This article needs to be retitled, as it stands it's misleading.
Papal Encyclicals[0] are solely authored by the Pope, even if there has been secular scholarship involved in the writing. It is never "presented" by anyone else, and to frame it as presented primarily by Christopher Olah "alongside" the pope is to betray an ignorance of what's officially going on.
Not sure how we arrived at the present title, "Anthropic co-founder to present AI encyclical alongside Pope Leo XIV", but it makes as much sense as "Iceberg nearly completes mainden voyage across Atlantic, with famous ship as passenger."
On top of that, submissions are not supposed to modify titles. Original is "Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25".
It was me. Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Chris Olah co-authored the encyclical with the Pope. I just found it noteworthy that there was someone from the “industry” at the encyclical presentation on May 25, which I think is a first. Usually, they are all clergy or academics.
I'm an atheist, but most of what I have heard from popes in recent years seems like sound and possibly needed advice.
Also, even though I feel AI and robotics are very important for progressing humanity, I think that much of the world has long since lost a proper sense of intrinsic human value. It's really gone from overt exploitation to slightly more mild exploitation where we pretend the system is really merit based.
And as AI and robotics remove the need for human labor, I hope that someone like the pope can convince people that we should value human beings inherently and more fairly. Inexpensive labor and intelligence should make this feasible.
I hope the speech isn't something dumb like "remember only humans have souls" because I think that's really premature and pretty obvious that AIs are not people at this point.
The really convincing and somewhat deeper simulations of humans are probably only a few years down the line though.
Which comes back to the Rovelli dualism article that was on the front page before. I think we should not be in a hurry to try to duplicate humans in depth (such as imitating emotions, pain, stream of consciousness, self-preservation, etc).
It's just completely unnecessary to go that far to get useful AI, and obviously unethical to subject a real human emulation to slavery.
Unfortunately some approximation of a human emulation (a slice of it) comes out of emulating Common Crawl. They do have neurons for emotions because those are necessary to predict next token.
Whether that implies anything about subjective experience... I think that question is unknowable by definition. Either substrate matters (in which case things have to be made of carbon for some reason?), or it doesn't (in which case... God only knows what that implies. Windows XP might have subjective experience).
> I'm an atheist, but most of what I have heard from popes in recent years seems like sound and possibly needed advice.
This is a bad sign. I'm an atheist too, but I don't think religions should appeal to outsiders.
The idea is that by relaxing norms, he wants to gain more members. But it doesn't actually go that way. It alienates the core, and the people for whom compromises are made don't want to join anyway.
You can see this with the number of members for Unitarian churches (declining) vs Amish (growing).
It's the same with Gamergate. Games which chase inclusivity often fail, because the very people they appeal to don't actually want to play video games.
Human value has rarely existed. Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing.
Post-industrial world needed human capital. Hence, the need for human value. If you notice most of this "need" has arisen out of then need for industrial expansion.
Post-AI will be interesting. Will we go back to pre-industrial or get something better.
I don't think this is factually accurate. What it really boils down is a question of scale of societies.
Most of us humans inherently value each other. There are exceptions, and small communities can get nasty. But for the most part, small human communities tend to be supportive and valuing each other.
This really only stops being the case when you get large-scale societies that allow humans to view others through an overly abstract lens. Combine that with an unchecked accumulation of power, and you have the potential for those in power to view the rest as without value.
I agree with you. I recently watched a bunch of videos from a YouTuber 'Mike Okay' and he visits some random, obscure and non-standard countries to travel.
Most of the people he encounters are super friendly, welcoming and willing to bend over backwards to help him out. It's genuine human connection and willingness. He will speak to people from every possible background, including people in the Taliban and honestly at the end of the day, we're all humans and most people respect that.
Things have become blurred with social media, digital life, closed and private nature of the modern world but if you take a step back, you can realize humans are typically, very helpful, friendly and unique characters.
It's telling how blithely you're missing the point of what the pope(s) mean by human value. Their intended meaning is that far gone from modern consciousness, even among people who meant to champion some kind of human value themselves.
They're not talking about the economic value of humans or even the psychological value of humans as subjects with experiences and a right to liberty or care or something. The idea they're trying to recall and reinvigorate is a sense of human value that transcends that temporal, material noise altogether and that is truly universal. It's the human value that welcomed slaves, prostitutes, wretches, merchants and kings as peers in something grander than economy or state or lineage or tribe or creed.
Now, you can make a well-developed case that that's hogwash and that the human value that matters is the one that alleviates suffering or grants liberty or even the one that grants material reward for some virtue or bloodline or whatever, but that's not what these guys are talking about. They mean a human nature that is always there and always worthy, just as much when it's experiencing temporal poverty/suffering/abuse as when it's basking in temporal wealth/success/freedom.
