All posts tagged: Pope

Spurning Just War, Pope Leo Ends Catholic ‘Permission Slip’ for Conflicts

Spurning Just War, Pope Leo Ends Catholic ‘Permission Slip’ for Conflicts

Published by Sam Flores

VATICAN CITY, May 28 (Reuters) – Pope Leo this week repudiated a major teaching used ⁠by ⁠the Catholic Church since at least the fifth century ⁠to evaluate when countries might be justified in waging wars, in a move experts said could have long-reaching impact for ​global powers. The disavowal of the doctrine came in the pope’s first major document, issued on Monday, which also urged global regulation of AI systems and made the clearest apology yet for ‌the Catholic Church’s historic role in supporting transatlantic slavery. “The ‘just ‌war’ theory which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated,” wrote Leo in the encyclical, entitled “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity). “Humanity possesses far more effective ⁠and capable tools ⁠for promoting human life and resolving conflicts, such as dialogue, diplomacy and forgiveness,” he said. Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, ​a close ally of Leo who was at the Vatican for the presentation of the text on Monday, told Reuters the pope is concerned with how the theory has been used by …

The five main takeaways from Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI

The five main takeaways from Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI

Published by Sam Flores

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Pope Leo XIV published on Monday (May 25) what is already being called the keynote document of his papacy, titled “Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), a sweeping encyclical addressing what he considers a new industrial revolution fueled by artificial intelligence. While the document extensively reflects on AI and its repercussions on society, war, work and education, its real focus is offering the Catholic Church’s wisdom on what makes humanity, well, human. If the title doesn’t make that priority clear, then the text reinforces it: “Human” is the most repeated meaningful word in the official English version, followed by “social” and “person.” Leo looks with concern at a culture that sees people as “a means of achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited.” He also warns of certain mindsets, such as transhumanism and posthumanism, that are popular in Silicon Valley and that hope to build a human-machine hybrid world or, worse yet, substitute humanity with machines altogether. Speaking to journalists after the presentation of the encyclical, the Rev. Brendan McGuire, often …

The Pope Grasps the Limits of AI

The Pope Grasps the Limits of AI

Published by Sam Flores

After the Lord sent a great flood to rid the world of evil, people gathered in Babylonia and began baking bricks—a recent advancement. In those days all humans spoke the same language, and they used those bricks to build a tower that embodied their limitless ambitions. And so the Lord imposed a panoply of tongues, thereby deterring the creation of any new technology that might aspire to divine power and glory. The Lord may have delayed such technologies, but he didn’t preempt them entirely. The Vatican’s recently released 250-page encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas—“magnificant humanity”—has been hailed as the first official Catholic document to wrestle with AI. But rather than deal strictly with its hazards, the letter, signed by Pope Leo XIV, has two overarching purposes: first, to defend humanity against those who have grown jaded about our shared nature and existence, and second, to warn society about the threats posed by the temptation to outsource human capabilities to computers. Championing not just human magnificence but human imperfection is a radical turn. The pope’s insight that …

Pope Leo Schooled the Tech Bros on Tolkien

Pope Leo Schooled the Tech Bros on Tolkien

Published by skeptic

Nobody was surprised that Pope Leo XIV cited well-known saints and previous pontiffs in his first encyclical, or papal letter of spiritual guidance, “Magnifica humanitas,” released Monday. But the name that immediately jumped out to many readers is one synonymous with high fantasy literature: J.R.R. Tolkien, the Catholic author of The Lord of the Rings. Leo’s letter is concerned with “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” a major theme of his first year as leader of the Catholic Church. Drawing from his predecessor, Pope Francis, he warns of “the growing dominance of a technocratic paradigm,” one capable of “reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.” He again compares the rise of AI to the Industrial Revolution that spanned from the mid-18th century to the beginning of the 20th, alluding to the teachings of his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who in his own 1891 encyclical asserted the importance of workers’ rights and dignity during a time of technological …

Who Is Christopher Olah, the Anthropic Cofounder Welcomed by Pope Leo?

