> Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility"
> This is a message we need right now.
Feels good man. The solution found by the private parties driving technological change is sainthood. Or aiming for it. At least, better than you. They have the vision of what's good for the herd, but the more time I spend as a sheep, the more it seems the "herd" is just a way to recycle the story of their own exceptionalism stripped of any mark of individuality. A simple visit to fiftyyears.com will greet you with "We back the indispensable". I guess it's the same "we".
> 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.
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.
I have only read a few passages (and some of the excellent quotes others have shared here), but I find the underlying message here so much more compelling than those found in the various "manifestos" which come out of Silicon Valley.
I think reading this helps me imagine a version of the future I'd actually like to live in. A version where technology is used well (rather than preaching for abstinence from technology) and where values other than "intelligence" (in whatever guise) are on an equal footing.
Even writing that makes me feel naive (and to an extent I know it is) but I think it would be inconsistent for someone who cheers for humanity's efforts to solve/chip away at "impossible" problems (like LLMs were thought to be not so long ago) to shirk from the challenge of making the world better for _everyone_.
The thing is why that this feels so good future is; it is a system with no constraints. A bit like Star Trek universe in Roddenberry's imagination. This kind of utopia can only be achieved with all honest actors, but in reality systems are usually designed around bad actors.
Even with all morally good actors locally, there is no guarantees for external forces. Thinking it hypothetically, even with global coordination ( all good actors ) there is not a proven path that would lead us to better place from any starting point from past.
> much more compelling than those found in the various "manifestos" which come out of Silicon Valley.
Whenever I hear these "tech overlords", I am always baffled at the total lack of culture, the absence of taste, the empty visions and the implied complete subjugation of humans to ideals of "efficiency" or "quick and easy". Maybe they would have been more interesting people if they had been brought up in beautiful towns and cities, if they had lived in a rich cultural environment instead of being raised as consumer of cheap and flashy pop culture. Maybe we should tax bad architecture, it gives me headaches but others might incur heavier damage.
As an aside, at least Trump is drawn to the grandeur of high culture from historical times, but he also doesn't understand a jota about aesthetics, and so the White House gets turned into a tacky gypsy-style abomination with one dollar ornaments.
Ask a scientist or engineer what philosophy or theology has taught us about the source of morality and their education, training and experiences havent prepared them to answer that question.
This didnt matter so much in the past because their activities never had the scale it does today. For basic training in philosophy if you are mid or upper level exec whose decisions are going to effect a whole lot of people, go to open yale courses and take the intro to Philosophy classes. It will help develop your answer to the question - why do you do what you do if you are going to die anyway tomorrow.
Far too many of us (particularly younger people, but not only them) undervalue or are dismissive of philosophy. I once was like this, partly because at the time I'd been brought up - like most humans - to believe my parents' religion held all the answers philosophy might address.
I quickly learned as an adult that whether you're a person of faith or not, it's not pointless at all. It's the foundation of everything. Philosophy is how you explain the deeper reasons behind why you follow whatever religion you do, or adhere more meaningfully to whatever kind of agnosticism, atheism and/or 'spirituality' (with or without woo) you espouse.
This can only be true if you believe in a certain mad-scientist version of these things. We as a society have systems (however flawed) to hold scientists and engineers to ethical standards: e.g. peer review and in many cases--e.g. civil engineering, architecture, medicine--even legal frameworks to enforce ethical standards. Science and engineering are human endeavors, they are not divorced from the human condition, they cannot be separated from humanity and human rights.
Maybe you mean mathematics is amoral and are committing the common conflation of "engineering is just applied science and science is just applied mathematics," which is a really bad case of missing the forest for the trees.
Norbert Weiner was an atheist but he talks about three areas religion is the only thing to have really examined that relate to capable AI: omniscience, omnipotence, and worship (gadget worship). It has very prescient stuff on blackbox learning/distillation, reinforcement learning/reward hacking, alignment through human feedback.
His The Human Use of Human beings and Cybernetics are extremely good too and have more of a mash of the themes between Rerum Novarum and Magnifca Humanitas, and more near-term automation.
> 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.
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.
> the earth’s goods — soil, water, air and natural resources — are given by God to the entire human family to sustain the lives of all, and that every person has an inherent right to the use of such goods, both now and in the future. ... Today, we are called to recognize that this universal destination applies not only to material goods, but also to immaterial and cultural goods.
Immaterial and cultural goods. This is a fascinating view on non-tangibles and one I feel inspired by. Reading this I asked myself (wait for the larger quote in a minute) how this affects views of IP, learning when texts are not available, cultural impact of characters and stories, the output from universities, publication of papers, ownership of research done by public or even private (!) funds, and more. Particularly I wonder about open weights vs open source for AI, and open source as a concept: where the old-school 'free software' GPLed version seems -- perhaps I am showing my bias -- most aligned with the ethical stance here?