The idea is that Christian or not, Catholic or not, it does good for everyone to think of human value that way and the critique -- for a long time now -- is that for all the flash and glimmer of technology and its material benefits, it sometimes makes it very very easy to forget.
What rot. Tell that to native Americans who were forcibly converted and enslaved. Tell that to people in the inquisition. Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers. Tell that to all the children murdered in Christian and catholic schools.
Christianity and Catholicism doesn’t fool me. If you’ve ever wanted to see the mythical devil - look to those preaching and they legacy of hate that they carry.
There's really no argument against the institutional and historical hypocisy. There's no shortage of people and groups that have done or currently do horrible violence against others, sometimes even in the name of these ideas.
But I don't know if that takes away from the idea itself and what fruitful counterpoint it might play in modern discourse.
So your argument is that if some people who claim allegiance to an idea do evil things, that renders all who claim such allegiance, and even the idea itself, evil? That is a pretty poor argument. It's also one that I don't think you would actually accept in another context. I bet you anything that I can find some ideal you uphold which was espoused by some vile people at some point, and I also bet that you wouldn't go "ok, I guess I have to give that ideal up now".
Arguably from very early on the Church has been at the forefront of "Serfs are of value to the Lord" if you will (St Lawrence, et al).
So far none of the AI stuff I've seen has really been about "the computer has no soul" and more around the danger that dehumanization can bring (which has been a refrain since the previous Leo, mind you).
I also wonder if it’s just harder to rule a much larger population in the modern world than in those times. Any jackass can show up and say that he was chosen to lead by some higher power. But you must still convince enough people that that is the case or at least have a military large enough that you can control.
A cursory look at the fall of extreme poverty across the world, over the last few decades, is enough to refute the idea that the world is largely based on exploitation.
I agree that things are getting better, but your sentiment feels a bit premature; exploitation is still alive and well in many supply chains. The people who manufacture the products you buy often live much harder lives than you.
Has wealth been distributed from exploiter to exploited? Doesn't seem like it. It just seems like the 99% are being exploited a little more evenhandedly.
You assume that exploitation and material improvement can not coexist. You can be exploited just as well, by that I mean you're not getting a fair share for what you contribute to the system.
I suggest a look at the recent economic development of Bangladesh, if you want something less abstract to illustrate the point that the reduction in poverty is very noticeable.
You would think that a great reduction in extreme poverty would give people pause, but it is almost always barely acknowledged. The strange conclusion is that people who tell you they care the most about poverty do not actually care about it in the slightest. It is just a vehicle for their resentment.
I'm not religious and haven't been since 2008. However, the world today is very different from then. It's fragmented, far more authoritarian, much more dangerous, with "us vs them" mentalities just gaining more and more traction in general in so many countries. There are almost no political leaders left in the world offering a vision that is distinct from mere survival instinct or domination or some mixture of the two. In the last decade we've seen the rise of multiple world-historical tyrants. Meanwhile, many major religions have lost all moral credibility due to continued decades of horrible violence. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it'd be nice to see some real, genuine world leadership from the Pope right now.
> the world today is very different from then. . . many major religions have lost all moral credibility due to continued decades of horrible violence.
I wouldn't say that this is entirely the case. Most religions are in the same position they were in back in 2008. With the Church attempting to accommodate modernity and slowly declining; with a fractured Muslim world; with Buddhism and other religions largely invisible in the West. To speak plainly, the only real exception is Judaism, which has doubled-down on growing into a weird and violent master-race cult, and which has voluntarily surrendered any claim to moral credibility. (So much the worse for anybody unlucky enough to live in Israel's neighborhood!)
We didn't have nearly the prosperity gospel and doomsday cult of christians we have today in 2008 (or at least they were kept much more at bay instead of running the country)
The title seems to be editorialized. To me, it makes it sound like Christopher Olah (the mentioned Anthropic co-founder) is a co-author. Instead he is going to be one of several speakers present when the encyclical is released.
> Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, on preserving the human person in the age of artificial intelligence, will be released on May 25. A presentation event with the Pope and various speakers is scheduled for the same day at the Vatican.
Among the "various speakers" is Christopher Olah. But hard to express under 80 characters I bet.
It's a tall order to live up to the impact of Rerum novarum, the encyclical by the former Pope Leo that greatly guided thinking out of the industrial revolution. Personally, I'm excited to read this. If we take the claims of most AI labs at face value, they believe their work will fundamentally change the relationship between humans and the economy. More involvement from faith leaders is a good thing.
- Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum; current Pope Leo XIV chose his name as an explicit gesture to his nominative predecessor
- This encyclical is a return to the earlier tradition of latin names (Magnifica Humanitas) for encyclicals, as opposed to many of Pope Francis' which used Italian (Laudato si')
- The official date it was signed was 135 years to the day since Rerum Novarum
- The Pope is personally appearing and speaking at the presentation; usually these encyclicals are just released at a small press conference without the Pope himself being there
Rerum Novarum intentionally tracked a third path, rejecting both socialism and laissez faire capitalism at the end of the 19th century. Gesturing so overtly towards it suggests that this new encyclical will also try to establish a "third way," grounded (as the title suggests) in human dignity.
Leo XIV has not published any encyclicals yet; this will be his first, and an extremely ambitious one at that. I also am very eager to read it.
If you're in a country where war is occurring, it doesn't matter if it's a world war or not. There are conflicts in pretty much every continent. North America is waging war in the Middle East. Europe has a multiyear conflict threatening to spill across more borders. Several countries in Africa are in conflict even if they are civil wars. North America, while not waging outright war, is in conflict with a South American country. The Asian continent is nearly routinely going through border skirmishes. Antarctica doesn't count. The Australian continent seems the only one without active conflicts. So 5/6 continents capable of being part of world war is in warlike conditions.
Chris Olah, one of Anthropic’s co-founders, got in touch. What followed was, by McGuire’s own description, mind-blowing. “They basically were asking for direct help from the Vatican to convene and help the industry, because the industry was going so fast down this road,” he recalled.
Just a letter from the pope, often about how Catholic teaching relates or applies to some modern issue. They present nothing new in terms of Catholic teaching itself, but, through the pope's authority, serve as important guidance for the faithful.
And honestly, even people outside the Catholic Church sometimes look to the pope for guidance on topics like this - see this very thread. The influence of the pope in the world isn't as strong as it once was, but he still has enough influence that he can do some good with it at times such as these. I think many are hoping for something on the level of Rerum Novarum - I know I am, though of course that's a very tough act to follow.
I wonder if the encyclical will incorporate material or take guidance from “Antiqua et nova”[1], the 2025 doctrinal note of the Catholic Church co-issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture. The Note addresses “the anthropological and ethical challenges raised by AI—issues that are particularly significant, as one of the goals of this technology is to imitate the human intelligence that designed it.” I sincerely hope it builds on it.
Hmm, there’s probably a good reason for this, but it feels weird to involve people who are openly atheist and, moreover, against religion in an event like this.
I hope it's some sort of covert invitation to convert/repent. The doors are always open for those who want to cross it :).
I <3 the sci-fi gods like Herbert, Heinlein and Asimov, and they all had great sci-fi takes on religion ... but Hyperion has THE best take on sci-fi religions IMHO.
While the Vatican does have walls, anyone can pretty much just walk on through them with perhaps a trip through a metal detector, so not sure what you mean.
The Catholic Church also does not teach that there cannot be restrictions on immigration, it simply says that we should treat people with dignity while enforcing such restrictions.
Who is this for? Is this to promote AI to the general Catholic public, or is it some kind of cultural signal to potential conservative institutional customers that Anthropic isn’t just a stereotypical bunch of godless California hippies?
Normally when I see these sorts of things it’s obvious what it is for and why, but this one confuses me.
I hope you saw others' correction to the title here that indicate Olah is just a speaker at an event on the same day, not an author (although he almost certainly was consulted for his opinions while the Pope and his assistants were working on the Encyclical). So what matters here is what the Pope is trying to do, not Olah's intentions in his minor role.
The Pope has already spoken quite a bit about ai, and exhorted priests to keep ai out of their homilies, which should be a sacred fruit of prayer and study.
Just from what I have seen he said and my Catholic Theological background, I would say he will definitely be talking about at least a couple things: 1) the relationship between ai and our intellectual labor, and how to use it fruitfully to grow without losing ourselves in it (a very similar concern to many on hn as far as I understand); and more importantly for him and again for many 2) how to use ai in society in a way that everybody can enjoy the fruits of it, instead of just the elite few (similar to the priority of Rerum novarum). This Pope chose his name because of this theme, and has consistently demonstrated that social justice is amongst his highest priority concerns - to the point that he has asked the Church to stop focusing so heavily on sexual ethics because there are such weighty injustices in the world that require our focused effort and attention.
The encyclical is for the Pope to express the church's view on AI and its impact to society to other Catholics. My guess for why Christopher Olah is there is to signal that Anthropic is the ethical AI company.
It’s for me. It’s strange so I’m probably going to watch it. It helps that I generally like the modern Catholic church’s direction on things (besides abortion but I’m willing to overlook that).
This is very much trying to create a consensus around what being human means and why it’s valuable in an age where it will be easy to dismiss the intrinsic value of a human. Probably a bit more important than a marketing stunt.
