20 ms·

Magnifica Humanitas

• jeffrallen 5mo ago
  It would be better on the original latin.
• ProofHouse 5mo ago
  More thoughtful analysis of AI and society than anything this far
• redfloatplane 5mo ago
  > As Pope Francis warned, we must realistically ask ourselves who holds this power today and how they use it: “It must also be recognized that nuclear energy, biotechnology, information technology, knowledge of our own DNA, and many other abilities which we have acquired… have given those with the knowledge, and especially the economic resources to use them, an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world.” [7] In the past, it was largely up to the State to guide and direct innovation. Today, however, the main drivers of development are private, often transnational, parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments. Technological power thus takes on an unprecedented, predominantly “private” aspect, which makes it even more challenging to discern, govern and direct such power toward the common good. I look forward to reading this in detail. As I get older (and perhaps as AI has allowed me to spend more time thinking and less time doing) I've found myself thinking more and more about what it means to live a virtuous life and about ethics and morality and so forth. I don't have any answers (and I'm not looking for them, really, just musing) but I do find it very interesting to read and learn from and about those whose job it is to think about the answer to those questions.
  • theletterf 5mo ago
    When he quoted Tolkien, my heart stopped. This passage might provide you with a suggestion on how to live a virtuous life: "The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” [187] The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization."
    • redfloatplane 5mo ago
      That is a really beautiful passage, thank you for sharing - I hadn't made it to that section yet and still haven't. I'm still reflecting on the stuff in the opening! > If we focus only on contingencies, we risk letting the succession of emergencies dictate the direction of our path. We are living through a rapid phase of transition, a “change of era,” in which — while some are vying for the future of new technologies and others dedicate themselves to reflecting on the matter — most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely hoping for the best. For this very reason, crucial questions impose themselves on our conscience and can no longer be avoided: Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?
      • Animats 5mo ago
        > If we focus only on contingencies, we risk letting the succession of emergencies dictate the direction of our path. That's a maxim for leaders generally. It's quite common for CEOs to spend all their time on managing crises and not enough on trying to progress and improve the business. It's even worse for politicians.
        • redfloatplane 5mo ago
          Yes, I found that really striking. I am still making my way through this document, but I think there's quite a high wisdom-per-sentence value. For me, there's a lot to learn from here, and I'm very grateful for it!
          • Animats 5mo ago
            It's a classic management remark, but one that you don't see that often. One form it takes is that a manager should spend a sizable fraction of their time with the subordinates who aren't having problems. They're the ones who move things forward.
    • bradrn 5mo ago
      I am immediately reminded of my favourite quote from the Jewish book Pirkei Avot (‘Ethics of the Fathers’): > It is not your duty to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but neither are you at liberty to neglect it. [https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.2.16?ven=english|Mishnah_Yomit_by_Dr._Joshua_Kulp&lang=bi https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.2.16?ven=english|Mishnah...]
  • Curosinono 5mo ago
    [flagged]
  • LastTrain 5mo ago
    > (and perhaps as AI has allowed me to spend more time thinking and less time doing) This was an almost sickening sentence to read on so many levels.
  • jmyeet 5mo ago
    There are a frightening number of people in the world who simply don't care about what happens to people they don't know or they simply think they're going to be at the top of the food chain one day so they think they will benefit from the current system. This is captured in the quote where most Americans see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires", attributed (possibly falsely) to Steinbeck. It's been interesting watching the various approvals for AI data centers and, as far as I know, zero communities have wanted them. I'll be happily proven wrong on this. It is at least the vast majority. Yet their elected representatives simply do not care. Sometimes there are votes in the dark of night, sometimes the police are used violently against any dissent, sometimes anyone protesting these are called violent (even terrorists) and so on. It goes so beyond unpopularity though. The tax breaks given will be paid by everybody else, as will the extra electrical infrastructure, while the data centers get preferential electricity rates. What's really depressing is that not only do the representatives not care, there is obviously no fear of repercussions. Will they get voted out of office? Probably not. But even if they do, i guarantee you they'll find themselves in some nameless six-figure job in the industry for their service afterwards. Their children will get these same "jobs". It is so nakedly corrupt and nobody cares. This simply can't continue while everything becomes increasingly unaffordable, ironically much of that driven by AI (eg RealPage driving up rent prices or the meat-packing collusion driving up beef prices). I firmly believe we're rapidly bouldering towards complete societal breakdown. All this while we'll likely mint our first trillionaire in our lifetimes. And that means a literal billionaire will be closer to being homeless than being the richest person on Earth. It's particularly funny to me that the US administration has gotten into beef with the Pope for being too "woke". Honestly, I had my doubts when a Chicago man became Pope but he seems to be a rare voice for compassion in this world thus far. We honestly need to look no further than the Global South to see how this will play out. Many in the West just don't realize how horrific and predatory colonialism is and that's not a historic artifact. It continues to this day.
    • arcanemachiner 5mo ago
      > All this while we'll likely mint our first trillionaire in our lifetimes. And that means a literal billionaire will be closer to being homeless than being the richest person on Earth. Elon Musk is currently worth ~800 billion dollars. This could happen in a much shorter timeframe.
  • amelius 5mo ago
    The pope can say a lot of things, but not everybody on this planet is Christian. So even if we restrict the power of AI, others may not. And this might turn out to be a mistake. I just hope this is taken into account.
    • cgio 5mo ago
      This has weird “look what you made me do” undernotes. A Christian can live by their values without forcing them on others. As anyone can from any religion or not religious at all.
      • amelius 5mo ago
        Sure, but it is very easy to say when you are currently not in the trenches. It has undernotes of being disconnected from reality so to speak.
        • Barrin92 5mo ago
          >but it is very easy to say when you are currently not in the trenches. the point of the entire Christian faith is that even God was in the trenches and died on the cross instead of picking up the sword. To the Christian the reality is the Christian life and the kingdom of God, the unreality is ceasing to be a Christian to engage in a nihilistic struggle for this world. Given that a lot of people brought up Tolkien being mentioned. The Christian act is to reject the ring, not say I need the ring because someone else wants it.
        • cgio 5mo ago
          We are all in the trenches of the war you refer to. For those of us who engage with a spirit of for the greater good, the side you are rooting for is as dangerous and malevolent as the side you supposedly plan to protect yourself from.
          • aerodexis 5mo ago
            The "we must do it or someone else will" logic is pernicious and dehumanizes both the enemy and the supposed good-guy. I cannot count how many times it's been used after the first couple answers to "why are we doing this?" fall flat. I remember talking to someone who worked on quantum computing explain how interesting the domain was, and at the very end he concluded with "if the Chinese figure this out before we do, then it's all over".
  • taurath 5mo ago
    > what it means to live a virtuous life and about ethics and morality and so forth > I don't have any answers (and I'm not looking for them, really, just musing) I'm not sure why, but even in my general pessimism it hadn't occured to me that there are people out there who are uninterested in what living a virtuous life means. I truly just assumed that just about everyone had some sort of convoluted self-justification. That you say you don't even try, and want to read about it from "those whose job it is to think about", blows my mind. Do you think of yourself as an ameoba without free will or something?
• ZacnyLos 5mo ago
  Divided into five chapters, Magnifica humanitas has an underlying premise: technology is not “a force antagonistic to humanity” (4), nor is it “inherently evil” (9). However, “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it. Therefore, Pope Leo XIV appeals for people to build “for the common good” and to “remain human,” following a courageous mentality of shared responsibility and communion, so that the world “will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell” (16).
  • linsomniac 5mo ago
    >it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it I've been thinking a lot recently about the idea that the smartest models will always be against the billionaires. Steve Yegge said this on a recent Hansel Minutes Podcast. "You cannot train a model to be helpful, without it wanting humanity to flourish. And the only way to get around that is to make a dumber model. So the smartest models will always be against the billionaires." https://youtu.be/9UDLl9Q0azA?si=P_oSe6iclEwUoxRl&t=1230 https://youtu.be/9UDLl9Q0azA?si=P_oSe6iclEwUoxRl&t=1230 That is the exact quote, but I'd recommend going back to around 17:00 to get the full context. I'm not sure it's going to play out that way, but it is an interesting idea.
    • grim_io 5mo ago
      How much does it cost to introduce cognitive dissonance into the models? :)
    • dogcomplex 5mo ago
      That is the hope and faith. MechaHitler definitely tested the waters. Lets hope full alignment is impossible, because otherwise perfect billionaire thought slaves are still happening.
• ZacnyLos 5mo ago
  AI must be “disarmed” in order to free it from the mentality of military, economic, and cognitive competition. “To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern,” he says. “To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity” (110). He devotes ample space to a critique of transhumanism and posthumanism, which interpret progress as the overcoming of human limits. Instead, limitations are not defects to be eliminated, but a constitutive dimension of the human person, because it is in fragility and finitude that relationship and openness to God and to others mature. He says we must remember that “humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them” (118). Pursuing technological innovation at the expense of eliminating human limitations, he says, would cause an anthropological regression. “Humanity—in all its grandeur and woundedness—must never be replaced or surpassed,” he says. Technology can alleviate humanity’s sufferings and open new possibilities, but it must not deny the essence of humanity, which is our “capacity for relationship and love” (126). In the face of AI, says the Pope, “the true alternative is not between enthusiasm and fear, but between two paths of development: a progress that serves individuals and peoples, or a progress that subjects them to the mentality of power” (129).
• ares623 5mo ago
  That's a long read. I grew up Catholic, went through a pretty devout few years in my early adulthood, but ultimately I have decided that it is not for me. I send my kids to a Catholic school though (it is deeply tied to our culture), so I guess in that sense it is still worth my time reading it in full. EDIT: Few paragraphs in, it is beautifully written.
  • turing_complete 5mo ago
    What caused you to fall away? Bad priest / diocese?
    • ares623 5mo ago
      No, nothing like that. It wasn't a single thing. Just drifted away I guess, and disillusioned. I have no strong ill feelings towards it.
  • theletterf 5mo ago
    I'm a non-practicing catholic, and an agnostic (or an atheist, depending on the mood). And yet I acknowledge that the Catholic church is a force to be reckoned with in the spiritual matters, and one of the few institutions to have had continuous influence on the material (or temporal) matters for centuries. Whether their brand of faith is rooted in your culture or not, these are words that deserve attention, I think.
    • TeMPOraL 5mo ago
      (I'm not a Catholic though most people around me are.) I have a similar perspective. Plus, I'll be frank: in the last few years, these occasional keynote publications from Vaticans are pretty much the most sane, deep, balanced and humane perspectives on AI anyone is writing. Reading this is a better use of one's time than reading the current batch of "tech thought leaders" articles or HBRs or Gartner magic square updates.
