsEoress 3y ago
      Killing babies is love for humanity?
      - monkeynotes 3y ago
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      - ugleer 3y ago
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        svieira 3y ago
        Sed contra ruah (breath) meaning that people are not of concern to God before they take their first breath - "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (Jeremiah 1:5). So even if people were not people before they were born, God cares about them before they are people. But then we have "Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:43), said to a pregnant Mary by St. Elizabeth. If Christ is fully man and Mary is already "the mother of God" when she holds Christ in her womb then people are people before they are born. So we must be misunderstanding something about what Genesis 2:7 means. As for drinking dirty water from the floor of the temple (literally, sweep up some dust and put it in a cup with water - not an abortifacient) - the trial is asking God to reveal the truth or falsity of the woman's claim that she is virtuous (much in the same way as asking someone to take an oath in court - the bad outcome in both cases is falling under the judgement of God and receiving in some measure justice for the offense of blaspheming by asking God to witness to your lie before men).
- more_corn 3y ago
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  - philwelch 3y ago
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    - monkeynotes 3y ago
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      - ImJamal 3y ago
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        dang 3y ago
        Please don't post religious flamewar comments, or any flamewar comments, to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've had to warn you about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37561153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37561153. Eventually we have to ban accounts that post like this and I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please stick to the rules from now on, we'd be grateful: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
        ImJamal 3y ago
        Could you explain why my comment is a flamewar comment but the comment I was responding to is not?
        dang 3y ago
        It certainly was, but I'd already responded to that user: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220614. When someone is breaking the site guidelines 16 times in a single thread, I can't post 16 responses, nor would readers want me to.
- skynet305 3y ago
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- yieldcrv 3y ago
  everyone else thats been accused, indicted or convicted of pedophilia and child molestation were multifaceted people that contributed to society and had love and understanding for someone else its not a misconception to focus on the totally cancellable, ostracizable, things that institution is known for
  - lupire 3y ago
    Pedophilia is distinct from child molestation and is a mental condition, not a crime.
    - yieldcrv 3y ago
      and an accusation doesnt need a distinction
- c54 3y ago
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  - geye1234 3y ago
    Your challenge (and everybody else's in this subthread) is showing that it is belief in the Catholic religion as such that brings these evils. I say it's human beings doing what human beings do; the fact that they're Catholic is incidental to the crimes. Murder is the deliberate killing of an innocent person regardless of circumstances or perceived consequences. The Church has always condemned murder. Same for rape, theft, etc etc. So those arguing that Catholics qua Catholics, rather than human beings who happen to be Catholic, are responsible for these evil acts have a tough case to argue. Edit: what's more, the atheist regimes of the 20th century shed orders of magnitude more blood than Catholics of the previous 19, and explicitly appealed to their ideology to justify their evil.
    - ImJamal 3y ago
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      - geye1234 3y ago
        You're going to have serious trouble showing me that the crimes of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot (a disciple of Sartre's existentialism), and other explicitly and deliberately atheist regimes, is incidental to their ideology. Even if I were to grant, for argument's sake, that their atheist beliefs were incidental to their crimes, it's pretty trivial to show that such beliefs present no obstacle to said crimes. You will also have serious trouble showing me that the crimes of Catholics are not incidental to their ideology. On the contrary: Catholicism explicitly condemns murder, pillage, rape and all the rest of it, under any and all circumstances and for any and all motives.
        ImJamal 3y ago
        I put a /s at the end of my comment. That means sarcasm. I should have been more clear, sorry about that.
- DagsEoress 3y ago
  Many people forget (or never knew) that Catholicism / Christianity basically kickstarted modern science. A large misconception is that Christianity and Science can't coexist. When in reality they amplify each other.
  - geye1234 3y ago
    There is a wonderful (if lengthy) takedown of the "Brave scientist Galileo vs Catholic Church" myth here: http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/9-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-from.html http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/9-great-ptolemaic-smackd...
    - tim333 3y ago