That is just what the (edited) title makes it sound like. The article states that Christopher Olah will be a speaker present at the encyclical release. It does not imply that he had any hand or influence in the content.
Well yeah, private companies influencing doctrine would be far more scandalous for believers I guess. The point is the church making connections with companies straight away, sidestepping heads of state.
I think in the case of Anthropic, it shows they’re at the very least willing to engage with the most important people in the philosophical and theological realm they’re in the midst of disrupting.
When the question asked is roughly of “can an AI ever be considered a human soul?”, there isn’t a philosopher alive whose individual opinion would be considered more meaningful than Pope Leo’s.
It’s unlikely that the church’s opinion would influence the future business choices of Anthropic. I think it still remains a positive business move to publicly engage with the church.
I don't know enough to disagree with this specifically, but reductionism and generalizing is its own problem. A PR stunt is far cry from a power grab. Reductionism favors addressing large trends, and large boogeymen, classes, groups, etc.. instead of doing the diligent work of finding root causes, nuanced as they might be, and addressing those.
If what you say is right, I would challenge that by still insisting the corporations can only do what governments let them. You might say they run governments behind the scenes, to which I would say, who let them? They keep influencing elections? Then elections don't seem to be working, that's the root cause perhaps? In all the major political issues, that's the trend I'm seeing, democracy failing, but then I'll challenge myself and ask why is it failing?
The old sentiment of "if it can't be fixed, it isn't a problem" seems rampant. Modern democracy itself is a fix for some other sets of problems. In the US at least, it is in theory designed to be mended and fixed. Perhaps the real cause is lack of political will power by everyone pursuing politics, to even talk about changing the way the government is architectured, altering constitutions, talking about parting ways with land and population (secession), or incorporation of some. Perhaps the population just isn't that interested in educating themselves on matters of civics, therefore how democracy works needs a rewrite at its core?
Either way, I rambled on, i know, but it's with a point i hope is obvious: the common political sentiment around billionaires, corporations, oligarchs (or similar "woke" or "DEI" dogwhistles on the right) simply don't address root causes. They're reductive by design, not accident.
This article needs to be retitled, as it stands it's misleading.
Papal Encyclicals[0] are solely authored by the Pope, even if there has been secular scholarship involved in the writing. It is never "presented" by anyone else, and to frame it as presented primarily by Christopher Olah "alongside" the pope is to betray an ignorance of what's officially going on.
Not sure how we arrived at the present title, "Anthropic co-founder to present AI encyclical alongside Pope Leo XIV", but it makes as much sense as "Iceberg nearly completes mainden voyage across Atlantic, with famous ship as passenger."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclical#Catholic_usage
On top of that, submissions are not supposed to modify titles. Original is "Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25".
> Not sure how we arrived at the present title
It was me. Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply that Chris Olah co-authored the encyclical with the Pope. I just found it noteworthy that there was someone from the “industry” at the encyclical presentation on May 25, which I think is a first. Usually, they are all clergy or academics.
I'm an atheist, but most of what I have heard from popes in recent years seems like sound and possibly needed advice.
Also, even though I feel AI and robotics are very important for progressing humanity, I think that much of the world has long since lost a proper sense of intrinsic human value. It's really gone from overt exploitation to slightly more mild exploitation where we pretend the system is really merit based.
And as AI and robotics remove the need for human labor, I hope that someone like the pope can convince people that we should value human beings inherently and more fairly. Inexpensive labor and intelligence should make this feasible.
I hope the speech isn't something dumb like "remember only humans have souls" because I think that's really premature and pretty obvious that AIs are not people at this point.
The really convincing and somewhat deeper simulations of humans are probably only a few years down the line though.
Which comes back to the Rovelli dualism article that was on the front page before. I think we should not be in a hurry to try to duplicate humans in depth (such as imitating emotions, pain, stream of consciousness, self-preservation, etc). It's just completely unnecessary to go that far to get useful AI, and obviously unethical to subject a real human emulation to slavery.
Unfortunately some approximation of a human emulation (a slice of it) comes out of emulating Common Crawl. They do have neurons for emotions because those are necessary to predict next token.
Whether that implies anything about subjective experience... I think that question is unknowable by definition. Either substrate matters (in which case things have to be made of carbon for some reason?), or it doesn't (in which case... God only knows what that implies. Windows XP might have subjective experience).
Emotions exist outside of immediate reaction. This is necessary for stuff like motivation.
> I'm an atheist, but most of what I have heard from popes in recent years seems like sound and possibly needed advice.
This is a bad sign. I'm an atheist too, but I don't think religions should appeal to outsiders.