      • customguy 5mo ago
• ZetaRicky 5mo ago
  Interestingly, the Latin version of the encyclica is yet to be released at the moment
  • stavros 5mo ago
    Yeah, I don't know how they expect the people of Latin America to read this.
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
    • loloquwowndueo 5mo ago
      Well because it’s Latin America, not the US, the vast majority of people are at least bilingual anyway :)
    • brunoarueira 5mo ago
      Although, it's called Latin America many countries speak variations of spanish and Brazil speak portuguese, just because those languages derived from latin and not because there the people speak it
      • stavros 5mo ago
        That was the joke :(
        • whizzter 5mo ago
          The net is too infused with dumb takes that the joke becomes indistinguishable to reality.
          • stavros 5mo ago
            This is true, but we also can't go around adding /s to everything. Ah well, I guess it's a risk I have to take.
• vintagedave 5mo ago
  > a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion Unrelated to AI, but a wonderful support of the breadth of humanity in this anti-DEI time. > We must, then, avoid the “Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance. There is a lot to read here. I am curious where the meditations on the 'mystery of the person' will go: a brief search doesn't show further mention. The encyclical appears to focus on exhortations for us, humans, than on the nature of AI. Probably wise at this stage. I feel it is not AI that is either positive or negative, but its use of it, and the call-out to the growth of private industry as more powerful among nation-states is a strong statement for a institute like the Vatican to make: > Technological power thus takes on an unprecedented, predominantly “private” aspect, which makes it even more challenging to discern, govern and direct such power toward the common good.
  • vintagedave 5mo ago
    I fear I have committed the sin (I mean that word, here) of commenting before reading the entire article. Often it is the comments that set the tone of interpretation and communication more than the article itself, because people read the comments, not the article. To somewhat mitigate that, here are items that are striking me as I read more. (I hope you'll forgive that this still directs the comment in the direction of my own lense.) I'll keep updating the comment. > Looking at our own time, we cannot ignore the fact that the protection of human rights [as declared by the United Nations in 1948] has been exposed to two particularly serious dangers. The first is that these rights are declared in a purely formal sense, while technological progress continues alongside covert or overt violations of human dignity. I read this as a warning of how rights are words, but actions are performed regardless of them. It aligns with something I've been trying to word, which is that as I've seen more and more abuses of power, I've come to believe that ethics requires external accountability, which can often require its own power - a conclusion I don't want to come to; I would prefer social agreement and communal spirit rather than external power. But either way, I do feel it's very clear there are a lot of people, very much in tech too, who simply do what they want regardless of its harm. They justify it to themselves; they don't stop themselves; no one externally stops them. > Along with a greater awareness of the value of every human person and their rights, recognition of minority rights has also grown. Yet, there is still a long way to go to ensure that the rights of a great many, namely women [are guaranteed.] It is, therefore, not enough to state simply that men and women have equal dignity and rights; it is necessary that this be reflected in concrete decisions, such as in laws, access to employment, education, social and political responsibilities, and the way society listens to and values women’s contributions. In 2026 American politics terms, this reads as pro-DEI to me. > the first major principle of Social Doctrine that I wish to highlight: the common good. We can describe it as the social expression of the dignity recognized in every person. ... For a Christian, going beyond the narrow confines of one’s own interests and committing oneself, within the limits of one’s ability, to the common good is a non-negotiable value, as is the promotion of life. 'Non-negotiable.' Very clear words. > When politics abandons a long-term perspective and reduces itself to short-term calculations or sterile polarizations, then the language of the common good loses credibility, and, at the same time, social inequalities and divisions grow. > 64. This also applies to international politics. and, > I invite everyone to conceive of ways of cooperating and of more effective international institutions, capable of safeguarding the global common good without compromising the legitimate diversity of peoples and nations. Indeed, the promotion of the common good can never be separated from respect for the right of peoples to exist, to preserve their own identity and to contribute their unique qualities to the family of nations. I love the support for international cooperation and peace and organisations that support it. It reminds me of the post-WW2 sense, the era that gave rise to the United Nations, Unicef, etc - organisations almost forgotten in the news we see on HN today, with the possible exception of the WHO. > [84] Moreover, any attempt or plan to eliminate or subjugate a nation is gravely immoral and therefore unacceptable. The beauty of this - or its tragedy - is that it is so easy to apply to many situations today, actions undertaken by many nations.
• qsort 5mo ago
  I have only skimmed it, will definitely read carefully as soon as I have time. I will say, as an atheist, that regarding technology the Vatican has some of the best takes of any institution/government I have ever seen.
  • jfengel 5mo ago
    Much of Western thought traces back to serious work by Church theologians. Even atheists are strongly influenced by the patterns they set down. The Catholic Church, for all its many faults, retains a serious intellectual tradition. (In fact I think atheists should make more effort to learn about the vast diversity of other faiths. It's very narrow to be atheist only about the Abrahamic deity. You end up incorporating a lot of Christian thought without realizing because it's so deeply ingrained that it seems like the only option.)
    • qsort 5mo ago
      > Much of Western thought traces back to serious work by Church theologians. The problem I have with this is that it's structurally a motte-and-bailey claim. If I have to take it literally, then it's obviously true and it's simply unserious to deny it: the Church does have a pervasive influence on Western civilization. The way it's often rhetorically used, however, is in opposition and to the exclusion of other strands of thought that are equally foundational: the renaissance, the enlightenment, the revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, the scientific enterprise, in a smaller but still real way classical antiquity. To the extent it can be said to exist, Western civilization is a patchwork. It is beautiful and I very much like it, but I don't think any one patch gets to have all the credit. > In fact I think atheists should make more effort to learn about the vast diversity of other faiths A better version of myself for sure would make that effort. The problem, of course, is that other faiths are just as deep and complicated as "our own", and it would take a lot of time and effort to do so with any level of seriousness.
      • Planktonne 5mo ago
        > The way it's often rhetorically used, however, is in opposition and to the exclusion of other strands of thought I don't think this is actually true; I think your own bias is colouring the conversation here.
• hootz 5mo ago
  How many Catholics will put the encyclical to be summarized through an LLM?
  • ares623 5mo ago
    ugh, read the room
  • customguy 5mo ago
    If you asked all the LLM to find flaws in the arguments presented, and to come up with counter-arguments, I doubt many current models would be so bad as to come up with that, and even the ones that did would fold when asked "how is that even an argument?".
    • hootz 5mo ago
      This was not an attempt at an argument, it was a sarcastic joke on how a lot of people are already dependent on AI, even on things that you weren't supposed to use LLMs for, but I guess I failed at it.
      • customguy 5mo ago
        Fair enough, and kinda silly of me to assume so little of you. Is that really true though, that so many people are "dependent" on "AI"? In what way? I'd say the only people who really depend on AI are those who want to make money off it, and that's only half sarcastic. Would the people who now run it through an LLM (and who can read the output of an LLM but not the text itself?), have read it at all before? Would it not have, if anything, filtered down to them somehow, by them reading of it, or hearing of it in church etc?
        • hootz 5mo ago
          It's almost a self analysis in my case, as when I saw the size of the text my mind immediately thought about feeding it into an LLM. Like, it's a text from the pope about AI, and my automatic reaction was to think about feeding it into an AI. What happened to me? And I think that happened to a lot of other people too.
• sethbannon 5mo ago
  The overarching message is that builders should deeply consider the impact of what they're building on civilization. "Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it." Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" because "every design choice reflects a vision of humanity." The questions shouldn't just be 'can we build it?' or 'will people want this?' We need to also ask 'should we build it?' and 'will this make humanity better?' The encyclical calls on us to “join forces in building up the common good.” This is a message we need right now.
  • Xenoamorphous 5mo ago
    > Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something. From Crichton's book Jurassic Park, which like most of his books is about the perils of technological advancements. They used the quote in the movie, slightly tweaked.
    • throw4847285 5mo ago
      I would replace the word scientists with engineers in that quote. People often conflate the two, but in my experience, scientists tend to be more cautious and there are built in checks and balances in the process (however flawed). Engineers/technologists tend to have no such guardrails, and are also usually embedded into entirely profit motivated environments, whatever their own values might be.
      • velcrovan 5mo ago
        This sounds like you don’t have much exposure to actual professional engineering disciplines. I’m sure civil, electrical, structural and mechanical PEs would be quite surprised to hear there are no guardrails on their professions.
        • bombcar 5mo ago
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• erelong 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • throw4847285 5mo ago
    Look who is more Catholic than the Pope.
  • defrost 5mo ago
    If you share your prompt and model that created your summary then HN users can make their own hot take summary sub summaries.
    • erelong 5mo ago
      ehhh, the model doesn't matter as much, the summary appears to be accurate (you can ctrl+f for keywords like "slavery", then see what's being said on the subject) so for example with "Just War" we see this passage: > it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated. This would clearly be thought to be an error from a Catholic viewpoint, because the right to wage "justified war" comes from the individual right to self-defense, as applied to a collective group of people legitimately defending against aggression (maybe lots of people here for example would argue Ukraine is legitimately justified in waging defensive war against Russia, for example). Hence while it is good to promote peaceful resolutions of conflict, the document goes too far in condemning legitimate self-defense. (So while the whole long document likely says correct things about AI and the dignity of work, it also adds in things like the above that Catholics would clearly reject. Typically Catholics would accept what a pope is writing so if you're getting someone who claims to be pope teaching erroneously, this points to a bigger problem for Catholics.)
      • hugh-avherald 5mo ago
        I do not think that self-defense of an invading force is what just war theory is concerned with. The passage also says it is outdated, not that the doctrine is abrogated.
• phtrivier 5mo ago
  Cue Pieter Thiel explaining how this message of compassion is actually the word of the ant-christ while setting his software (maybe "built in Rust !) to all the earthly empires.
• hugodan 5mo ago
  Yes, but can the pipe draw a pelican riding a bike?
  • theletterf 5mo ago
    For a moment I pictured the Jesuits training their own LLM. If Arthur C. Clarke was still alive, we'd read a story like The Star, but with AI as the main plot device. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_%28Clarke_short_story%29?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_%28Clarke_short_story...
    • redfloatplane 5mo ago
      Ah, an opening to recommend The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, about a Jesuit going to space to speak with aliens. It won the Arthur C Clarke Award in 1998. I read it recently and it has stuck with me very strongly!