      They didn't do very well by Giordano Bruno though who proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets and got burned at the stake.
      - geye1234 3y ago
        I'm a bit late responding to this, but I believe this is false, and that his cosmological beliefs had nothing to do with his fate: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-truth-about-giordano-bruno https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-truth-about-giordano-bru...
  - sapientiae3 3y ago
    One of my favourite stories is of George Lemaître who came up with the Big Bang theory, and predicted the Higgs Boson - while Steven Hawkins bet against it, and was proved wrong. George Lemaître was a Catholic Priest.
- tptacek 3y ago
  I agree that it's good, but I was struck by how much of it could have been written in the 1970s about the coming revolution in databases. It's probably good to have a refresher!
  - ysofunny 3y ago
    it is amazing how all computers do could be done in paper, but not as fast which means that computer technology since the 70s is really just "faster paper", faster by more then a single order of magnitue... but ultimately paper-equivalent to this day maybe LLMs, once their computational characteristics are better understood, will finally move computing beyond paper so fast it can write on itself over 2,000,000,000 times per second
    - deleted 3y ago
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    - pvg 3y ago
      ‘universal control mechanism for other machines’ is not something you can do with faster paper and that’s the job of a gigantic pile of computers.
      - itishappy 3y ago
        Isn't it? The universal control mechanism for other machines used to be punchcards.
        pvg 3y ago
        a mechanical mechanism which isn’t and wasn’t particularly universal and where the use of paper is incidental and often limiting. the point is that just making computation faster (what gp was talking about) is not why computers are everywhere.
    - spyder 3y ago
      computer technology since the 70s is really just "faster paper" Huh... "paper" is just storage, the whole point of "computer technology" is to have a tool to do computation not just storage. So no, computers are not just faster paper.
- danans 3y ago
  > This is probably the best thing I’ve read by a world leader on AI. > It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. Catholicism is an institution implementing and developing a religious philosophy that has a profound love of humanity, creativity, and understanding. Just because the Pope released this statement doesn't change how the Catholic church got its reputation, both good and bad. The magnitude of history of the Catholic Church up to the present defines its reputation far more than a single statement about AI. That said, it's good that they are adding their humanistic perspective to the debate. They are not the only ones saying these things - but their members, from developing country farmers to Supreme Court justices - need to be informed and aware since AI will probably affect everyone. I think it would be negligent if they didn't.
- woah 3y ago
  Is Catholicism still relevant once we create a new AI god to rule over us and it kills the old god? Could Catholics utilize their expertise in worshipping omnipotent deities to appease Roko's Basilisk?
- jamil7 3y ago
  > It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. I’d like to know if anything else about Catholics and the Catholic church makes you sad? And what do you believe are “misconceptions”?
  - thepasswordis 3y ago
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    - ugleer 3y ago
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      - dang 3y ago
        We've banned this account because religious flamewar isn't allowed on HN. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - dang 3y ago
      Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dang 3y ago
    "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - jamil7 3y ago
      Sorry, shouldn't have engaged there.
- deleted 3y ago
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vnglst 3y ago
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- monkeynotes 3y ago
  Basically what ChatGPT says when asked about the future of AI without consuming the article. This is about as vanilla message as any.
- Cheer2171 3y ago
  You have not added any value to this discussion.
alach11 3y ago
I certainly didn't expect to read a treatise from the Pope about LLM hallucination today. I wonder who at the Vatican is keeping up with the latest AI advances and helping Francis stay on top of it? This is actually a pretty balanced/nuanced take on the topic. It almost reads like an OpenAI blog post about alignment...
- lupire 3y ago
  Artificial Intelligence / Artificial Life is a major area of interest to religions, since their business is defining and guiding life. Religion is the home to most modern day philosophical thinking and struggle. It's been a hot topic in sermons all year.
- anon291 3y ago
  > I wonder who at the Vatican is keeping up with the latest AI advances and helping Francis stay on top of it The Vatican directly charters universities across the globe. I imagine they have several experts on the topic who are working with them, and I imagine they also have clergy and religious knowledgeable in both catholic theology and mathematics, computer science, HPC and AI. Fun fact, the first american woman to earn a phd in computer science was a nun
- sangnoir 3y ago