The idea is that by relaxing norms, he wants to gain more members. But it doesn't actually go that way. It alienates the core, and the people for whom compromises are made don't want to join anyway.
You can see this with the number of members for Unitarian churches (declining) vs Amish (growing).
It's the same with Gamergate. Games which chase inclusivity often fail, because the very people they appeal to don't actually want to play video games.
Human value has rarely existed. Pre-industrial world didn't have much human value. Your were a lord or a serf. There was not much in between. A lord's life had value, a serf's value was nothing.
Post-industrial world needed human capital. Hence, the need for human value. If you notice most of this "need" has arisen out of then need for industrial expansion.
Post-AI will be interesting. Will we go back to pre-industrial or get something better.
I don't think this is factually accurate. What it really boils down is a question of scale of societies.
Most of us humans inherently value each other. There are exceptions, and small communities can get nasty. But for the most part, small human communities tend to be supportive and valuing each other.
This really only stops being the case when you get large-scale societies that allow humans to view others through an overly abstract lens. Combine that with an unchecked accumulation of power, and you have the potential for those in power to view the rest as without value.
I agree with you. I recently watched a bunch of videos from a YouTuber 'Mike Okay' and he visits some random, obscure and non-standard countries to travel.
Most of the people he encounters are super friendly, welcoming and willing to bend over backwards to help him out. It's genuine human connection and willingness. He will speak to people from every possible background, including people in the Taliban and honestly at the end of the day, we're all humans and most people respect that.
Things have become blurred with social media, digital life, closed and private nature of the modern world but if you take a step back, you can realize humans are typically, very helpful, friendly and unique characters.
It's telling how blithely you're missing the point of what the pope(s) mean by human value. Their intended meaning is that far gone from modern consciousness, even among people who meant to champion some kind of human value themselves.
They're not talking about the economic value of humans or even the psychological value of humans as subjects with experiences and a right to liberty or care or something. The idea they're trying to recall and reinvigorate is a sense of human value that transcends that temporal, material noise altogether and that is truly universal. It's the human value that welcomed slaves, prostitutes, wretches, merchants and kings as peers in something grander than economy or state or lineage or tribe or creed.
Now, you can make a well-developed case that that's hogwash and that the human value that matters is the one that alleviates suffering or grants liberty or even the one that grants material reward for some virtue or bloodline or whatever, but that's not what these guys are talking about. They mean a human nature that is always there and always worthy, just as much when it's experiencing temporal poverty/suffering/abuse as when it's basking in temporal wealth/success/freedom.
The idea is that Christian or not, Catholic or not, it does good for everyone to think of human value that way and the critique -- for a long time now -- is that for all the flash and glimmer of technology and its material benefits, it sometimes makes it very very easy to forget.
What rot. Tell that to native Americans who were forcibly converted and enslaved. Tell that to people in the inquisition. Tell that to peoples in India and the east that were forcibly converted so that the pope could fill his coffers. Tell that to all the children murdered in Christian and catholic schools.
Christianity and Catholicism doesn’t fool me. If you’ve ever wanted to see the mythical devil - look to those preaching and they legacy of hate that they carry.
There's really no argument against the institutional and historical hypocisy. There's no shortage of people and groups that have done or currently do horrible violence against others, sometimes even in the name of these ideas.
But I don't know if that takes away from the idea itself and what fruitful counterpoint it might play in modern discourse.
So your argument is that if some people who claim allegiance to an idea do evil things, that renders all who claim such allegiance, and even the idea itself, evil? That is a pretty poor argument. It's also one that I don't think you would actually accept in another context. I bet you anything that I can find some ideal you uphold which was espoused by some vile people at some point, and I also bet that you wouldn't go "ok, I guess I have to give that ideal up now".
Serfs were of value to the lord, and they were usually not treated that badly compared to many workplaces today.
Arguably from very early on the Church has been at the forefront of "Serfs are of value to the Lord" if you will (St Lawrence, et al).
So far none of the AI stuff I've seen has really been about "the computer has no soul" and more around the danger that dehumanization can bring (which has been a refrain since the previous Leo, mind you).
I also wonder if it’s just harder to rule a much larger population in the modern world than in those times. Any jackass can show up and say that he was chosen to lead by some higher power. But you must still convince enough people that that is the case or at least have a military large enough that you can control.
When it’s necessary for the pope to tell the orange one to calm down about wiping out a civilisation, you know things are bad.
This would be more of an indictment if we were closer to the 19th century rather than 5 popes deep into public denouncements of American militarism.
yeah I'm not impressed. Its not like the worlds religions have consistently held the moral high ground.
That catholic church has a long and sordid history of protecting its own.