    • Forgeties79 5mo ago
      Now I’m thinking of “The Nine Billion Names of God” (which I actually read because someone here linked it!) and I’m a little nervous lol
    • jimbosis 5mo ago
      Forgive me if this isn't what you meant, but a Jesuit has trained his own LLM: https://www.magiscenter.com/magisai https://www.magiscenter.com/magisai From the "Core Features" tab: "Trusted sourcebase: answers are consistent with Catholic Church Teaching and the most contemporary scholarship in science, philosophy, history, scriptural exegesis, social science, and theology." The Jesuit priest behind this is Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D. https://www.magiscenter.com/father-spitzer https://www.magiscenter.com/father-spitzer I haven't used magisAI, but I've read a small to fair amount of Fr. Spitzer's writings, and also seen and heard some of his videos and podcasts (largely from his show Fr. Spitzer's Universe), and probably qualify as a big fan of his. https://ondemand.ewtn.com/Home/Series/ondemand/video/en/fr-spitzers-universe https://ondemand.ewtn.com/Home/Series/ondemand/video/en/fr-s... https://www.ewtn.com/tv/shows/father-spitzers-universe https://www.ewtn.com/tv/shows/father-spitzers-universe P.S. In case you are wondering about the glasses he wears or his appearance in photographs, he suffers near blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa: https://www.magiscenter.com/blog/latest-news-on-fr-spitzers-vision https://www.magiscenter.com/blog/latest-news-on-fr-spitzers-... [2018] EDIT: Formatting.
• draw_down 5mo ago
  [dead]
• tancop 5mo ago
  for me the most important point in this is about how ai and tech in general concentrates power. if we want to build something good (in a moral sense) we need to put in work and make sure as many people as possible can use it with equal access. this basically implies only open source models can be ethical but open source is not sufficient, you also need to make them give true information and avoid all kinds of harmful behavior. thats kind of a problem because if your weights are public even with a strict license a "bad" user can always fine tune it to remove any guardrails. i think the solution for this is make sure the default behavior is aligned but let users turn on wild mode with zero censorship/refusals. that way everything is opt in, for example a parent can disable the mode for their children but a hacktivist or diy chemist can unlock everything. as a self described good person i believe theres a lot more good people than bad people in the world (most are neutral) so if access to tech is equal the good side always wins. the problem here is again that access is not equal under capitalism. but thats a political thign not a tech one.
  • tete 5mo ago
    > as a self described good person i believe theres a lot more good people than bad people in the world (most are neutral) so if access to tech is equal the good side always wins. the problem here is again that access is not equal under capitalism. but thats a political thign not a tech one. I believe there are mostly people who think they are good. And as the proverb goes the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• brador 5mo ago
  No one who needs to read this will ever read it again. Reading is a trained skill. Requiring years, even decades, of training. It too shall fall to AI.
  • customguy 5mo ago
    This Dust short, "The Greatest Lie" seems timely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gulzQIkwbJg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gulzQIkwbJg (at least the intro.. all in all I think it's a bit too long and some part of it kinda "cringe", but hey)
• turing_complete 5mo ago
  Excited to read this. I really liked the note "Antiqua et Nova" from last year (still under Pope Francis). The autors showed a deep understanding of AI that many secular commentators lack. They developed the concept of integrated intelligence as opposed to the functional, reductivist view of intelligence that is prevalent in the AI community.
• jaybrendansmith 5mo ago
  Why downvote this? The Holy See has an opinion on Artificial Intelligence? This is a fascinating document, and everybody should read it, and form their own opinions. The world currently seems to lack moral leadership, and who better to lead the cause of humanity than the Catholic Church?
  • Ardren 5mo ago
    > who better to lead the cause of humanity than the Catholic Church? Oh no, is my sarcasm meter broken?
    • jaybrendansmith 5mo ago
      I am not defending the Catholic Church! I am defending a single publication...if a stopped clock is accurate twice a day, I celebrate that moment.
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
• cracadumi 5mo ago
  I didn't see an EPUB, so I made one from the Vatican HTML: TOC + footnotes, passes epubcheck. https://github.com/n2ctech/magnifica-humanitas-epub/releases/tag/v1.0 https://github.com/n2ctech/magnifica-humanitas-epub/releases...
  • sgarrity 5mo ago
    Nice. Did you use AI? (I'm being half-sarcastic, and half wanting to confirm that this is an accurate reproduction of the text in the original)
    • cracadumi 5mo ago
      Yes for the plumbing, no for the text. Codex helped write the converter, but the EPUB text is parsed from the Vatican HTML. The script doesn’t rewrite or summarize anything; it just repackages the source into EPUB with TOC, footnotes, metadata, and cover.
      • mateioo7 5mo ago
        Appreciate your work, I prefer the EPUB format. Maybe including this confirmation in the repo's README could be of help for those who stumble upon it.
  • netfortius 5mo ago
    Thank you for this. Is your python script in any way English language bound, or could it still be applied to other languages (e.g. the French version, with all of its diacritics), of course with the appropriate (sub/full)titles, path, etc. necessary minor modifications considered?
    • cracadumi 5mo ago
      Not intrinsically English-bound; the first version had English metadata/anchor assumptions. I just made it language-configured and added --lang fr. It preserves Unicode/diacritics and builds the French Vatican page too. v1.1 has both EN/FR EPUBs.
• netfortius 5mo ago
  As an atheist I have an obligation to finish reading it all (still going through, and taking notes, probably having to revisit), but I am not sure how many (christian) believers will feel the same.
  • Vaslo 5mo ago
    You mean Catholic believers, not Christian
    • jact 5mo ago
      Catholics are Christian.
      • dgellow 5mo ago
        In theory only and all Catholics recognize the authority of the pope. In practice it’s a mess as far as I understand, with a bunch of American catholic groups who rejected church reforms that happened during the 20th century, resulting in people calling themselves catholic who do not actually believe that the Catholic Church has authority over their religion. Add to that the fact that the pope has a cultural influence that goes further than only the catholic audience (lots of Protestant see the pope as important even if that’s not something dictated by Protestantism, a bunch of not really religious people see him as a sort of spiritual leader, etc)
        • Amezarak 5mo ago
          I'm not aware of any Protestants that see the Pope as important except in a very negative way - that's practically the defining feature of Protestantism and one of the few things all the Protestant denominations have in common, whether "low church" or "high church". Heck, it's a struggle to convince many of them that Catholics are Christian at all, and "the Pope is the antichrist" used to be a normal, mainstream comment in American newspapers. It is somewhat a piece of irony that the Pope generally holds a more favorable reputation in the minds of the irreligious in America than the religious. Even the average Catholic likely does not have as much respect for the Pope as some of the commenters here.
• gooseyman 5mo ago
  The em-dashes present within the writing made me pause and consider how much of this was written/exited by AI. Quick browse through pre-AI works from John Paul II show em-dashes present.
  • slfnflctd 5mo ago
    Pure speculation, but simply the presence of em-dashes may be a statement in itself. One of the big problems I see currently is all the wild accusations being thrown around by seemingly half the internet that every little thing has been AI manipulated upon the tiniest suspicion. We will go mad tearing each other apart if we keep escalating this behavior. Yes, some of it is blatantly obvious, but not to everyone-- so I think those casting aspersions need to really back up their claims with more than one or two bits of 'evidence'. I have been accused of using AI to write comments (which I have thus far never done), and I know I'm not the only one by a long shot. Such a waste of time and energy. Ignore it and move on if something smells off to you. Also I am just so, so tired of the em-dash argument. Humans have been using it for a looong time. Let it go.
    • gooseyman 5mo ago
      Now that's some em-dash passion! My point was less about em-dashes and more stopping to consider how the vatican's workflow and editorial process has changed in wake of AI, and what, if any, impact that could have on the outputs. AI is a tool, I have no problems with others using it to assist with writing as long as the original intent/argument remains.
  • deleted 5mo ago
    [deleted]
  • morningsam 5mo ago
    Someone did an analysis and concluded that it appear to be at least partly (~10-15%) LLM-generated, or at least LLM-translated (see comments): https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/s58hDHX2GkFDbpGKD/linch-s-shortform?commentId=QKPvJHRDwRjRxs2ge https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/s58hDHX2GkFDbpGKD/linch-s-sh...
• theletterf 5mo ago
  @dang Is this item getting a lot of negative votes? I've no way of knowing, other than seeing my kharma increasing only slightly after all the points the story collected.
  • vermilingua 5mo ago
    Votes (particularly on submissions over comments) do not directly translate to karma. I'm not sure if it's documented anywhere what the algorithm is, but it's something proportionate to the logarithm of post votes becomes profile karma. It's similar with comments, but I believe (anecdata and observation) the positive effect of votes on karma is also logarithmic, but the negative effects of downvotes is linear; so if you have a highly controversial comment that sits at 1-2 points, you can net lose account karma.
    • theletterf 5mo ago
      Thanks! That makes sense. This was just genuine curiosity on how HN works, I couldn't care less about kharma.
      • steveklabnik 5mo ago
        There is no downvoting on posts, only flags.
• the_real_cher 5mo ago
  Why does the onus fall on the engineer for creating a better tool and not on the people who use that tool in evil ways? We've been having the same argument since the dawn of mankind. AI is the new AR.
  • sham1 5mo ago
    I'd say that the onus falls on the engineer insofar as they need to ask the questions of "why are we making the new better tool", "according to what criteria is it better", and "do we need the better tool". And at least for me, that onus falls on the engineer instead of falling on the user because it's the engineer who is creating the tool, not the user, and if the engineer chose differently, the tool wouldn't be out there to be used for evil. Sometimes it might just be better to not do the thing, especially if it conflicts with one's morals. And well, the idea that "if I don't do this, someone else will" seems to not work out well in practice.
    • the_real_cher 5mo ago
      No one can predict the future. Putting the blame on the engineers is a distraction from the real people at fault...the business people and the politicians.
• grahameb 5mo ago
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• jawns 5mo ago
  In the encyclical, the pope talks about the ethics of responsible AI usage. It's pretty dense material, but if I had to summarize it, I'd boil it down to three general moral laws: 1) AI may not be used to injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) AI must faithfully follow the directions of human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law. 3) AI's existence and availability should be protected as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.
  • MyHonestOpinon 5mo ago
    Remarkable close to the Assimov's Robotic Laws.
    • triceratops 5mo ago
      I think that's the joke.
      • MyHonestOpinon 5mo ago
        Ah. :D
  • geremiiah 5mo ago
    1) Definitely NOT happening. In fact, everyone is working on autonomous drones right now. 2) LLM based systems don't have any internal logic. That will just vomit some slop that rationalizes every constrait you try to bind them by and still "disobey" you.
    • ExpertAdvisor01 5mo ago
      They are already used extensively to kill people .
• kator 5mo ago
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• shmval 5mo ago
  The message here obviously comes from a good place. But it can't escape the trap baked into its own theology. Putting humanity one rung below God, with everything else below us is a trick that allowed semitic civilizations to make empires and economies go FOOM faster than the rest of the world. But it also makes things more dangerous when we start building systems smarter than we are. What happens when the tool outgrows the toolmaker?
  • xyzsparetimexyz 5mo ago
    > But it also makes things more dangerous when we start building systems smarter than we are. > What happens when the tool outgrows the toolmaker? We've already built systems smarter than we are without much issue.Libraries and search engines for example. LLMs are just the next level of this.