  > I wonder who at the Vatican is keeping up with the latest AI advances and helping Francis stay on top of it? The Catholic church has many scientists in the ranks, and is responsible for a fair share of scientific discoveries. The father of genetics was sworn to abstinence as a priest, and the Jesuits (the current pope's former order) have been particularly prolific in astronomy.
  - gattilorenz 3y ago
    Fun fact: even the Big Bang was first proposed by a physicist who was also a Catholic priest!
eql5 3y ago
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- prefer_to_ask 3y ago
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- deleted 3y ago
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- diggan 3y ago
  Artificial Intelligence and Peace – AntiPope Francis ???
  - eql5 3y ago
    Glad somebody got it! Thank you.
  - InCityDreams 3y ago
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    - dang 3y ago
      Religious flamewar isn't allowed on HN and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't post like this (or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220158 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220130). If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > AntiPope Francis I can't think of anything witty, but this made me think of Charlie Stross.
    - diggan 3y ago
monkeynotes 3y ago
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- lainga 3y ago
  Why?
  - monkeynotes 3y ago
    Because that's how political messaging is usually curated. I see no reason to expect the Pope to be different. The idea of him finding time to sit down at his desk, doing all that research, finding citations, have time to understand all the technical neauance, etc. etc. sounds totally unreasonable for a person whose time is split in so many directions.
    - lainga 3y ago
      I'm not sure I'm convinced. Why do you think (of all places) the Vatican's press office has taken up using LLMs so quickly? And why wouldn't they mention it (in an official message from the Pope, no less)?
      - monkeynotes 3y ago
        I wouldn't be surprised because an LLM is a viable shortcut to get shit done. Why would the Pope's press office not use one? You think they are too honest, too benevolent to do that? Why?
        jprete 3y ago
        The assertion says much more about your views than theirs.
        deleted 3y ago
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        3y ago
whoisstan 3y ago
>I hope that the foregoing reflection will encourage efforts to ensure that progress in developing forms of artificial intelligence will ultimately serve the cause of human fraternity and peace. It is not the responsibility of a few but of the entire human family. Isn't it the responsibility of the one in christian speak, not even the few. Also: Franciscan monk Paolo Benanti, the Pope’s AI adviser on ensuring algorithms respect human dignity https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25534031-000-the-popes-ai-adviser-on-ensuring-algorithms-respect-human-dignity/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25534031-000-the-pope...
- lupire 3y ago
  Are you referring to ambiguity between "each and every one" and ",the group overall"? I interpreted that sentence as "each and every one", not "someone else".
bernardlunn 3y ago
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woah 3y ago
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- svieira 3y ago
  A few things that aren't in the common blog post about AI: On account of revealed truth, he knows that the machine cannot be anything more than a machine: > Our world is too vast, varied and complex ever to be fully known and categorized. The human mind can never exhaust its richness, even with the aid of the most advanced algorithms. Such algorithms do not offer guaranteed predictions of the future, but only statistical approximations. Not everything can be predicted, not everything can be calculated; in the end, “realities are greater than ideas”. [9] No matter how prodigious our calculating power may be, there will always be an inaccessible residue that evades any attempt at quantification. What the machine does is bound by the same rules of morality as human beings, but it can't act in a moral fashion so it's up to us to ensure that we do: > “Intelligent” machines may perform the tasks assigned to them with ever greater efficiency, but the purpose and the meaning of their operations will continue to be determined or enabled by human beings possessed of their own universe of values. There is a risk that the criteria behind certain decisions will become less clear, responsibility for those decisions concealed, and producers enabled to evade their obligation to act for the benefit of the community. > ... > At times too, forms of artificial intelligence seem capable of influencing individuals’ decisions by operating through pre-determined options associated with stimuli and dissuasions, or by operating through a system of regulating people’s choices based on information design. These forms of manipulation or social control require careful attention and oversight, and imply a clear legal responsibility on the part of their producers, their deployers, and government authorities. [emphasis mine] And the kicker - intelligence is not free will (even if the two are severable the machine will never have the latter): > The unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and that capacity cannot be reduced to programming a machine, which as “intelligent” as it may be, remains a machine. ---- [9] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), 233.
- lupire 3y ago
t0bia_s 3y ago