A cursory look at the fall of extreme poverty across the world, over the last few decades, is enough to refute the idea that the world is largely based on exploitation.
I agree that things are getting better, but your sentiment feels a bit premature; exploitation is still alive and well in many supply chains. The people who manufacture the products you buy often live much harder lives than you.
https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/reports/child-labor/list-o...
Has wealth been distributed from exploiter to exploited? Doesn't seem like it. It just seems like the 99% are being exploited a little more evenhandedly.
You assume that exploitation and material improvement can not coexist. You can be exploited just as well, by that I mean you're not getting a fair share for what you contribute to the system.
"UM ACTUALLY THOSE SWEATSHOP WORKERS ARE LUCKY TO BE WORKING FOR PENNIES AN HOUR TO MAKE MY OVERPRICED CONSUMER ELECTRONICS AND THESE FLY-ASS Js"
I suggest a look at the recent economic development of Bangladesh, if you want something less abstract to illustrate the point that the reduction in poverty is very noticeable.
You would think that a great reduction in extreme poverty would give people pause, but it is almost always barely acknowledged. The strange conclusion is that people who tell you they care the most about poverty do not actually care about it in the slightest. It is just a vehicle for their resentment.
I'm not religious and haven't been since 2008. However, the world today is very different from then. It's fragmented, far more authoritarian, much more dangerous, with "us vs them" mentalities just gaining more and more traction in general in so many countries. There are almost no political leaders left in the world offering a vision that is distinct from mere survival instinct or domination or some mixture of the two. In the last decade we've seen the rise of multiple world-historical tyrants. Meanwhile, many major religions have lost all moral credibility due to continued decades of horrible violence. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it'd be nice to see some real, genuine world leadership from the Pope right now.
> the world today is very different from then. . . many major religions have lost all moral credibility due to continued decades of horrible violence.
I wouldn't say that this is entirely the case. Most religions are in the same position they were in back in 2008. With the Church attempting to accommodate modernity and slowly declining; with a fractured Muslim world; with Buddhism and other religions largely invisible in the West. To speak plainly, the only real exception is Judaism, which has doubled-down on growing into a weird and violent master-race cult, and which has voluntarily surrendered any claim to moral credibility. (So much the worse for anybody unlucky enough to live in Israel's neighborhood!)
That last bit is false, you are conflating Zionism and Judaism. Plenty of non weird non colonizer non Zionist Jewish folks.
We didn't have nearly the prosperity gospel and doomsday cult of christians we have today in 2008 (or at least they were kept much more at bay instead of running the country)
The title seems to be editorialized. To me, it makes it sound like Christopher Olah (the mentioned Anthropic co-founder) is a co-author. Instead he is going to be one of several speakers present when the encyclical is released.
Agree, the introduction from article:
> Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica humanitas, on preserving the human person in the age of artificial intelligence, will be released on May 25. A presentation event with the Pope and various speakers is scheduled for the same day at the Vatican.
Among the "various speakers" is Christopher Olah. But hard to express under 80 characters I bet.
It made me think that the founder wrote their own encyclical with AI
Didn’t even think they made encyclicalpedias anymore
yeah 'anthropic employee to appear on panel'
It's a tall order to live up to the impact of Rerum novarum, the encyclical by the former Pope Leo that greatly guided thinking out of the industrial revolution. Personally, I'm excited to read this. If we take the claims of most AI labs at face value, they believe their work will fundamentally change the relationship between humans and the economy. More involvement from faith leaders is a good thing.
Yeah good propaganda, how much time after the Industrial Revolution was Rerum novarum?
At least they didn't pick Dario lest he burst in flames
The intentional parallels are hard to miss:
- Pope Leo XIII wrote Rerum Novarum; current Pope Leo XIV chose his name as an explicit gesture to his nominative predecessor
- This encyclical is a return to the earlier tradition of latin names (Magnifica Humanitas) for encyclicals, as opposed to many of Pope Francis' which used Italian (Laudato si')
- The official date it was signed was 135 years to the day since Rerum Novarum
- The Pope is personally appearing and speaking at the presentation; usually these encyclicals are just released at a small press conference without the Pope himself being there
Rerum Novarum intentionally tracked a third path, rejecting both socialism and laissez faire capitalism at the end of the 19th century. Gesturing so overtly towards it suggests that this new encyclical will also try to establish a "third way," grounded (as the title suggests) in human dignity.
Leo XIV has not published any encyclicals yet; this will be his first, and an extremely ambitious one at that. I also am very eager to read it.
It's interesting how natural historic mimesis seems to be in these vaunted roles.
Presidents have their favorite past counterparts, so did emperors, and clearly the Pope does as well.
Does this kind of imitation prevent truly creative action taking? Did Akhenaten have someone in mind when he declared his own religion?