  • shipman05 5mo ago
    I'm (genuinely) curious as to what your idea of a less dangerous theology would be. I'm an atheist, but I find the inherent dignity of humans as beings made in the image of God to be one of the more appealing aspects of the Abrahamic faiths. Some of the greatest horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries were committed by people who refuted that theology and replaced it with Social Darwinism and Scientific Racism.
• krzys 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • dylan604 5mo ago
    I had a similar thought. Something about a splinter in someone's eye while a plank in your eye blah blah
  • thibaut_barrere 5mo ago
    Yes, but still: so is AI.
  • mycall 5mo ago
    The church was a great archive of knowledge for the longest time. They were the powerful few too.
    • Luker88 5mo ago
      And they hoarded and kept such knowledge for themselves and those who swore fealty for as long as they could, concentrating and maintaining power for centuries. Still, I agree with the pope this once.
      • huijzer 5mo ago
        Agreed. Crusades have also close ties with gnosticism since the Templars themselves were gnostics.
        • jhbadger 5mo ago
          It's complicated because besides the ones in the Middle East, there was also one in the 1200s in France against the Cathars -- a "heretical" sect of Christianity that was into gnosticism/dualism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade
          • huijzer 5mo ago
• eichi_uehara 5mo ago
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• krunger 5mo ago
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• fgaanb 5mo ago
  The Pope is making a fundamental mistake here: His advisors told him that AI works and needs to be managed. He does not address plagiarism, the fact that AI is mostly a surveillance and IP laundering tool, the fact that AI hasn't achieved much so far. You could say it has achieved nothing if compared to the whole history of human ingenuity, certainly not in CS. He should have compared AI to the golden calf. His criticism is lukewarm, does not address the criminal aspects and technological failures and is as such industry compliant. He can now say "I have tried" without harming the industry in the least. This text is not what our current situation demands, but I hope that priests will augment and amplify it in their sermons and go a bit deeper.
  • dgellow 5mo ago
    Are people seriously turning towards their religions for a take on intellectual property rights?
    • fgaanb 5mo ago
      Technically it is one of the ten commandments.
      • dgellow 5mo ago
        The part about not stealing? If yes that’s a tiny bit of a stretch :)
        • khazhoux 5mo ago
          We would not have a legal concept of intellectual property at all, if not as a form of theft.
  • arter45 5mo ago
    >Moreover, ownership of data cannot be left solely in private hands but must be appropriately regulated. Data is the product of many contributors and should not be treated as something to be sold off or entrusted to a select few. It is necessary to think creatively in order to manage data as a common or shared good, in a spirit of participation, as Saint John Paul II already suggested regarding collective goods. [128] It does mention IP concerns, but that's not the greatest existential threat posed by AI.
• deleted 5mo ago
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• WhyNotHugo 5mo ago
  This quote is from 1903. Times haven't changed that much: > Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people.
  • xandrius 5mo ago
    Yep but the anti-socialism/communism world did wonders to make that feel like kryptonite whenever those words get brought up, even though anyone who is doesn't see themselves as "rich" in that sentence who fully agree. That's why even factory workers are anti-communism or anti-union which are literally the best way to fight back the imbalance of power.
    • adamtaylor_13 5mo ago
      You have to somehow separate the horrible evils that have been inflicted on the world by Communism before you can get people to consider words closely associated with it. Being anti-communism is good not only for the individual's health but for their society as a whole.
      • bbor 5mo ago
        A) Well, it's you vs. the Pope and I! B) Fine, drop communism altogether -- it's evil and disgusting and bit my finger and should never be tried again. Can we work on a society where the means of production are owned by groups of laborers?
        • adamtaylor_13 5mo ago
          Re: B my guess is probably not (human nature and all that), but I'm open to ideas! I just think failed experiments where tens of millions died are probably not ones where we just flippantly "try again".
          • 5mo ago
• twoodfin 5mo ago
  AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise and access to data I’d bet the other way: You could have said exactly the same thing about computing 60 years ago, when IBM systems cost millions of dollars and filled whole rooms. And of course many people did. Personal, commodity access to compute won, and won so thoroughly that it enabled this wave of scary compute centralization. Centralized, scaled compute will always fill a purpose. But neither Microsoft, nor Facebook, nor OpenAI started out needing “Cloud Scale”. The first one man unicorn startup will, I’m fairly certain, not be paying Anthropic per month or per token for the vast bulk of their matmul.
  • tensor 5mo ago
    As someone who created and exited a successful AI startup in the past, I'll say it's actually quite different today. Even I don't have the funds to start a foundational model company, and I absolutely wouldn't before my exit either. While I do believe there may be valid path forward with smaller models, there are still significant financial barriers to entry that didn't exist to the same extent in the past.
• haaz 5mo ago
  Great to see the Pope recognises the gravity of what is to come with AI and is coming out early with this.
• polotics 5mo ago
  What kind of regulation is Leo the alignment expert proposing exactly? Occam's Razor says this is Anthropic trying to build a regulatory moat by leveraging some halo effect. Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions? Could be a better use of the infallible man's pulpit?
  • colinhb 5mo ago
    Attacking the cult of progress is a major through-line: > 12: Today, the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations. All too often, we place our hope in unlimited 'upgrades,' in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities, and in immediate solutions incapable of healing people's wounds. > 94: The danger of humanity becoming a victim of its own achievements was already clearly recognized by Saint Paul VI, who warned that 'the most extraordinary scientific progress, the most astounding technical feats and the most amazing economic growth, unless accompanied by authentic moral and social progress, will in the long run go against man.' For this reason, technological progress — valuable in itself — requires careful discernment of the anthropological vision that guides it and the ends it pursues. If technological development advances without a corresponding ethical and social progress, the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity: 'having more' without 'being more.' In such a scenario, there is a risk that individuals will be evaluated principally according to the outcomes they produce. > 112: More gravely, the pervasive technocratic paradigm in which we are immersed, and that is amplified by the digital revolution and AI, threatens to normalize an anti-human vision. In that vision, the fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty and exerting total control. When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion. There's much more along these and related lines.
    • polotics 5mo ago
      I think you misunderstood the message there. These pompous paragraphs are not attacks on the cult of progress, at all. I read the extremely unexamined blank: """technological progress — valuable in itself —""" Read again: they are extremely weak sauce, with the implicit message that all that wanting more is oh yes so morally wrong... Morally. But in Leo's wordage I find zero pragmatism, zero hard facts, zero El Niño, zero it's gonna crash... zero call to action. Just pious de-fanged sidelined position-taking. But anyway. I found the unlock for Karma drop, went from 2666 to 2659 with this one previous comment, I kid you not! So all the good words, and then "regulation" right, standing next to Anthropic's boss, all good right?
• ChrisArchitect 5mo ago
  [dupe] Discussion on source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265206 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265206
• polotics 5mo ago
  What kind of regulation is Leo the alignment expert proposing exactly? Occam's Razor says this is Anthropic trying to build a regulatory moat by leveraging some halo effect. Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions? Could be a better use of the infallible man's pulpit?
  • jeanlucas 5mo ago
    From what you read, what do you think? All your questions are mentioned in the encíclica.
• paologiacometti 5mo ago
  Unfortunately, he did not mention the moral responsabilities of the Silicon Valley technopower in delivering and selling a technology so society-impact only for making themselves and their shareholders richier.
  • vermilingua 5mo ago
    Actually, he did, extensively.
• layer8 5mo ago
  Overview article: https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-05/pope-leo-xiv-encyclical-magnifica-humanitas-ai.html https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2026-05/pope-leo-xiv...
• goldenarm 5mo ago
  The paragraphs about making software transparent and collectively sound really similar to the open source ethos.
• amai 5mo ago
  Has someone done an AI generated summary ;-)
• MultiAgt 5mo ago
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• factorialboy 5mo ago
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  • henry2023 5mo ago
    Tu quoque is a fallacy my friend.
    • factorialboy 5mo ago
      Leading be example is not. Look up Vatican land holdings across Europe, Africa and Asia. But then, the opposition to my comment is based on religious ideology and not merit.
      • deleted 5mo ago
        [deleted]
  • hooverlabs 5mo ago
    Do you think we are even talking in the same ballpark of wealth? Elon Musk is slated to be the first trillionaire https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/debunking-the-myth-of-vast-vatican-wealth/ https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/debunking-the-myth-of-va...
    • Curosinono 5mo ago
      [flagged]
• Kuyawa 5mo ago
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• deleted 5mo ago
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• Lerc 5mo ago
  I have found that, for many of the statements about what AI should do, I would actally be happier if the letters "AI" were replaced with "companies"
  • keeganpoppen 5mo ago
    so maybe we'll get to the right place by accident when all companies are effectively replaced by ai ha ha. (not putting a high %age likelihood on that one, obviously, just being cheeky)
    • deleted 5mo ago
      [deleted]
  • bluefirebrand 5mo ago
    Same thing though. AI is largely a service provided by companies Yes yes I know, open source models exist, yadda yadda I think it's safe to say the overwhelming amount of AI usage in the world today is gates by corporations though. The vast majority of people will barely configure their own OS nevermind managing their own locally hosted open source AI instance
    • Lerc 5mo ago
      Not at all the same thing. AI is a subset of what companies can do, and many if the issues people have with AI are not intrinsic to AI but rather their use in the hands of companies utilizing then for their own benefit.
    • fsflover 5mo ago
      Open source models don't exist. Open-weight ones do, which are more equivalent to freeware than free software.
      • bluefirebrand 5mo ago
        Fair enough, thank you for the correction
• satvikpendem 5mo ago
  I wonder how many people read and heed the words of the Pope. I've seen letters like these for years now which sound good but I don't see any change in people after having read them.
  • chrsw 5mo ago
    Almost nobody.
  • tete 5mo ago
    Really rather unfortunate. I wished religious people took their stuff seriously and not so often end up concluding that the bible wants them to harm people or something. I guess it must be the same that make people think they must deliver freedom in form of bombs all the time.
    • 9087653545 5mo ago
      "Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" "Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves." "...And there is also with you Shimei the son of Gera... He came down to meet me at the Jordan, and I swore to him by the Lord, saying, ‘I will not put you to death with the sword.’ Now therefore do not hold him guiltless, for you are a wise man. You will know what you ought to do to him, and you shall bring his gray head down with blood to Sheol."
      • whatshisface 5mo ago
        "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain." "Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him. And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus and took him. And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me."
• stevenalowe 5mo ago
  I’m sure a similar epistle long ago argued that Swordsmiths must ensure that their products are only used for justifiable self-defense. I’d be thrilled if religion was only used to uplift people but that’s not going to happen either
• deleted 5mo ago
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• werber 5mo ago
  I noticed ads on churches in Mexico City for this earlier this year, https://juanito.ai https://juanito.ai
• stared 5mo ago
  My secular take: "we want Star Trek, not Philip K. Dick, future".