There are rumors, that AI could generate theologically more accurate homilies than some priests. It's funny and scary at same time.
- anon291 3y ago
  I mean realistically that would be an improvement over many priest's homiletics.
haunter 3y ago
Actually very like this. Thanks for sharing!
SpaceL10n 3y ago
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johnohara 3y ago
Musk's statement that with AI we are "summoning the demon" will be ten years old this year so those tasked within the Vatican with studying such things have had ample time for careful consideration. Most disturbing to me in this Papal message is the paragraph titled "Shall we turn swords into ploughshares?" Anytime the phrase "grave concern" is used, whether diplomatically, ethically, morally, or otherwise, it generally means the event has happened, the decision was made, the behavior was expressed, or the news was delivered. For Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems ("LAWS") to be specifically referenced means the Vatican probably has reports of its use in combat, albeit experimentally, and not just drones and remote piloting of UAVs.
- Vecr 3y ago
  It's interesting to speculate about what C. S. Lewis would think of current AI systems and their future. Might not be too different from his demons.
cubefox 3y ago
I noticed this passage: > To speak in the plural of “forms of intelligence” can help to emphasize above all the unbridgeable gap between such systems, however amazing and powerful, and the human person: in the end, they are merely “fragmentary”, in the sense that they can only imitate or reproduce certain functions of human intelligence. The use of the plural likewise brings out the fact that these devices greatly differ among themselves and that they should always be regarded as “socio-technical systems”. That's true now and will probably be true for a few years -- but it seems we could soon have systems that are fully general agents, not just narrow tools. Those would raise some thorny theological questions. For example, will the following be still true? > The unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and that capacity cannot be reduced too programming a machine, which as “intelligent” as it may be, remains a machine. And what about even more advanced AGI, systems that are more intelligent than any human? > Human intelligence is an expression of the dignity with which we have been endowed by the Creator, who made us in his own image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26) ... says Francis and cites Genesis, but that leaves open the status of superhuman machine intelligence. If intelligence makes us similar to the Creator, doesn't this mean that superintelligence is even more similar to Him than us? In a word, will it be a sort of angel? (Or, if it doesn't behave ethically, a devil?) Probably that is too far away and to speculative for him to comment about. But I would like to know what his advisors have to say on these questions, if anything.
- thfuran 3y ago
  >For example, will the following be still true? The human capacity for moral judgement and ethical decision-making can't be reduced to programming a machine with a complex collection of algorithms only because it already is exactly that. Human cognition is embodied in a machine which implements the algorithm determined by its structure and the laws of physics.
dang 3y ago
All: this thread is a good case of what the HN guidelines mean when they say: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." Religious flamewar about Catholicism (or any other religion of course) is a perfect example of a generic flamewar tangent, the thing we most want to avoid here. Such disputes are as tedious and repetitive as they are nasty and community-destroying. It's hard enough to hold this place together without any of that! I've posted a dozen moderation replies to commenters who I saw doing this in the thread, regardless (of course) of which side they were on. I'm sure I missed some others, but the intention is to be as even handed about this as we can. In the meantime, everybody, no more religious flamewar on HN please!
beepbooptheory 3y ago
> We need to remember that scientific research and technological innovations are not disembodied and “neutral”, but subject to cultural influences. As fully human activities, the directions they take reflect choices conditioned by personal, social and cultural values in any given age. The same must be said of the results they produce: precisely as the fruit of specifically human ways of approaching the world around us, the latter always have an ethical dimension, closely linked to decisions made by those who design their experimentation and direct their production towards particular objectives. I wish every AI hype guy yelling "luddite" at the top of their lungs whenever they encounter resistance could simply understand this utterly true point. People have become so confused by what is essentially just accumulated marketing, they don't even have a consistent or rational idea of what something like progress actually is, or perhaps at least, what it could be. SV ideology has created a culture existentially committed to what amounts to an empty signifier: "progress" becomes simply whatever the economic winners happened to do, something defined after the fact. Everyone wants to believe history is simply climbing this one big mountain, and we simply need to keep up and go forward. But perhaps we are just in the ocean, holding on to whatever planks and buoys we can, hoping we can weather the storms we might see on the horizon.
koqoo 3y ago
genAI is GOD-mode-ON