I mean, the industrial revolution probably could have gone a little better.
Maybe, but it went pretty damn well. The AI revolution will be a success if it goes anywhere close to as well.
too bad about Lake Eerie
Hopefully this time we can avoid multiple, world wide wars.
If you're in a country where war is occurring, it doesn't matter if it's a world war or not. There are conflicts in pretty much every continent. North America is waging war in the Middle East. Europe has a multiyear conflict threatening to spill across more borders. Several countries in Africa are in conflict even if they are civil wars. North America, while not waging outright war, is in conflict with a South American country. The Asian continent is nearly routinely going through border skirmishes. Antarctica doesn't count. The Australian continent seems the only one without active conflicts. So 5/6 continents capable of being part of world war is in warlike conditions.
You can hope… but there is a matter of global debt and account that sooner or later will be settled.
Related: https://observer.com/2026/03/the-catholic-priest-who-helped-...
Chris Olah, one of Anthropic’s co-founders, got in touch. What followed was, by McGuire’s own description, mind-blowing. “They basically were asking for direct help from the Vatican to convene and help the industry, because the industry was going so fast down this road,” he recalled.
It will be interesting to see how the Pope's more human centered view clashes with Anthropic's rhetoric around replacing humans with AI
Can someone explain to me what encyclical is, and what is it significance in the history of the Catholic Church?
Just a letter from the pope, often about how Catholic teaching relates or applies to some modern issue. They present nothing new in terms of Catholic teaching itself, but, through the pope's authority, serve as important guidance for the faithful.
And honestly, even people outside the Catholic Church sometimes look to the pope for guidance on topics like this - see this very thread. The influence of the pope in the world isn't as strong as it once was, but he still has enough influence that he can do some good with it at times such as these. I think many are hoping for something on the level of Rerum Novarum - I know I am, though of course that's a very tough act to follow.
We don't need popes or effing machines to tell us what we're doing wrong. We all already know that.
What we do need is a lot more ordinary people to do something about it.
Fairly disappointed that it’s not Amodei/Amor Dei there. A terrible blow for nominative determinism.
I wonder if the encyclical will incorporate material or take guidance from “Antiqua et nova”[1], the 2025 doctrinal note of the Catholic Church co-issued by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Dicastery for Culture. The Note addresses “the anthropological and ethical challenges raised by AI—issues that are particularly significant, as one of the goals of this technology is to imitate the human intelligence that designed it.” I sincerely hope it builds on it.
[1] https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu...
Title is: Pope's first encyclical on preserving the human person in AI age coming May 25
Hmm, there’s probably a good reason for this, but it feels weird to involve people who are openly atheist and, moreover, against religion in an event like this.
I hope it's some sort of covert invitation to convert/repent. The doors are always open for those who want to cross it :).
This reminds me of the second half of the Hyperion cantos by Dan Simmons
I <3 the sci-fi gods like Herbert, Heinlein and Asimov, and they all had great sci-fi takes on religion ... but Hyperion has THE best take on sci-fi religions IMHO.
It seems that is the first in his series but is that a good one to start after Dune? I’m on the last book there and, man, the pacing is questionable.
You mean the Endymion books, or Fall of Hyperion? I'm rereading the latter right now..
My expectations for the "encyclical": some kind of take on AI that poses as "conservative" while pushing views strongly opposed to Catholicism.
I did rather enjoy New Pope talking the horrors of deportations and walls… considering the Vatican has ultra-strict immigration and walls.
While the Vatican does have walls, anyone can pretty much just walk on through them with perhaps a trip through a metal detector, so not sure what you mean.
The Catholic Church also does not teach that there cannot be restrictions on immigration, it simply says that we should treat people with dignity while enforcing such restrictions.
Another weird thing is this religious group trying to exert control over the AI companies:
https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/Techisturningincreasinglytore...
Why are the AI companies meeting with them at all? Just seems uncomfortable and suspicious.
The world is getting real tired of these tech bros.
Who gives a shit what some religious fanatic is doing?
You should welcome wisdom wherever it is to be found. Judge the document when it is available, not the source.
Who is this for? Is this to promote AI to the general Catholic public, or is it some kind of cultural signal to potential conservative institutional customers that Anthropic isn’t just a stereotypical bunch of godless California hippies?
Normally when I see these sorts of things it’s obvious what it is for and why, but this one confuses me.
My guess is that it (re)affirms that LLMs don't have souls and only people do.
If you've read any Vatican publications, the theme is being the authority on the ontology of reality.
EDIT: A decree for bioethics https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... I'd expect a similar deal for AI.
I have met many people who don't seem to have a soul.