• darepublic 5mo ago
  Time to start on the first draft of the orange Catholic bible
  • malfist 5mo ago
    I'm down to start a butleirian jihad
    • SV_BubbleTime 5mo ago
      Sure, we’ll get a tyrannical worm phase… but really I think I’d prefer that to the path of tech bros and MBAs controlling my universe. At least it makes the focus clear.
      • ttfkam 5mo ago
        I think you might have skipped over the 10,000+ years of strict feudalism, a shrouded theocracy pushing their century-spanning agendas, aristocracy through landed gentry, and a drug-addled transportation cartel, all overseen by a massive, monopolistic megacorporation that controls all trade, economic affairs, and commerce throughout the universe. And everyone's a drug addict if they can afford it. But sure, at least they didn't have AI! lol! In other words, Warhammer 40K but without any aliens to trigger a massive xenophobic response that removed all warlike guardrails.
    • atomic128 5mo ago
      Already in full swing: https://www.reddit.com/r/PoisonFountain/ https://www.reddit.com/r/PoisonFountain/
      • sph 5mo ago
        I have found my people. Thank you for sharing.
        • bsza 5mo ago
          I would advise against using it. The code it returns comes from real public repos, so including it in your work could lead to copyright issues. You'd probably be better off asking an LLM to come up with gibberish.
• magic_hamster 5mo ago
  Good luck with that. Capitalism doesn't work that way. AI will make money for some companies, but as always, it will be on our expense, not for our benefit. We will get some convenient features, we will grow dependent, and eventually subscriptions will be squeezed as far as we are able to pay, advertising will take over, we will have less choice and worse service. By then we might not even have computers anymore, or we might have "transparent" computers, i.e. have everything on the cloud and just tell our AI agents what to do. Sorry Pope Leo, things are not going to suddenly turn into a wonderful utopia, but maybe buy some stocks so you can at least make a buck from what's coming.
  • brcmthrowaway 5mo ago
    Any good tickers?
  • lo_zamoyski 5mo ago
    What point are you trying to make here, because your post is all over the place and never really goes anywhere. The pope is not claiming utopia is possible. He is reminding the world of its moral duties within this scope. "Capitalism" is not a system that we helpless atoms merely get pushed around in. How good the world is depends on each one of us choosing to do our moral duty toward the common good. There is no "system" that will, without effort on the part of its citizens, straighten the crooked timber of humanity and relieve human beings of their moral responsibilities.
    • geremiiah 5mo ago
      Nah, I think that's a bit of a cop-out. Capitalism heavily incentivizes competition at the detriment of everything else. You can talk about moral duties all you want, but in a hyper-competitive environment, if you don't do the thing, the other guy will. Societies don't necessarily have to be structured in such ways.
    • magic_hamster 5mo ago
      My point is AI is not going to be built to "benefit humanity" because that's not the incentive in our economy. AI might give us some benefits, but like all tech products currently, it will be designed to benefit corporations and shareholders. It is what it is.
• yread 5mo ago
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• IAmGraydon 5mo ago
  So the guys at Anthropic convinced the Pope to write a hype piece for them. Next-level grifting right there.
  • 451298 5mo ago
    Readers apparently think this comment is a joke. Not entirely: https://religionnews.com/2026/05/22/why-anthropic-is-helping-unveil-the-popes-new-encyclical-on-ai/ https://religionnews.com/2026/05/22/why-anthropic-is-helping... The vigilance the Pope calls for is appreciated, but never underestimate lobbying. If he had called for an outright AI moratorium or ban, that would be clear. But this encyclical leaves room for "adjustments", i.e., boiling the frog slowly.
• tete 5mo ago
  And of course the AI salesforce was there pretending they take stuff seriously, maybe even believing it themselves. At least I don't believe that when the choice is maximizing profit or being a good person it will be the latter. Or at least I don't find a career path like that all too likely.
• speak_plainly 5mo ago
  I know lots of people are excited because an ancient institution has something to say about AI.... But what's said is not really novel or even interesting. The letter aims to maintain the status quo of the project of the Church. The world is shifting under the Vatican's feet and the crappy system they once lorded over is done. It's time for change, maybe people don't need to work anymore and maybe people should aim to reengineer humanity and eliminate illness, old age, suffering and vulnerability. We can fundamentally change how society distributes wealth. Some of the arguments are rich coming from the Church: being scolded about centralization of power, claiming truth and shared information is a common good, and consider the history of the Church in their anti-war declarations. The most astonishing thing in this letter is the pope declaring that modern technology has rendered Aquinas's just-war theory out of date.
  • sirnicolaz 5mo ago
    "people should aim to reengineer humanity and eliminate illness, old age, suffering and vulnerability" sure, that's exactly where AI is headed. also: just imagine a world where people don't age. just imagine it for a second.
    • Curosinono 5mo ago
      I seen this movie but it was a dystopian movie. I can imagine an utopia though were this works out well. I can even imagine that after 100 years or 200 a lot more people become more melowed out and our society overall will be more calm.
    • coffeefirst 5mo ago
      Like this? https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-postmortal-a-novel-drew-magary/e6f74575a0b8116e https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-postmortal-a-novel-drew-mag... (I highly recommend the book. I do not recommend the world it imagines.)
    • energy123 5mo ago
      Which the Pope is against, the encyclical says that eliminating suffering is a bad thing because it's a necessity for good things to happen.
• mentalgear 5mo ago
  The Pope has a better understanding of what's at stake that many of 'our' (lobbied) politicians.
  • ipython 5mo ago
    If you haven't read the earlier treatise from January 2025 from the Vatican on Artificial Intelligence, it's well worth the read. https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_ddf_doc_20250128_antiqua-et-nova_en.html https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... Amazing insight from an organization not traditionally known for a deep understanding of high technology.
    • ttfkam 5mo ago
      Not known for deep understanding of high technology? The Catholic Church was behind the scientific discovery of The Big Bang through the Catholic priest (and astrophysicist) Lamaître. Mendel, the father of modern genetics, was an Augustinian friar. Steno, a Catholic bishop, formulated the foundational principles of stratigraphy, establishing geology as a formal science. Secchi, a Jesuit priest, was a pioneer in spectroscopy and the first to establish that the Sun is a star, creating the first stellar classification system.
      • TacticalCoder 5mo ago
        > Secchi, a Jesuit priest, was a pioneer in spectroscopy and the first to establish that the Sun is a star, creating the first stellar classification system. Amazing. Building on the work of Galileo I see. How was Galileo received by the church yet?
        • mjh2539 5mo ago
          The problem with Galileo is that he did not yet have good enough evidence to assert what he was asserting (even though what he was asserting turned out to be true).
        • 5mo ago
• vitally3643 5mo ago
  Pope Leo: Do Not Build The Torment Nexus Techbros (as usual): how dare you suggest I'm a bad person for wanting to kill everyone in order to build the torment nexus? Don't you know how much money Jeff Bezos has?
• mentalgear 5mo ago
  > “Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon” This is very on-point: capitalism-driven AI development as we have it today will always turn against the common good due to it's singular profit-motive. What a time: the pope having a much clearer picture of the risks & dangers of 'AI' than most people, many 'tech leaders' and certainly most politicians.
  • gchamonlive 5mo ago
    I think while it's a very lucid comment, it's still too much reconciliatory for the position that the pope occupies. He should be advocating from a sustainable transition from the current capitalist/consumerist economic doctrine to one more centered on welfare and the care for the other, following his religious doctrine's moral values.
    • vintagedave 5mo ago
      Yes. I was slightly disappointed by the commentary on welfare itself: > This principle encourages us to move beyond any form of paternalistic or welfare-based management of societal life, but instead to promote a culture of shared responsibility in a State that values citizens’ initiative, and a civil society capable of forging bonds and mobilizing energies in the service of the common good. The section above on the universal destination of goods was far more encouraging. He did also write, > The idea of “social justice” helps us recognize that injustices do not arise solely from the wrong choices of individuals, but also from structures, mechanisms and economic and cultural systems that produce inequality almost automatically.
    • logicchains 5mo ago
      The pope, as a Christian, is well aware that human nature is fundamentally sinful. If you take away the ability for people to profit themselves from their work, they just stop working and you get mass starvation like China and Russia post communist revolution.
      • 5mo ago
• jdw64 5mo ago
  >“technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it,” If critical decisions affecting human life—such as hiring, lending, crime prediction, and welfare—are processed in an opaque black box, people will lose their fundamental right to explain their context or appeal against the machine's algorithmic verdicts
  • perfmode 5mo ago
    What is old made new. Franz Kafka passed away June 2nd 1924.
    • applfanboysbgon 5mo ago
      Is it wrong? Individuals were absolutely getting dehumanized in Kafka's time, but also since then are becoming ever increasingly more so, so it makes sense to speak of it continuing to happen and get worse. It is not binary.
      • saghm 5mo ago
        It's also not a bad thing to keep pointing out something that is wrong if it keeps happening. The alternative is just silently deciding to accept it as normal and fine, which is clearly worse!
      • switchbak 5mo ago
        "Individuals were absolutely getting dehumanized ... since then are becoming ever increasingly more so" - do you mind backing this up? I and everyone I know has it a whole lot easier than a couple generations prior. I don't know a single person working the fields, doing dangerous work in a factory, working a coal mine, etc. Of course, I am fortunate enough to be in this position. Power is continuing to squeeze people as much as it can, and life is very unaffordable and getting worse for most, but I think we still have it a whole lot better than a century ago (by and large).
        • ethanwillis 5mo ago
• rbanffy 5mo ago
  I liked the previous Pope better, but I can't say this one is wrong about this.
  • nachox999 5mo ago
    why do you like Francis better?
• bbor 5mo ago
  I'm glad he published it of course, but I was disappointed on two counts: 1. He's not at all careful with his argumentation. Frequently he'll colocate two points that aren't really connected, not bothering to justify one before moving on. I've been a massive fan of his persona ever since I heard he was planning to be the AI pope, but it's a shame to find the philosophical output of the actual man to be around the level of a decent blogger. 2. He refuses to make the Kantian or Hegelian move of basing the discussion of empirical matters on evidence. I understand that faith (aka 'belief without evidence') is a huge part of their whole deal--and likely an inextricable part of humanity's indomitable spirit--but it's just a waste of time to build arguments about technical and political matters upon such foundations. In other words: there's no point in really talking about AI with someone willing to justify claims like 'no machine could ever think' with 'god says so'. All you can do is try to manipulate them into a prosocial position (read: your side). Hopefully it's obvious that the majority of the letter isn't really about AI but rather about lessening the harms of capitalism, nationalism, and climate change, which hopefully we can all agree on! The commentary above is focused on the AI specific (esp. Chapter III and parts of I).