122 points by sirpenguin 3y ago

bjornlouser 3y ago

[flagged]

avipars 3y ago

[flagged]

thepasswordis 3y ago

This is probably the best thing I’ve read by a world leader on AI. It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. Catholicism is an institution implementing and developing a religious philosophy that has a profound love of humanity, creativity, and understanding. > The inherent dignity of each human being and the fraternity that binds us together as members of the one human family must undergird the development of new technologies and serve as indisputable criteria for evaluating them before they are employed, so that digital progress can occur with due respect for justice and contribute to the cause of peace. Technological developments that do not lead to an improvement in the quality of life of all humanity, but on the contrary aggravate inequalities and conflicts, can never count as true progress. [8] The entire thing is worth reading, but this particularly summarizes my feelings. AI is good, but only insofar as it advances and centers the beauty of humanity.

monkeynotes 3y ago
> It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. What are these misconceptions? Catholicism uses shame to induce conformity, has had numerous priests abuse children (and protecting the offenders), has a long history of violence against non-adherents, historically deeply homophobic, and so on. All of that is factual. Edit: Oh! And now I remember, they killed and buried hundreds of children in Canada at their "schools" for indigenous people. Graves unmarked, families never knew what happened to the kids. But it's OK! Pope here said sorry, sort of, after being pressured, for decades. Also they found graves. Canadian govt. couldn't give a rats ass because the church is as powerful as governments. But remember! We love all of God's children.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
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  - monkeynotes 3y ago
    So what if it's not unique to Catholicism? I was asking specifically what the misconceptions are. You've redirected.
    - ben_w 3y ago
      > So what if it's not unique to Catholicism? I was asking specifically what the misconceptions are. You've redirected. As someone who left Catholicism for Wicca and then eventually gave up on religion in general, I think it's valid to point out that these flaws are not unique to Catholicism. I would say that in pointing at all those things it has done wrong, you are implicitly saying that that these traits are unusual — but we're all a bunch of monkeys, it's really hard to get us to be nice to each other, and it's really easy for Machiavellian sadists to rise to power in every institution.
      - monkeynotes 3y ago
        > I think it's valid to point out that these flaws are not unique to Catholicism. In what way? Does pointing it out change the facts? Why can't we have a discussion about how Catholicism is objectively hypocritical and not have to discuss all of the other things that are wrong in the world?
        ben_w 3y ago
        In the specific way I wrote in the very next sentence. You're welcome to point out the flaws and hypocrisies all you like, though I know from my experience as an angry bisexual Wiccan teenager that had to go to a Catholic school and study the bible as part of my education, that it does little good unless you have the goal of looking pompous — especially when the very line you were quoting was > It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. rather than > It makes me immensely sad that people don't realise Catholics are uniquely perfect. The former does not imply perfection, nor even an absence of hypocrisy.
gdcbe 3y ago
I’m from Belgium, traditionally a catholic country, and from that POV pretty certain that the biggest issue is that the catholic church as an institution has a pretty bad historical rep (still going on today) of abuse of power, and covering up where they see fit. So might help if they clean house, change policies and find ways to amend the victims. Just to say that I don’t agree that it’s always about misconceptions but more often about mistrust or not feeling accepted. That said there have been signs of a more open environment and their ceremonial texts can often be an interesting read.
- InCityDreams 3y ago
  Their 'apologies" are often fun to read, too.
deleted 3y ago
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MeImCounting 3y ago
[flagged]
- dang 3y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ugleer 3y ago
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- monkeynotes 3y ago
  Let's not forget about the abortion.
  - DagsEoress 3y ago
    Killing babies is love for humanity?
    - monkeynotes 3y ago
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    - ugleer 3y ago
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      - svieira 3y ago
        Sed contra ruah (breath) meaning that people are not of concern to God before they take their first breath - "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you" (Jeremiah 1:5). So even if people were not people before they were born, God cares about them before they are people. But then we have "Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" (Luke 1:43), said to a pregnant Mary by St. Elizabeth. If Christ is fully man and Mary is already "the mother of God" when she holds Christ in her womb then people are people before they are born. So we must be misunderstanding something about what Genesis 2:7 means. As for drinking dirty water from the floor of the temple (literally, sweep up some dust and put it in a cup with water - not an abortifacient) - the trial is asking God to reveal the truth or falsity of the woman's claim that she is virtuous (much in the same way as asking someone to take an oath in court - the bad outcome in both cases is falling under the judgement of God and receiving in some measure justice for the offense of blaspheming by asking God to witness to your lie before men).
more_corn 3y ago
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- philwelch 3y ago
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  - monkeynotes 3y ago
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    - ImJamal 3y ago
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      - dang 3y ago
        Please don't post religious flamewar comments, or any flamewar comments, to HN. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. We've had to warn you about this before: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37561153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37561153. Eventually we have to ban accounts that post like this and I don't want to ban you, so if you'd please stick to the rules from now on, we'd be grateful: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
        ImJamal 3y ago
        Could you explain why my comment is a flamewar comment but the comment I was responding to is not?
        dang 3y ago
        It certainly was, but I'd already responded to that user: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220614 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220614. When someone is breaking the site guidelines 16 times in a single thread, I can't post 16 responses, nor would readers want me to.