Who Is Christopher Olah, the Anthropic Cofounder Welcomed by Pope Leo?

Published by Sam Flores

Raised in Canada, Olah worked on projects related to 3D printing after receiving a Thiel Fellowship in 2012. The program, founded by conservative billionaire Peter Thiel, pays young people to work on a start-up or research project after skipping or stopping college. After finishing his two years as a Thiel fellow, Olah went on to an internship at Google, where he helped develop DeepDreams, a neural network project that created psychedelic art. At OpenAI, Olah ran an interpretability research lab, where he designed projects that helped explain what was going on as the team built its large-language model. In late 2020, he followed Amodei out of the company. On his X account, Olah frequently reposts comments from other employees who have left OpenAI, purportedly because they’re not satisfied with the company’s commitment to safety. When Anthropic was engaged in a public battle with the Department of Defense over the use of its models, Olah also reshared an amicus brief filed by Catholic moral theologians in support of Anthropic’s case. Olah is an active blogger and …

What Pope Leo XIV’s First Encyclical Says About the Power of AI

What Pope Leo XIV’s First Encyclical Says About the Power of AI

Published by skeptic

An algorithm decides what we see, another filters what we read, and still others enter into the processes that govern work, information, and collective choices. In the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. the first signed by Pope Leo XIV and published on May 25, artificial intelligence is not viewed as just another technology; it is part of the invisible infrastructure of our contemporary daily lives. But the text is not conceived as an exclusively technological reflection. Pope Leo XIV places the issue of AI within the tradition of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and directly invokes—while updating it—the Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII (published on May 15, 1891) in the year of its 135th anniversary. That encyclical addressed the question of labor at the height of the industrial revolution in the late 19th century. If the “res novae” of that time were factories, labor, and industrial capitalism, today the new issues revolve around digital platforms, algorithms, data, and automation systems that are reshaping power, the economy, and social relations. For this reason, the encyclical …

Vance calls Pope Leo’s AI warnings ‘profound’

Vance calls Pope Leo’s AI warnings ‘profound’

Published by Sam Flores

Vice President JD Vance praised Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday for issuing a new theological document rife with warnings about unbridled advancements in AI. Subscribe to read this story ad-free Get unlimited access to ad-free articles and exclusive content. The text, Leo’s first encyclical since his installation as pope last year, urged a restraint that doesn’t stop progress but, rather, functions as the “exercise of responsible care for the human family.” Vance, a Catholic and a proponent of AI technology, said in a telephone interview with NBC News that he had yet to read the entire encyclical but had scanned “bits and pieces” and summaries of it. “What I read of it sounds very profound, and the sort of thing that you would expect and hope from a leader of the church,” he said. “The thing about morality is that the principles never change, but the way you apply those principles does, because the world changes, right?” “You have new technologies and warfare, so you have to update ‘Just War’ doctrine,” Vance added. “New ways …

Pope Leo meets families of youth lost to illegal toxic waste dumping in Italy’s ‘Land of Fires’

Pope Leo meets families of youth lost to illegal toxic waste dumping in Italy’s ‘Land of Fires’

Published by Sam Flores

ACERRA, Italy (AP) — Pope Leo XIV on Saturday greeted one by one families who lost loved ones to illegal toxic dumping in an area near Naples, tied to a multi-billion criminal racket run by the mafia. Many paused to share photographs and other mementos of children and young people who have died or are battling cancer because of the pollution. Leo’s visit to the so-called Terra dei Fuochi, or Land of Fires, came on the eve of the 11th anniversary of Pope Francis’ big ecological encyclical Laudato Si (Praised Be), and indicates Leo’s commitment to carry on his predecessor’s environmental agenda. “I have come first of all to gather the tears of those who have lost loved ones, killed by environmental pollution caused by unscrupulous people and organizations who for too long were able to act with impunity,” Leo said in remarks to family members and local clergy inside Acerra’s cathedral. The pontiff recalled that the area now dubbed the Land of Fires was once called “Campania felix,” Latin for blessed or fruitful countryside, …