> 66. Certainly there is a right to private property, which has its own specific meaning and purpose, yet it is always subordinate to the universal destination of goods.
'Always subordinate'.
> 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. In turn, it widens the gap between the included and the excluded, between those who can participate in the digital revolution and those who remain on the margins.
Wow!
I cannot interpret this; it's not my right. But moving from the questions I asked above, to this paragraph, is powerful.
> > 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.
I mean.. DEI was in reality homogenization and eliminated diversity. Just because you agreed with the small amount of allowed opinions/people doesn't make it more diverse.
> 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.
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."
>Therefore man was created single in the world to teach that for anybody who destroys a single life it is counted as if he destroyed an entire world, and for anybody who preserves a single life it is counted as if he preserved an entire world.
(Directly from the Mishna in the Talmud Yerushalmi)
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?
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
> Certainly, the decisive turning points in world history are substantially co-determined by souls whom no history book ever mentions. And we will only find out about those souls to whom we owe the decisive turning points in our personal lives on the day when all that is hidden is revealed.
Sure. And this is what everyday people do. And this is why CEOs and billionaires refuse to do (doing their fair share), and freeride on the people's work and dedication
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.
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.)
> 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.
> 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.
Your sentence doesn't really make sense, and there is a lot of deities..
> You end up incorporating a lot of Christian thought without realizing because it's so deeply ingrained that it seems like the only option.
Depends on the country, some Northen european countries have a very high proportion of atheists, so it happens probably less there.
There are a lot of deities, and they are far more diverse than you would expect if you're not exposed to them. Even the more atheist countries still seem Christian to Hindus, Confucians, animists, and thousands of other more obscure religions.
I remember when Pope Benedict was mocked because he warned about the dangers of social media (this is when everyone thought Twitter was going to lead to more Arab Springs), but looking back, he was completely right:
> the one-sidedness of the interaction, the tendency to communicate only some parts of one’s interior world, the risk of constructing a false image of oneself, which can become a form of self-indulgence
True, the note "Antiqua et Nova" from last year showed a deep understanding of AI that many secular commentators lack, and developed an interesting concept of integrated intelligence as opposed to the functional, reductivist view of intelligence that is prevalent in the AI community
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).
>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."
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.
@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.
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.
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
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
(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.
I'm a fedora wearing akshually agnostic and just too cool for bible school, but I never felt reading these "keynotes" wasted my time. They're not "just" humane but also very intelligent and direct. I would even go so far as to call them intellectually honest, and less religious that way than slogans like "you cannot stop progress, so just adapt", or something about toothpaste.
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?".
I will skip the "just war" theory, because I simply don't know enough to make a cogent argument
But
> attacks colonialism without explaining why Christians created colonies
Speaking as an english person with a passing interest in colonialism, this is an _interesting_ take.
Which colonies are you talking about? because the ones in America and Ireland were explicitly not catholic. More complex still some of them were super anti-pope, and a lot were just C-of-E catholic but sans pope
Who, in your mind, are "these people?" Please, don't go back and check the authorship of the document before replying. I'm extremely curious to see what you are thinking.
While there's a singular author ("Leo"), these writings are often created in consultation with other people:
> Francis, for example, did not write Laudato si’ entirely on his own. The first draft was prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, with input from other Church leaders. The document was then revised and reviewed by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
But I meant mostly those who share "Leo's" errors and write like him ("these people [like "Leo"])
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.)
"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.
> This is a message we need right now.
Feels good man. The solution found by the private parties driving technological change is sainthood. Or aiming for it. At least, better than you. They have the vision of what's good for the herd, but the more time I spend as a sheep, the more it seems the "herd" is just a way to recycle the story of their own exceptionalism stripped of any mark of individuality. A simple visit to fiftyyears.com will greet you with "We back the indispensable". I guess it's the same "we".
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.
Engineers/technologists tend to have no such guardrails, and are also usually embedded into entirely profit motivated environments, whatever their own values might be.
I think reading this helps me imagine a version of the future I'd actually like to live in. A version where technology is used well (rather than preaching for abstinence from technology) and where values other than "intelligence" (in whatever guise) are on an equal footing.
Even writing that makes me feel naive (and to an extent I know it is) but I think it would be inconsistent for someone who cheers for humanity's efforts to solve/chip away at "impossible" problems (like LLMs were thought to be not so long ago) to shirk from the challenge of making the world better for _everyone_.
Even with all morally good actors locally, there is no guarantees for external forces. Thinking it hypothetically, even with global coordination ( all good actors ) there is not a proven path that would lead us to better place from any starting point from past.
As an aside, at least Trump is drawn to the grandeur of high culture from historical times, but he also doesn't understand a jota about aesthetics, and so the White House gets turned into a tacky gypsy-style abomination with one dollar ornaments.