skynet305 3y ago
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- monkeynotes 3y ago
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yieldcrv 3y ago
everyone else thats been accused, indicted or convicted of pedophilia and child molestation were multifaceted people that contributed to society and had love and understanding for someone else its not a misconception to focus on the totally cancellable, ostracizable, things that institution is known for
- lupire 3y ago
  Pedophilia is distinct from child molestation and is a mental condition, not a crime.
  - yieldcrv 3y ago
    and an accusation doesnt need a distinction
c54 3y ago
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- geye1234 3y ago
  Your challenge (and everybody else's in this subthread) is showing that it is belief in the Catholic religion as such that brings these evils. I say it's human beings doing what human beings do; the fact that they're Catholic is incidental to the crimes. Murder is the deliberate killing of an innocent person regardless of circumstances or perceived consequences. The Church has always condemned murder. Same for rape, theft, etc etc. So those arguing that Catholics qua Catholics, rather than human beings who happen to be Catholic, are responsible for these evil acts have a tough case to argue. Edit: what's more, the atheist regimes of the 20th century shed orders of magnitude more blood than Catholics of the previous 19, and explicitly appealed to their ideology to justify their evil.
  - ImJamal 3y ago
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    - geye1234 3y ago
      You're going to have serious trouble showing me that the crimes of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot (a disciple of Sartre's existentialism), and other explicitly and deliberately atheist regimes, is incidental to their ideology. Even if I were to grant, for argument's sake, that their atheist beliefs were incidental to their crimes, it's pretty trivial to show that such beliefs present no obstacle to said crimes. You will also have serious trouble showing me that the crimes of Catholics are not incidental to their ideology. On the contrary: Catholicism explicitly condemns murder, pillage, rape and all the rest of it, under any and all circumstances and for any and all motives.
      - ImJamal 3y ago
        I put a /s at the end of my comment. That means sarcasm. I should have been more clear, sorry about that.
DagsEoress 3y ago
Many people forget (or never knew) that Catholicism / Christianity basically kickstarted modern science. A large misconception is that Christianity and Science can't coexist. When in reality they amplify each other.
- geye1234 3y ago
  There is a wonderful (if lengthy) takedown of the "Brave scientist Galileo vs Catholic Church" myth here: http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/9-great-ptolemaic-smackdown-from.html http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/10/9-great-ptolemaic-smackd...
  - tim333 3y ago
    They didn't do very well by Giordano Bruno though who proposed that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their own planets and got burned at the stake.
    - geye1234 3y ago
      I'm a bit late responding to this, but I believe this is false, and that his cosmological beliefs had nothing to do with his fate: https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-truth-about-giordano-bruno https://www.ncregister.com/blog/the-truth-about-giordano-bru...
- sapientiae3 3y ago
  One of my favourite stories is of George Lemaître who came up with the Big Bang theory, and predicted the Higgs Boson - while Steven Hawkins bet against it, and was proved wrong. George Lemaître was a Catholic Priest.
tptacek 3y ago
I agree that it's good, but I was struck by how much of it could have been written in the 1970s about the coming revolution in databases. It's probably good to have a refresher!
- ysofunny 3y ago
  it is amazing how all computers do could be done in paper, but not as fast which means that computer technology since the 70s is really just "faster paper", faster by more then a single order of magnitue... but ultimately paper-equivalent to this day maybe LLMs, once their computational characteristics are better understood, will finally move computing beyond paper so fast it can write on itself over 2,000,000,000 times per second
  - deleted 3y ago
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  - pvg 3y ago
    ‘universal control mechanism for other machines’ is not something you can do with faster paper and that’s the job of a gigantic pile of computers.
    - itishappy 3y ago
      Isn't it? The universal control mechanism for other machines used to be punchcards.
      - pvg 3y ago
        a mechanical mechanism which isn’t and wasn’t particularly universal and where the use of paper is incidental and often limiting. the point is that just making computation faster (what gp was talking about) is not why computers are everywhere.
  - spyder 3y ago
    computer technology since the 70s is really just "faster paper" Huh... "paper" is just storage, the whole point of "computer technology" is to have a tool to do computation not just storage. So no, computers are not just faster paper.
danans 3y ago
> This is probably the best thing I’ve read by a world leader on AI. > It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. Catholicism is an institution implementing and developing a religious philosophy that has a profound love of humanity, creativity, and understanding. Just because the Pope released this statement doesn't change how the Catholic church got its reputation, both good and bad. The magnitude of history of the Catholic Church up to the present defines its reputation far more than a single statement about AI. That said, it's good that they are adding their humanistic perspective to the debate. They are not the only ones saying these things - but their members, from developing country farmers to Supreme Court justices - need to be informed and aware since AI will probably affect everyone. I think it would be negligent if they didn't.
woah 3y ago
Is Catholicism still relevant once we create a new AI god to rule over us and it kills the old god? Could Catholics utilize their expertise in worshipping omnipotent deities to appease Roko's Basilisk?
jamil7 3y ago
> It makes me immensely sad that people have so many misconceptions about Catholics. I’d like to know if anything else about Catholics and the Catholic church makes you sad? And what do you believe are “misconceptions”?
- thepasswordis 3y ago
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  - ugleer 3y ago
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    - dang 3y ago
      We've banned this account because religious flamewar isn't allowed on HN. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dang 3y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into religious flamewar. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- dang 3y ago
  "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - jamil7 3y ago
    Sorry, shouldn't have engaged there.
deleted 3y ago
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vnglst 3y ago