> Ankh-Morpork! Brawling city of a hundred thousand souls! And, as the Patrician privately observed, ten times that number of actual people.
-- Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett
All of the people who I agree with are ensouled, all of them I disagree with are not.
It makes celebrating their murders and assassinations just like so much easier to cheer for!!
(Yeah, it’s a problem, but they can’t see it)
What is your opinion on this quote?
“Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people!”
Heretic!
I hope you saw others' correction to the title here that indicate Olah is just a speaker at an event on the same day, not an author (although he almost certainly was consulted for his opinions while the Pope and his assistants were working on the Encyclical). So what matters here is what the Pope is trying to do, not Olah's intentions in his minor role.
The Pope has already spoken quite a bit about ai, and exhorted priests to keep ai out of their homilies, which should be a sacred fruit of prayer and study.
Just from what I have seen he said and my Catholic Theological background, I would say he will definitely be talking about at least a couple things: 1) the relationship between ai and our intellectual labor, and how to use it fruitfully to grow without losing ourselves in it (a very similar concern to many on hn as far as I understand); and more importantly for him and again for many 2) how to use ai in society in a way that everybody can enjoy the fruits of it, instead of just the elite few (similar to the priority of Rerum novarum). This Pope chose his name because of this theme, and has consistently demonstrated that social justice is amongst his highest priority concerns - to the point that he has asked the Church to stop focusing so heavily on sexual ethics because there are such weighty injustices in the world that require our focused effort and attention.
The encyclical is for the Pope to express the church's view on AI and its impact to society to other Catholics. My guess for why Christopher Olah is there is to signal that Anthropic is the ethical AI company.
> Who is this for?
For the shrinking Catholic church it's trying to regain relevance. For Anthropic it's PR.
It’s for me. It’s strange so I’m probably going to watch it. It helps that I generally like the modern Catholic church’s direction on things (besides abortion but I’m willing to overlook that).
It's part of the gradual agenda to label AI the antichrist.
Amodei seems apropos
Why does this seem like it came out of a meeting where someone kept saying "how can we leverage AI?"
This is very much trying to create a consensus around what being human means and why it’s valuable in an age where it will be easy to dismiss the intrinsic value of a human. Probably a bit more important than a marketing stunt.
Not at all. The Rerum Novarum timing is too intentional.
I bet it will be 100 AI written, with guidance, natch, just because...
For anyone concerned about the growing power of giant corporations, the fact that they're doing joint statements with religious leaders is...wow.
Regardless of content, it seems an extra step in solidifying where power lies.
That is just what the (edited) title makes it sound like. The article states that Christopher Olah will be a speaker present at the encyclical release. It does not imply that he had any hand or influence in the content.
Well yeah, private companies influencing doctrine would be far more scandalous for believers I guess. The point is the church making connections with companies straight away, sidestepping heads of state.
I think in the case of Anthropic, it shows they’re at the very least willing to engage with the most important people in the philosophical and theological realm they’re in the midst of disrupting.
When the question asked is roughly of “can an AI ever be considered a human soul?”, there isn’t a philosopher alive whose individual opinion would be considered more meaningful than Pope Leo’s.
It’s unlikely that the church’s opinion would influence the future business choices of Anthropic. I think it still remains a positive business move to publicly engage with the church.
I don't know enough to disagree with this specifically, but reductionism and generalizing is its own problem. A PR stunt is far cry from a power grab. Reductionism favors addressing large trends, and large boogeymen, classes, groups, etc.. instead of doing the diligent work of finding root causes, nuanced as they might be, and addressing those.
If what you say is right, I would challenge that by still insisting the corporations can only do what governments let them. You might say they run governments behind the scenes, to which I would say, who let them? They keep influencing elections? Then elections don't seem to be working, that's the root cause perhaps? In all the major political issues, that's the trend I'm seeing, democracy failing, but then I'll challenge myself and ask why is it failing?
The old sentiment of "if it can't be fixed, it isn't a problem" seems rampant. Modern democracy itself is a fix for some other sets of problems. In the US at least, it is in theory designed to be mended and fixed. Perhaps the real cause is lack of political will power by everyone pursuing politics, to even talk about changing the way the government is architectured, altering constitutions, talking about parting ways with land and population (secession), or incorporation of some. Perhaps the population just isn't that interested in educating themselves on matters of civics, therefore how democracy works needs a rewrite at its core?
Either way, I rambled on, i know, but it's with a point i hope is obvious: the common political sentiment around billionaires, corporations, oligarchs (or similar "woke" or "DEI" dogwhistles on the right) simply don't address root causes. They're reductive by design, not accident.
Thoughtful and well written.
I tend to agree -- Even if I'm not sure what that quite looks like, and even if I'm not sure if that's better than what we already have.