Ask a scientist or engineer what philosophy or theology has taught us about the source of morality and their education, training and experiences havent prepared them to answer that question.
This didnt matter so much in the past because their activities never had the scale it does today. For basic training in philosophy if you are mid or upper level exec whose decisions are going to effect a whole lot of people, go to open yale courses and take the intro to Philosophy classes. It will help develop your answer to the question - why do you do what you do if you are going to die anyway tomorrow.
I quickly learned as an adult that whether you're a person of faith or not, it's not pointless at all. It's the foundation of everything. Philosophy is how you explain the deeper reasons behind why you follow whatever religion you do, or adhere more meaningfully to whatever kind of agnosticism, atheism and/or 'spirituality' (with or without woo) you espouse.
Maybe you mean mathematics is amoral and are committing the common conflation of "engineering is just applied science and science is just applied mathematics," which is a really bad case of missing the forest for the trees.
https://monoskop.org/images/1/1f/Wiener_Norbert_God_and_Gole...
Norbert Weiner was an atheist but he talks about three areas religion is the only thing to have really examined that relate to capable AI: omniscience, omnipotence, and worship (gadget worship). It has very prescient stuff on blackbox learning/distillation, reinforcement learning/reward hacking, alignment through human feedback.
His The Human Use of Human beings and Cybernetics are extremely good too and have more of a mash of the themes between Rerum Novarum and Magnifca Humanitas, and more near-term automation.
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.
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.
Immaterial and cultural goods. This is a fascinating view on non-tangibles and one I feel inspired by. Reading this I asked myself (wait for the larger quote in a minute) how this affects views of IP, learning when texts are not available, cultural impact of characters and stories, the output from universities, publication of papers, ownership of research done by public or even private (!) funds, and more. Particularly I wonder about open weights vs open source for AI, and open source as a concept: where the old-school 'free software' GPLed version seems -- perhaps I am showing my bias -- most aligned with the ethical stance here?
> 66. Certainly there is a right to private property, which has its own specific meaning and purpose, yet it is always subordinate to the universal destination of goods.
'Always subordinate'.
> 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. In turn, it widens the gap between the included and the excluded, between those who can participate in the digital revolution and those who remain on the margins.
Wow!
I cannot interpret this; it's not my right. But moving from the questions I asked above, to this paragraph, is powerful.
> Unrelated to AI, but a wonderful support of the breadth of humanity in this anti-DEI time.
I mean.. DEI was in reality homogenization and eliminated diversity. Just because you agreed with the small amount of allowed opinions/people doesn't make it more diverse.
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.
"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."
> 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...]
>Therefore man was created single in the world to teach that for anybody who destroys a single life it is counted as if he destroyed an entire world, and for anybody who preserves a single life it is counted as if he preserved an entire world.
(Directly from the Mishna in the Talmud Yerushalmi)
> 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?
I wonder if meeting Colbert played any part in that.
Edith Stine
https://github.com/n2ctech/magnifica-humanitas-epub/releases...
(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.)
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.
Your sentence doesn't really make sense, and there is a lot of deities..
> You end up incorporating a lot of Christian thought without realizing because it's so deeply ingrained that it seems like the only option.
Depends on the country, some Northen european countries have a very high proportion of atheists, so it happens probably less there.
> the one-sidedness of the interaction, the tendency to communicate only some parts of one’s interior world, the risk of constructing a false image of oneself, which can become a form of self-indulgence
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).
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
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.
Indeed, the beginning of the Italian text is: "La magnifica umanità creata da Dio si trova oggi..." from which, Magnifica Humanitas.
Quick browse through pre-AI works from John Paul II show em-dashes present.
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).
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_%28Clarke_short_story...
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
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-s...
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-... [2018]
EDIT: Formatting.
EDIT: Few paragraphs in, it is beautifully written.
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.
Reading is a trained skill. Requiring years, even decades, of training. It too shall fall to AI.
We've been having the same argument since the dawn of mankind. AI is the new AR.
-anti-war passages and attacks Catholic just war theory
-attacks colonialism without explaining why Christians created colonies
-brings up historical attitudes towards slavery to freshly try to make Catholcism look bad
Hoping more people wake up to how opposed these people are to Catholic beliefs and practices
I will skip the "just war" theory, because I simply don't know enough to make a cogent argument
But
> attacks colonialism without explaining why Christians created colonies
Speaking as an english person with a passing interest in colonialism, this is an _interesting_ take.
Which colonies are you talking about? because the ones in America and Ireland were explicitly not catholic. More complex still some of them were super anti-pope, and a lot were just C-of-E catholic but sans pope
Could you explain more about your viewpoint?
> Francis, for example, did not write Laudato si’ entirely on his own. The first draft was prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, with input from other Church leaders. The document was then revised and reviewed by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
But I meant mostly those who share "Leo's" errors and write like him ("these people [like "Leo"])
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.)