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monkeynotes 3y ago
Basically what ChatGPT says when asked about the future of AI without consuming the article. This is about as vanilla message as any.
Cheer2171 3y ago
You have not added any value to this discussion.

alach11 3y ago

I certainly didn't expect to read a treatise from the Pope about LLM hallucination today. I wonder who at the Vatican is keeping up with the latest AI advances and helping Francis stay on top of it? This is actually a pretty balanced/nuanced take on the topic. It almost reads like an OpenAI blog post about alignment...

lupire 3y ago
Artificial Intelligence / Artificial Life is a major area of interest to religions, since their business is defining and guiding life. Religion is the home to most modern day philosophical thinking and struggle. It's been a hot topic in sermons all year.
anon291 3y ago
> I wonder who at the Vatican is keeping up with the latest AI advances and helping Francis stay on top of it The Vatican directly charters universities across the globe. I imagine they have several experts on the topic who are working with them, and I imagine they also have clergy and religious knowledgeable in both catholic theology and mathematics, computer science, HPC and AI. Fun fact, the first american woman to earn a phd in computer science was a nun
sangnoir 3y ago
> I wonder who at the Vatican is keeping up with the latest AI advances and helping Francis stay on top of it? The Catholic church has many scientists in the ranks, and is responsible for a fair share of scientific discoveries. The father of genetics was sworn to abstinence as a priest, and the Jesuits (the current pope's former order) have been particularly prolific in astronomy.
- gattilorenz 3y ago
  Fun fact: even the Big Bang was first proposed by a physicist who was also a Catholic priest!

eql5 3y ago

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prefer_to_ask 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
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diggan 3y ago
Artificial Intelligence and Peace – AntiPope Francis ???
- eql5 3y ago
  Glad somebody got it! Thank you.
- InCityDreams 3y ago
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  - dang 3y ago
    Religious flamewar isn't allowed on HN and we ban accounts that do it, so please don't post like this (or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220158 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220158 or https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39220130). If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > AntiPope Francis I can't think of anything witty, but this made me think of Charlie Stross.
  - diggan 3y ago

monkeynotes 3y ago

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lainga 3y ago
Why?
- monkeynotes 3y ago
  Because that's how political messaging is usually curated. I see no reason to expect the Pope to be different. The idea of him finding time to sit down at his desk, doing all that research, finding citations, have time to understand all the technical neauance, etc. etc. sounds totally unreasonable for a person whose time is split in so many directions.
  - lainga 3y ago
    I'm not sure I'm convinced. Why do you think (of all places) the Vatican's press office has taken up using LLMs so quickly? And why wouldn't they mention it (in an official message from the Pope, no less)?
    - monkeynotes 3y ago
      I wouldn't be surprised because an LLM is a viable shortcut to get shit done. Why would the Pope's press office not use one? You think they are too honest, too benevolent to do that? Why?
      - jprete 3y ago
        The assertion says much more about your views than theirs.
        deleted 3y ago
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      - 3y ago

whoisstan 3y ago

>I hope that the foregoing reflection will encourage efforts to ensure that progress in developing forms of artificial intelligence will ultimately serve the cause of human fraternity and peace. It is not the responsibility of a few but of the entire human family. Isn't it the responsibility of the one in christian speak, not even the few. Also: Franciscan monk Paolo Benanti, the Pope’s AI adviser on ensuring algorithms respect human dignity https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25534031-000-the-popes-ai-adviser-on-ensuring-algorithms-respect-human-dignity/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg25534031-000-the-pope...

lupire 3y ago
Are you referring to ambiguity between "each and every one" and ",the group overall"? I interpreted that sentence as "each and every one", not "someone else".

bernardlunn 3y ago

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deleted 3y ago
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woah 3y ago

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svieira 3y ago
A few things that aren't in the common blog post about AI: On account of revealed truth, he knows that the machine cannot be anything more than a machine: > Our world is too vast, varied and complex ever to be fully known and categorized. The human mind can never exhaust its richness, even with the aid of the most advanced algorithms. Such algorithms do not offer guaranteed predictions of the future, but only statistical approximations. Not everything can be predicted, not everything can be calculated; in the end, “realities are greater than ideas”. [9] No matter how prodigious our calculating power may be, there will always be an inaccessible residue that evades any attempt at quantification. What the machine does is bound by the same rules of morality as human beings, but it can't act in a moral fashion so it's up to us to ensure that we do: > “Intelligent” machines may perform the tasks assigned to them with ever greater efficiency, but the purpose and the meaning of their operations will continue to be determined or enabled by human beings possessed of their own universe of values. There is a risk that the criteria behind certain decisions will become less clear, responsibility for those decisions concealed, and producers enabled to evade their obligation to act for the benefit of the community. > ... > At times too, forms of artificial intelligence seem capable of influencing individuals’ decisions by operating through pre-determined options associated with stimuli and dissuasions, or by operating through a system of regulating people’s choices based on information design. These forms of manipulation or social control require careful attention and oversight, and imply a clear legal responsibility on the part of their producers, their deployers, and government authorities. [emphasis mine] And the kicker - intelligence is not free will (even if the two are severable the machine will never have the latter): > The unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and that capacity cannot be reduced to programming a machine, which as “intelligent” as it may be, remains a machine. ---- [9] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (24 November 2013), 233.
lupire 3y ago

t0bia_s 3y ago

There are rumors, that AI could generate theologically more accurate homilies than some priests. It's funny and scary at same time.

anon291 3y ago
I mean realistically that would be an improvement over many priest's homiletics.

haunter 3y ago

Actually very like this. Thanks for sharing!