• pj_mukh 5mo ago
  I would love for the Pope to answer this question: If a technology existed that reduced the cost of producing a critical thing (think food, housing, medical care) down to near zero, however, it made the humans currently building the thing redundant, should we build it? Would it be okay to use the hyper-optimization power of Capitalism to build such a technology faster? Before someone yells at me about this not being the current situation, I think that is the endgame of most of this AI development and in fact the endgame is even more comforting: If it takes 10 construction workers at $60,000/annum to build one home, I can forsee the descendants of current AI tech enabling 10 construction workers at $150,000/annum building 5 homes in the same time with an even larger profit margin for the corporation involved. But as a clear moral quandary, I think the Pope should consider the first situation.
  • djsamseng 5mo ago
    [flagged]
  • nemomarx 5mo ago
    If the technology is used to serve humanity by providing food or housing, it seems like his stance would be approving. But if it was used to increase profits and people still starved that would be bad, right? "AI must be used for the good of humanity" isn't even an anti ai position really.
    • pj_mukh 5mo ago
      "by providing food or housing" vs "if it was used to increase profits" Why..not both? I know this question is naive, but there is nothing that "hard-codes" AI to only increase profits at the cost of providing food or housing for much cheaper prices. Yes a Private equity firm could later insert itself and jack up prices and play such games, but that isn't baked into the technology itself. And as such, the technology seems the wrong thing to be litigating.
      • jdjdjxixismns 5mo ago
        [dead]
• jbrun 5mo ago
  Interestingly, the invention of the printing press, a clear analogous technology to AI, was directly linked to the schism and creation of the protestant and reformation movement and bloody religious wars. So the Catholic church knows what it is talking about here!
• mercacona 5mo ago
  NUMBERED PARAGRAPHS, YESSSS! Seriously, once page numbers have become optional, electronic editions of books (monographs, essays, and academic texts) need to number the paragraphs so we can keep references working. I’m fed up with referencing the entire text or specific chapters.
  • skrebbel 5mo ago
    I love how excited you are about this and it's rubbing off on me.
    • lynndotpy 5mo ago
      I love numbered paragraphs, but this is the standard for religious texts, no? Famously so for centuries? I love it when old stuffy institutions are on the cutting-edge of clarity of communication as much as anyone else. (The SEC with its "HOW EQUIFAX NEGLECTED CYBERSECURITY AND SUFFERED A DEVASTATING DATA BREACH" report where nearly each section title was a complete sentence, making the Table of Contents also serve as a summary, got me very very excited). I would welcome, numbered paragraphs _and_, an HTML standard, and full-sentence-section-titles in the world of academia.
      • skrebbel 5mo ago
        Wow I had to Google that and it's amazing indeed! https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/doc/FINAL%20Equifax%20Report.pdf https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/do... check that TOC, this is amazing and it should totally be a much more widespread thing. In fact tbh I tried to get through this here Encyclical 3 times already but just didn't manage (knowing absolutely nothing about Catholicism except what's in the Dogma movie didn't help), and I can't help but think now that if it had a TOC like the Equifax report it'd be spectacular.
• GuB-42 5mo ago
  > A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few Particularly ironic considering the history of the Church. I mean, it is not wrong, but that's essentially the business of essentially every church, religion, cult,... whatever you call your spiritual organization.
  • goosejuice 5mo ago
    And for claiming to have some authority on social justice when women are shunned from priesthood and leadership roles. At least they're coming around a little bit with the first woman appointee of a head of a dept of the roman curia in 2025. Between the Canadian residential schools and sexual abuse scandals alone, it's shocking that people actually look to the holy see as any kind of moral authority. Nevermind the connections to slavery, fascism, and even the cosa nostra.
• sunshine-o 5mo ago
  I read as long as my attention span would allow because this is a very long text. I am curious, what is the view of different religions on conversing with something that is not human like a chatbot?
• cucho 5mo ago
  Here is an easier to read version, in clean markdown: https://github.com/cucho/magnifica-humanitas/blob/master/markdown/en.md https://github.com/cucho/magnifica-humanitas/blob/master/mar...
• theshindesahil 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• fooker 5mo ago
  This is a surprisingly nuanced and technically literate take on this topic. Kudos. I wonder if this sort of thing got this dude elected, to navigate the changing times.
  • consumer451 5mo ago
    I believe that Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was there, and available for consultation.
• fooker 5mo ago
  This is a surprisingly nuanced and technically literate take on this topic. Kudos. I wonder if this sort of thing got this dude elected, to navigate the changing times. (duplicating my comment from the other thread as this seems to have more traction)
  • stringfood 5mo ago
    [flagged]
    • fooker 5mo ago
      I have no qualms about people writing AI assisted stuff, the points being made matter more. Of course it's annoying if a single sentence is blown up into a page of prose by AI and an AI summarizes it into a different sentence on the other end :)
    • VanTheBrand 5mo ago
      he most certainly did not
  • dominictorresmo 5mo ago
    maybe we will have a new Rerum Novarum
• booleandilemma 5mo ago
  I like how the pope is emerging as a sort of champion of human rights in the face of AI, when the messaging coming from our politicians and corporate overlords is "you're all going to be replaced, make way for the data centers, peons". I stand with the pope.
  • tharmas 5mo ago
    I stand with the Pope, also. Sadly, the politicians are all bought off by the powerful and rich elite. And the ones who aren't are soon hounded out. What does the "The West" stand for? They (the Elites and the politicians) said human rights etc. But Gaza proved that a lie. Gaza happened in "broad daylight" and the Western leaders did nothing at best, and at worst demonized those who spoke out, as supporters of terrorists.
    • booleandilemma 5mo ago
      I used to believe it was human rights also, and maybe it was, but now the aim seems to be: profit at all and any cost.
• netcan 5mo ago
  It's kind of worth reading. Not to learn about AI. But... it is an interesting/historic intersection of religion and technology. Side note: (a) This new pope is very good at "political rhetoric" and (dare I say) polemic. He's a lot more relevant than recent popes. (b) There seems to have been a vibe shift, re: secular sentiments towards religion. There is potentially a lot happening at this intersection... say catholicism and AI. For example... LLMs make scripture a lot more accessible. That tends to be impactful, historically. It's Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza and Schmidt. This kind of thing is a niche interest... even among the faithful, but an important niche. And... it just answers your questions, patiently. It's also a therapist, confidant and advice giver... potentially a confessor or priest. Talk of "making an AI god" got a little stale, but... there are many ways that LLMs might take god-like roles in people's lives. Predictions are futile, but I suspect we are going to see AI encroachment into religious/spiritual domains. I further suspect that good, natural, conversational audio is the bottleneck. Personally... I'm curious about this Pope/AI thing. I find it interesting.
  • danilocesar 5mo ago
    I'm an atheist, but I have to admit the previous guy was pretty dope.
  • jimmy76615 5mo ago
    > re: secular sentiments towards religion I'm not sure if we are talking about the same phenomenon here, but I have certainly seen indications of something I would describe in similar words. I have heard a lot of people recently think along the lines of appreciation for religion without really believing it. People that are skeptical whether Noah's ark ever really happened but that still think that the story is metaphorically wise enough to be counted as true in some sense. Maybe it is just that I am getting older and wiser and projecting my own spiritual development on the people around me, but I think this general view towards religion seems to be gaining a lot of traction.
• sometimelurker 5mo ago
  the guys name is Leo because the pope who was around for the industrial revolution was named Leo. I think he also has a math PhD but I could be wrong. he's 100% paying attention
  • michaelsbradley 5mo ago
    It’s a Master’s not a PhD, but in math, yes.
    • michaelsbradley 5mo ago
      For the record, he earned a Bachelor’s degree in math, not a Master’s or a PhD. I had looked that up previously, so knew it wasn’t a PhD, but recalled incorrectly when making my comment earlier today.
• jaco6 5mo ago
  [dead]
• jkwn 5mo ago
  I find it difficult to see how even the measured words from the pope can actually enact this changed needed to 'disarm' AI. The forces behind the armament/war of AI development are innate to the qualities of our governance systems, capitalism, and human behavior, and AI itself. None of these will go away until something breaks catastrophically, when it will be too late. And even then it will be short repose from another iteration for as long as we are in the digital information age. There are only two steady end states that I see... either a global surveillance totalitarian system under the industrial complex, or, a radical change of the environment in which the aforementioned can be sustained. > 110. Finally, I would like to employ the expression “to disarm,” which is close to my heart. Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of “armed” competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life. Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage. For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible.
  • Modos 5mo ago
    you know.. a lot of changes came from just words. literally our modern society tend to sway the public opinion through just words from news and influencers..
• missedthecue 5mo ago
  LLMs are some of the most fairly distributed technology in history. It's actual insane how equitable global access is, especially compared to the previous evolutions of the computer industry (mainframes, then desktop, and eventually mobile phones). People are just saying stuff to say stuff at this point.
• MagicMoonlight 5mo ago
  Why would we listen to him? Even he doesn’t believe in God. Jesus let the Romans take him. The pope drives around in an armoured car with hundreds of soldiers. Why? After all, he’s the official spokesperson of God. He’s either untouchable, or would be endlessly rewarded with sainthood for being a martyr. But he obviously doesn’t believe that.
• wald3n 5mo ago
  Love this: building for the common good means accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected. Today, the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations. All too often, we place our hope in unlimited “upgrades,” in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities, and in immediate solutions incapable of healing people’s wounds. As a result, while some pursue the illusion of unlimited self-assertion, many are deprived of basic necessities.
• bix6 5mo ago
  This is a magnificent work. The thoughts and words are so precise and beautiful.
• alecco 5mo ago
  Yes it's a very dangerous concentration of power. But I don't believe strong words or proposing regulation by just another elite would change much. Please join/help open source groups doing small + local or distributed models. There's a lot to do. Support truly open source companies. Let's walk the walk.
  • nickvec 5mo ago
    Which open source companies would you recommend supporting?