SpaceL10n 3y ago

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johnohara 3y ago

Musk's statement that with AI we are "summoning the demon" will be ten years old this year so those tasked within the Vatican with studying such things have had ample time for careful consideration. Most disturbing to me in this Papal message is the paragraph titled "Shall we turn swords into ploughshares?" Anytime the phrase "grave concern" is used, whether diplomatically, ethically, morally, or otherwise, it generally means the event has happened, the decision was made, the behavior was expressed, or the news was delivered. For Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems ("LAWS") to be specifically referenced means the Vatican probably has reports of its use in combat, albeit experimentally, and not just drones and remote piloting of UAVs.

Vecr 3y ago
It's interesting to speculate about what C. S. Lewis would think of current AI systems and their future. Might not be too different from his demons.

cubefox 3y ago

I noticed this passage: > To speak in the plural of “forms of intelligence” can help to emphasize above all the unbridgeable gap between such systems, however amazing and powerful, and the human person: in the end, they are merely “fragmentary”, in the sense that they can only imitate or reproduce certain functions of human intelligence. The use of the plural likewise brings out the fact that these devices greatly differ among themselves and that they should always be regarded as “socio-technical systems”. That's true now and will probably be true for a few years -- but it seems we could soon have systems that are fully general agents, not just narrow tools. Those would raise some thorny theological questions. For example, will the following be still true? > The unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and that capacity cannot be reduced too programming a machine, which as “intelligent” as it may be, remains a machine. And what about even more advanced AGI, systems that are more intelligent than any human? > Human intelligence is an expression of the dignity with which we have been endowed by the Creator, who made us in his own image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26) ... says Francis and cites Genesis, but that leaves open the status of superhuman machine intelligence. If intelligence makes us similar to the Creator, doesn't this mean that superintelligence is even more similar to Him than us? In a word, will it be a sort of angel? (Or, if it doesn't behave ethically, a devil?) Probably that is too far away and to speculative for him to comment about. But I would like to know what his advisors have to say on these questions, if anything.

thfuran 3y ago
>For example, will the following be still true? The human capacity for moral judgement and ethical decision-making can't be reduced to programming a machine with a complex collection of algorithms only because it already is exactly that. Human cognition is embodied in a machine which implements the algorithm determined by its structure and the laws of physics.

dang 3y ago

All: this thread is a good case of what the HN guidelines mean when they say: "Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents." Religious flamewar about Catholicism (or any other religion of course) is a perfect example of a generic flamewar tangent, the thing we most want to avoid here. Such disputes are as tedious and repetitive as they are nasty and community-destroying. It's hard enough to hold this place together without any of that! I've posted a dozen moderation replies to commenters who I saw doing this in the thread, regardless (of course) of which side they were on. I'm sure I missed some others, but the intention is to be as even handed about this as we can. In the meantime, everybody, no more religious flamewar on HN please!

beepbooptheory 3y ago

> We need to remember that scientific research and technological innovations are not disembodied and “neutral”, but subject to cultural influences. As fully human activities, the directions they take reflect choices conditioned by personal, social and cultural values in any given age. The same must be said of the results they produce: precisely as the fruit of specifically human ways of approaching the world around us, the latter always have an ethical dimension, closely linked to decisions made by those who design their experimentation and direct their production towards particular objectives. I wish every AI hype guy yelling "luddite" at the top of their lungs whenever they encounter resistance could simply understand this utterly true point. People have become so confused by what is essentially just accumulated marketing, they don't even have a consistent or rational idea of what something like progress actually is, or perhaps at least, what it could be. SV ideology has created a culture existentially committed to what amounts to an empty signifier: "progress" becomes simply whatever the economic winners happened to do, something defined after the fact. Everyone wants to believe history is simply climbing this one big mountain, and we simply need to keep up and go forward. But perhaps we are just in the ocean, holding on to whatever planks and buoys we can, hoping we can weather the storms we might see on the horizon.

koqoo 3y ago

genAI is GOD-mode-ON