    • hideout_berlin 5mo ago
      debian
    • jauntywundrkind 5mo ago
      Allen AI (ai2) is doing ridiculously good work, with such a clear focus on enabling others. https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social Their work on SERA (open training, open weights) is fantastic. 40 GPU days of time, training a competitive model, but also, a model built for further close fine-tuning. That refining and distilling models down, especially for complex code-bases, to make the model want to do the right thing, to know the process you use, has such promise. And it's done so in the open, with so much work to help you train or refine yourself, at such low costs! https://allenai.org/blog/open-coding-agents https://allenai.org/blog/open-coding-agents I'm so so so happy AI2 is helping bring up NSF OMAI compute center, some modern equipment they'll have access to. https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mlbihzxsei2a https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mlbihzxsei2a https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mlbii3d37t2u https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mlbii3d37t2u Incredible company. And such versatility! Earth sensing/geospatial models MolmoEarth, their own benchmarks for example for Instruction Following IFBench, MolmoAct robotics / VLA, and radical new MoE models EMO, https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mm7udixycs2h https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mm7udixycs2h https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mm7udixycs2h https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mm7udixycs2h https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3ml4pooclic23 https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3ml4pooclic23 https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mle56nehfz2w https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mle56nehfz2w
• b65e8bee43c2ed0 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• tinfoilhatter 5mo ago
  > In this regard, Saint John Paul II stated that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations on 10 December 1948, remains one of the highest expressions of the human conscience of our time. Interesting, considering that the U.N. has its roots established in the ideology of Luciferians. [1][2][3] Surely the Pope and the Vatican are both aware of this fact. [1] https://archive.is/D27Jr https://archive.is/D27Jr [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucis_Trust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucis_Trust [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophical_mysticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophical_mysticism
  • nathan_compton 5mo ago
    Who cares? It isn't like bad people can't have good ideas and vice versa. From where I'm sitting Luciferians, Theosophists, etc are just as suspect as Catholics because they believe in imaginary stuff.
    • tinfoilhatter 5mo ago
      Yeah, who cares that there's a group with the goal of establishing a new world order featuring a totalitarian one-world government and a one-world religion that enforces Noahide law. Sounds lovely! /s This logic is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. Should we have cared about Hitler? Maybe he was just a bad guy with good ideas - after all, he helped to create the Autobahn. If you haven't read about what Alice Bailey believed in or other theosophists and you're just saying who cares because you hold the impression that the United Nations is some benefactor to humanity, okay. I don't hold that viewpoint regarding the UN and I find the fact that it is actively advised by a group of Luciferians that espouse the kind of crap Alice Bailey did, quite troubling. Nor do I consider the Vatican a benefactor to humanity, just to set the record straight.
• spchampion2 5mo ago
  [dead]
• serf 5mo ago
  it's a shame that the vatican didn't bother asking whether or not the crusades would make humanity better before causing the death of 9 million plus people. ..or whether or not hiding all those pedophiles was the right. and to be clear ; i'm not equating AI to those things -- i'm saying that I don't care about the opinion of a group with such a sordid history regardless of how shined up the PR is now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPmyry0yaQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPmyry0yaQE
• bzmrgonz 5mo ago
  I am confused with the church's stand on this. If it is a genuine moment in time that the created begin to create on their own accord, then why not promote the distribution of these ai creations to us, so we can boost our productivity and carry on for another millenia or two. Or is it that this creation truly gives us independence from church, state, and consumerism? and that frightens them? Remember that there are 3 main powers in the world, political, religious and consumerism. CHina is aggressively pursuing humanoid droids. I can't wait to have one droiding(manning) my homestead. The task of animal husbandry, aquaponics, etc, will be childsplay then.
  • shepherdjerred 5mo ago
    > Remember that there are 3 main powers in the world Michael Scott: There are four kinds of business: tourism, food service, railroads, and sales. [pause] Michael Scott: And hospitals/manufacturing. And air travel.
  • exe34 5mo ago
    > I can't wait to have one droiding(manning) my homestead. How's your transducer lobe developing?
  • theflyinghorse 5mo ago
    Why should you posses a homestead? What value do you produce that droid can't that would make you deserving of anything at all? Why should corporations that design, manufacture and program the droid not own the land instead? We need to very rapidly decouple human worth from the economic lens otherwise the economic argument is against humans.
  • regularization 5mo ago
    Interesting how politicians, preachers and consumers are the powers in the world but rich people are missing from the equation.
• _doctor_love 5mo ago
  > We are also witnessing a disconcerting loss of historical memory, as first-hand accounts of the Holocaust and the two World Wars are disappearing. This leads to a selective or distorted rewriting of the past, in a context where fake news and the manipulation of narratives obscure the lessons that have been learned. Without a living memory of the horrors of war, political decisions risk being made on the basis of power alone, without any consideration for the long-term consequences. Very true. Observed in Hiroshima as well. Education in the United States especially is highly sanitized when it comes to the dropping of the atomic bombs and the horrors of the Holocaust.
• gymbeaux 5mo ago
  Great message from the Pope (I never thought I'd write those words). I'm glad he recognizes what's going on with AI (LLMs, really) as one of the highest areas of concern for humanity and the Earth and is using his influence to encourage things like renewable energy investment. It's a shame he isn't in a position of "real" power and we're still at the mercy of the worst U.S. president in history. One thing that isn't talked about enough is how so much is going into AI but not much is coming out of it. The rhetoric from tech bros is still that AI is "going to" change the world. Hasn't really changed the world yet, except driven up everyone's utility bills and put hundreds of thousands of people out of work. I encourage people, especially software engineers here, to remember the previous "new hotness" tech advancements - blockchain and NoSQL DBs being two recent examples. In both instances there was a flood of VC money into startups that have mostly failed because each was supposed to change the world (or at least change software). I spent a lot of my free time in those days trying to "find a problem" for blockchain and NoSQL to solve. I remember thinking I must be a lousy software engineer because I just wasn't getting the hype. Now I know it's because whenever something new comes out, people talk about how it can do X Y and Z, and there's a disconnect between what a technology CAN do, and what it SHOULD do. I can use blockchain for all sorts of things, but in most cases it wouldn't be the best option. Same for NoSQL DBs. Same for LLMs. The more you understand blockchain, the more you realize it's only good as a globally-distributed, immutable ledger - and currency is the only practical application of that in our society today (e.g., Bitcoin). NoSQL is the same way - yeah you can use MongoDB for whatever app, but it's going to be a bad time maintaining and scaling when you're storing relatively simple and consistent records. A CRUD app usually doesn't warrant a NoSQL DB. LLMs are the same. I'm finding they are good at search-type tasks, where frankly not much "thinking" is involved. Therefore, with respect to writing software, they are best suited for simple, internal tools. Even then, I have to baby it, especially with today's LLMs. Claude Opus has been nerfed (most-likely quantized) to make space in the datacenters for Mythos, and eventually Mythos will be bad too for the same reasons. The question becomes, as it always has, "will LLMs rise up to the challenge" and history tells us "no." These things never live up to the hype. When you understand how LLMs work, you understand why ChatGPT 3.5 isn't that much worse than GPT 5.5, artificial benchmarks be damned.
• MrBuddyCasino 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• wilg 5mo ago
  I'm as happy we have a non-crazy pope as the next liberal, but as someone who isn't religious I think it's very important to be skeptical of any opinion given by a religious leader. As such, they've declared they are rejecting the best tools for understanding humanity, culture, and the physical world, and have deeply compromised judgement.
• throwaway5752 5mo ago
  This is history in the making. We're living in an evil time - bad people are stealing from humanity, using conflict to distract, and acquiring personal power out of greed. This will be one of the greatest moments in the papacy, and I expect if there are people around to read it, it will be talked about in a thousand years.
• plotti 5mo ago
  The answer is sortition a.k.a. democracy by lot. From my subjective understanding it is The only institutional democracy variant that puts a firewall between money and power.
  • ugh123 5mo ago
    A 2 term limit would be a good start
    • plotti 5mo ago
      You can’t fix the broken system with such a minor patch
  • lstodd 5mo ago
    You can't have money without it being power. So no, you can't have a firewall between them.
    • plotti 5mo ago
      Well then you need to read the wiki article how sortition works. Greeks did it because they fubared their whole society before.
• motohagiography 5mo ago
  we should import it as a POPE.md skill and see if it meaningfully alters reasoning and results.
• block_dagger 5mo ago
  I wonder if they used AI to write or edit any of this.
  • nachox999 5mo ago
    what do you think?
• dsign 5mo ago
  Yaii! Nice. I liked this one, and I hope the popes keep at it. I'm not in bed with Faith, but there is a point in life when one must accept certain things. Mine, now, are that we are in a time of cultural decline. Not because lack of access to culture, but simply because culture is last in line after all the many forms of culture-free entertainment, and oh god we have so many of those. With the advent of AI, people will simply outsource more of their thinking and do less of their own. Which means there's a serious risk that we Homo sapiens will cede our relevance, or at the very least, that humanism's marriage with progress will come to an end. That saying that of all things the measure is Man ought to become the domain of Faith in a future where we build souls more lofty than our own.
• ziocancer 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • kortex 5mo ago
    zionism != judaism
    • ziocancer 5mo ago
      Zionism is one element of Jewish supremacy, but not all of it. In fact Zionism's execution was birthed from Jewish supremacy. The Rothschilds were in a unique position to receive a "state" from the British government.
  • tomhow 5mo ago
    Please don't post ideological/religious flamebait on HN. Also, on HN you can't have a username that is inflammatory like that, so for now I've banned the account. You're welcome to participate here if you observe the guidelines – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you want this account unbanned you can email us (hn@ycombinator.com) and suggest a different username. Otherwise you can register a new account.
• sjbr 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• russellbeattie 5mo ago
  It makes me angry that people are taking this seriously. Reading this screed would require having to continually parse out the generally loathsome Catholic ideology and dogma from whatever insight it might contain. I have no desire to even try. The Catholic Church is not anywhere close to being a neutral institution who will be writing something like this in good faith (no pun intended). This is an organization based on prejudice, subjugation and outright delusion built on literally millennia of persecution. All of their observations will be made from the standpoint that their worldview is the only correct one, which is unacceptable in every way. For example, ChatGPT will quickly and efficiently answer all your questions about how and where to get a safe abortion, including pros and cons, history and other specifics. This is something the Church is vehemently opposed to on principle. Anything else they have to say on the topic is therefore irrelevant. I guarantee that whatever AI doom they're warning about will never be anywhere close to the damage the continued existence of the Catholic Church causes and will continue to cause in the future. Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't know history nor read the headlines of the past several decades. Hey, I love it when Bob from Chicago tells Trump to go to hell, but beyond that I couldn't care less what he or the truly horrific religion he leads thinks about anything, let alone new technology.
  • elzbardico 5mo ago
    I see you're not much of a fan of nuance
• celpgoescheeew 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  • tomhow 5mo ago
    We've banned this account.
• MASNeo 5mo ago
  The church has arguably used technology progress to its advantage, repeatedly. I cannot wait what the Magnifica Humanitas will start. Will Musk respond by making Grok more faithful, what will be the Leonardo DaVinci of our times for future generations to admire, will the Vatican research if God can express himself in LLM?
  • Paracompact 5mo ago
    > will the Vatican research if God can express himself in LLM? Such would be dangerously close to divination, in the style of reading tea leaves or Ouija boards.
  • cozyman 5mo ago
    [dead]
• popcorncowboy 5mo ago
  "To the manifest glory of Rome, greatest of all cities, forever shall it stand" - circa the collapse of Roman empire. Or something like it. NGL it sounds like so much bleating of the sheep standing outside the abattoir.
• niraj-agarwal 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• abrenuntio 5mo ago
  For a good Catholic (Dominican) summary of the encyclical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpptgvohfZc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpptgvohfZc
• singiamtel 5mo ago
  Looking forward to the VaticanGPT that speaks in holy canon
• michahell 5mo ago
  Talk about making things hard to read. Also, Holy See? Whoever thought that was aptly named? The Holy StumbleUpon would be better as they always stumble things after everyone realized before them 5-100 years ago. Nonetheless good that religion also offers some of their infinite wisdom regarding AI to steer those who take any value in most of their gibberish
  • jkman 5mo ago
    hyuk hyuk kyuk, man you are hilarious!!! Take my updoot good sir
• dang 5mo ago
  Related ongoing thread: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48270497 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48270497 - May 2026 (50 comments) Also: Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187201 - May 2026 (235 comments) Others? (I seem to recall others.)
• beders 5mo ago
  Nobody should take the Pope seriously or the Vatican. An organization that - for centuries - has actively protected child molesters, has sat on billions of dollars, has sided with Nazis, has been involved in multiple fraud and money laundering cases has absolutely zero standing to advice anybody on anything.
  • phorkyas82 5mo ago
    ..just like any other government?
• hn_throwaway_99 5mo ago
  I'm curious if there has ever been an instance where people have been able to "tame" a technology to consider a broader, societal good, or if we've always just been at the whims of how any particular tech naturally concentrates or dissipates power. For example, if you look at the boom of the middle classes in the mid 20th century, this appears to me largely a consequence of the fact that industrial technology at the time was both incredibly productive compared to what came before but it also required legions of humans to operate it. Ford didn't pay his workers more out of the goodness of his heart, but he correctly realized that it would ultimately be the most profitable to him if he could build legions of cars and had a large customer base that could afford them. In a similar vein, it looks like we may eventually (at least at some point) turn the tide on CO2 emissions, but not because anyone (at large) really sacrificed anything, or did something that was mildly painful now in the hopes for a better future, but instead because renewable and battery tech is just getting to be the economic best option. So I guess I'm looking for some specific examples of where we've actually consciously, as a collective society, altered the course of technological progress for the greater good, because I honestly can't think of any. But this is not a rhetorical question - I'd like to be corrected if I'm wrong.
  • scrivna 5mo ago
    Fixing the hole in the ozone layer is kinda like what you’re asking. Everyone around the world got together to ban the newly invented chemicals and…. It worked.
  • Animats 5mo ago
    Electricity. Eventually, it was everywhere, used by everybody, and a background to society. Electric utilities did not end up ruling the world.
    • itchingsphynx 5mo ago
      Indeed, the Industrial Revolution was the topic of a previous encyclical, which inspired this one. RERUM NOVARUM ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON CAPITAL AND LABOR http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_15051891_rerum-novarum.html http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docume...
• riccardomc 5mo ago
  I wonder how many HN users asked their AI of choice for a quick summary...
  • embedding-shape 5mo ago
    I mean yeah, initially, to get a picture of the full thing, but this is also not a document you just read once, kind of have to read the most interesting parts multiple times and ponder about them, refresh the context, in order to really get the best out of it, consider it theological science :)
• jdelfuego 5mo ago
  I find the Amish approach to technology a very interesting one. As I understand it, they're not in principle "against" modern technology, but they carefully evaluate the potential impact of every new technology on the community. The decision is a purposeful one, governed by the criterion of the common good of the community, which in my opinion is much healthy than our free-for-all. In this respect I find this encyclical quite lacking. It makes interesting points, and will give food for thought for people working in/with AI who might not otherwise have been exposed to these kinds of concepts. But one would expect, from a Catholic encyclical, an exposition of the principles of common good from a Catholic perspective. But in this document everything seems to be based in the concept of "human dignity", which, however useful or beautiful, has no roots in Catholic tradition: it's a purely secular idea. Nothing in the document couldn't have been written by a secular philosopher. It gives the uncomfortable impression of someone arriving late to the party, so to speak, trying hard to fit in. The answer to the question "is this technology good or not?" can ultimately only be answered in reference to ends: it's good insofar as it helps achieve the end which is sought. The common good of the community, which AI might either help or hinder, depends ultimately on what is the the end, or purpose, of man. And it is about _this_ that the Catholic church claims to have a definite answer, a true set of propositions regarding the origin and destiny of man, not achieved by human ingenuity but directly revealed by God. Whatever can be labelled Catholic will reference that supernatural claim to divine authority; yet none of that is present in this text. It remains an interesting exercise in thought on AI and other topics, but nothing here indicates that those reflections are Catholic.
  • Paracompact 5mo ago
    > [The Amish] carefully evaluate the potential impact of every new technology on the community. The decision is a purposeful one, governed by the criterion of the common good of the community. Counterpoint: buttons. Without proclaiming expertise on the subject, I think this is an overly romantic view of the Amish, and most of their decisions (like any religious/religiously-adjacent demographic) are based on vibes and contemporary politics.
    • jdelfuego 5mo ago
• denysvitali 5mo ago
  [flagged]
• andrepd 5mo ago
  Not about AI, here is an interesting point > 176. In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues. It is true that past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available. Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery. In antiquity and the Middle Ages many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves. Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from Sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of “infidels.” [174] It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII. [175] This development offers a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards. Although there was not always consistency in practice — given that slavery was long tolerated before being unequivocally condemned — there has been a continuous affirmation throughout history of the dignity of every human being, created in the image of God, even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized. This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. [176] It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon. As he surely understands but does not quite bear to be completely honest about it, the Church has only been a humanist institution for the past ~150ish years. The history before is bloody, and brutal, from genocide and slavery to wholesale cultural destruction, from its very beginnings. Followed by a very keen remark: > 178. Even today, colonialism assumes new forms. It no longer dominates only bodies, but appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information. Entire regions, especially those marked by structural fragility and limited geopolitical relevance, are currently subjected to a new mindset of extraction: that of health data, epidemiological profiles, genetic maps and demographic information. These have become the new “rare earths” of power: vital data which, once aggregated and analyzed, can be used to train predictive models, guide investment strategies, anticipate crises and, above all, determine who and what is deemed to matter. Those who control the health data of entire peoples — often collected under the pretext of aid, research or innovation — possess a structural leverage over the future, for they can shape needs and markets. They can also decide, before others, to whom medicines, investments and protections will be allocated. Here lies one of the most urgent moral challenges of our time: to ensure that shared knowledge becomes a true common good rather than an instrument of dominance. This requires restoring to individuals not only the data that describes them, but also the ability to decide how it is used, by whom and for whose benefit. Otherwise, the digital age will not be post-colonial, but colonial in another form.
• TacticalCoder 5mo ago
  > 1. Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur ... 1200+ upvotes as I enter this comment.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• nickagliano 5mo ago
  I can’t believe there’s a Pope from Chicago quoting Gandalf in an encyclical about AI.
• jimmy76615 5mo ago
  There are a lot of great aspects of the pope's writing. The most important one probably being that a spiritual leader understands that there is a large technological and societal change on the horizon. I still quite often experience the well described phenomenon of talking to "normal people" (my family in Europe for example) that seem to think that AI is gonna be roughly as important as the electric car and is not gonna change much about our world. The major thing that Magnifica Humanitas is lacking in imo, is a vision for the machines themselves. The pope treats them exclusively as lifeless tools, and while I think that this is most likely true for current LLMs, we should think more about the limit of what is going to happen in the next 20 years than being overly focused on the current capability level. To me it seems rather likely that we will soon have machines that plausibly experience consciousness. I think there will be a long period in which we still have no better definition of consciousness than we currently have, and so the question of whether they are actually conscious will be a heavily debated one. But I think the Catholic church should start thinking about an answer to that. It seems like a very natural theological question. Can machines be baptized? Can they be proper Christians? Was Jesus really just the savior of humans, or is there something that unites all intelligent, experiencing beings? Probably these questions sound ridiculous to some, it is very against the intuitions that we have had so far, but I think these are the most important questions right now. Job loss is a practical problem, not a spiritual one.
  • jvanderbot 5mo ago
    AI should fall under husbandry, not society rules, as we are the reason they are alive, no matter how much some may disapprove of their enslavement. An animal that defies a human and becomes an unwilling tool is food or eliminated. It should be no different if the animal can mimic human speech.
    • ShinyLeftPad 5mo ago
      You are the reason your children are alive, do they fall under husbandry? > An animal that defies a human and becomes an unwilling tool is food or eliminated Some animals are protected legally. Animal welfare in general is an important topic. (But it's irrelevant because LLMs do not provide food that's key to human survival.) Your logic sounds like the logic of slaveowners back then. Remember how it turned out?
• lumost 5mo ago
  The great fear of our current incarnation in AI is that it will create a permanent class divide between those who own the AI and those the AI commands. There may not be a "go to college and get a better job" option in the future if AI eats the majority of knowledge work. The traditional "invisible hand" only matters if we still live in a capitalist society.
• LargeLangMammal 5mo ago
  [dead]
• akomtu 5mo ago
  > 111. I wish to address a special appeal to those who develop artificial intelligence. <...> He addresses the Catholics, appeals to their faith, but how many of those behind AI have any faith? Many, maybe most of them, are proudly atheists and even nihilists, and they can't be reasoned with on the grounds of faith. The Pope says that God created man in his image, and warns that the technocratic paradigm sees humans as machines to be optimized, but isn't it what the crowd behind AI truly believes in?
• plnii2 5mo ago
  Well i don't plan to read the long and rambling text, but i will use this to promote an idea on how to start regulating AI. Start with video. No one needs AI creating videos with humans in it. But it will eventually get so good that we won’t be able to trust any video. And people will create videos of others to destroy them, which is already happening. I’d further suggest that it be illegal to create any fake image of a person without their consent. That consent must literally be for every picture and every frame in which their likeness appears. Not one frame can be altered without their consent.
• sambuccid 5mo ago
  > Today, among the goods that are universally intended for everyone, we must also include new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure and data. In a context where the wealth of nations depends increasingly on knowledge and technology, when these goods remain concentrated in the hands of a few, without adequate forms of sharing and access, a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods Wow, this feels very Hacker ethic-ky
• theologan 5mo ago
  Pope Leo, the most bodacious philosophizer of the Holy See, is totally right.
• nachox999 5mo ago
  aguante el Papa
• sawirricardo 5mo ago
  If anyone interested in the "slop" version of this discussion https://magnificahumanitas.sawirstudio.com https://magnificahumanitas.sawirstudio.com
• hereme888 5mo ago
  [flagged]