Thoughts on Pope Leo XIV's Magnifica Humanitas

Thoughts on Pope Leo XIV's Magnifica Humanitas(adropincalm.com)

56 points by borracciaBlu 43 days ago | 54 comments

> The direction that AI takes is not written into the technology itself. It depends on our choices, on the institutions that host and underpin that choosing, and on our ability to manage innovation responsibly to serve the common good.

This is such a key point -- the problem is that the $T that are being poured into AI are doing so for one purpose alone: ROI

The choice has already been made, and it's the wrong one.

Coeur 43 days ago | |

This is the same position of Yuval Noah Harari in his recent Economist interview: The ones in power (Musk etc.) try to frame the bad AI future as inevitable, instead of shouldering responsibility. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNZhxTtOL-I

The whole interview is well worth your time.

Animats 43 days ago | |

It's the correct choice according to the fundamental principles of capitalism, as set down by Milton Friedman.[1] and Lewis Powell.[2] Friedman set down the theory:

In an ideal free market resting on private property, no individual can coerce any other, all cooperation is voluntary, all parties to such cooperation benefit or they need not participate. There are no “social” values, no “social” responsibilities in any sense other than the shared values and responsibilities of individuals. Society is a collection of individuals and of the various groups they voluntarily form. ...

(But) the doctrine of “social responsibility” taken seriously would extend the scope of the political mechanism to every human activity. It does not differ in philosophy from the most explicitly collectivist doctrine. It differs only by professing to believe that collectivist ends can be attained without collectivist means. That is why, in my book “Capitalism and Freedom,” I have called it a “fundamentally subversive doctrine” in a free society, and have said that in such a society, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business—to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.”

Then Powell (the Powell who became a Supreme Court Justice) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce set out to change the rules of the game. The 1971 "Powell memo" was written when the values of the 1960s had permeated society. The objective of the memo was to turn that around. It's a battle plan to use corporate power to change government. When it was written, few companies had lobbyists. Now, corporate lobbying is huge, and effective.

The extent to which this well-funded project worked doesn't have to be described today. What's worth realizing is that it wasn't always that way.

The U.S. Government of the Lyndon Johnson era ("Great Society", "War on Poverty") was organized to deal with something like the impact of AI on employment. The current government is not. It is permeated with people who think it the government shouldn't do anything about it.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctr...

[2] https://reclaimdemocracy.org/powell_memo_lewis/

insane_dreamer 43 days ago | | |

> It's the correct choice according to the fundamental principles of capitalism

sure, it aligns with the principles of capitalism

that doesn't make it the right choice

sm-silversight 43 days ago | | |

It ain't capitalism if we have the FOMC chop off the invisible hand with 20 years of LIRP/ZIRP

doodlebugging 43 days ago | |

I agree with your summary. Greed has won out over everything else.

eru 43 days ago | | |

Ha, if only! I'd like to live in that utopia!

If eg Putin had been more greedy instead of power hungry, we wouldn't have had his war against Ukraine. Same for many other wars and conflicts, including the US war on Iran, or even WW2 if you want to go back in time.

albeebe1 43 days ago | | |

Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

hagbard_c 43 days ago | |

I'd say that the outcome mostly depends on whether something resembling AGI is achieved since that would more or less inevitably end up leading to something resembling ASI ('super-intelligence') which in turn makes it questionable whether the resulting entity can be counted upon to 'serve the common good' - whatever that may be. The quest for ROI has at most a temporary influence on the direction if this path is followed unless it actually keeps AGI (and thus ASI) from being achieved.

Loughla 43 days ago | | |

I am afraid that anything created by humans will be, inherently, influenced in its ultimate development by human nature.

Therefore, whatever AGI looks like will be selfish, violent, and short sighted...

But our current crop of chatbots are not it. They're just parrots that happen to be pretty bad for the climate.

m4rtink 43 days ago | |

Its certainly the wrong choice if by all indications the R is apparently missing in your ROI.

Waterluvian 43 days ago | |

Yeah. And the quality of AI will only get worse from here unless we can commoditize open weight models.

If Google and Anthropic and such are able to own access, they will enshittify it horribly. Because they are powerless to do anything but, in the name of profit.

skybrian 43 days ago | | |

I think it's just as likely that these companies will choose different strategies and go after different markets. Though there are some similarities, Apple didn't do the same thing as Microsoft. And although they do copy features, Android isn't the same as iPhone.

In particular, Google depends a lot more on advertising than Anthropic does, so their incentives are different.

hydrox24 43 days ago |

There is interesting debate about whether, and how much, LLMs were used to write parts of this encyclical. Generally encyclicals are written by a group of Cardinals and/or Bishops, with significant input from the Pope, so it seems possible that while the Pope's sections and speeches have been human-written, some of the other writers used LLMs in some capacity.

The argument boil down to: Pangram seems to flag some sections, some sections have tells or AI smell, and despite being written in a similar register, previous writings of both the Pope and previous encyclicals are not flagged.

I'm not sure that it's a disaster if parts have been AI assisted, but it's an interesting question to ponder, and would be interested in the HN view.

Best post I've found arguing that there was LLM use: https://substack.com/inbox/post/199316613

Australian startup apparently verifying (without much detail) that it's not: https://www.proudlyhuman.org/news-room/media-releases/pope-l...

NoboruWataya 43 days ago | |

My view is that it doesn't really matter, and focusing on it is likely an attempt to distract from the substance of the encyclical, which could be seen as critical of AI insofar as it calls for stronger regulation and more conscientious use of AI. As an aside, I think the arguments put forward in the blog post you link are pretty weak, but again, getting into that would just distract from the actual points being made in the encyclical.

antihipocrat 43 days ago | |

I have caught myself writing in a manner similar to LLM output. I put it down to reading so much of LLM content at work and online that it bleeds into my own style.. Nothing egregious like the "it's not this, it's that" pattern, but more subtle like the cadence and the balance of active vs passive voice.

What I'm saying is that it's possible that some of these tells are becoming part of standard writing style now.

fasterik 43 days ago | |

The encyclical is not anti-AI, so there's not really any contradiction or hypocrisy if AI was used to write it. It's more of a criticism of the "technocratic paradigm" and the potential for abuse of power and lack of accountability.

luckydata 43 days ago | |

who gives a shit tbh, argue with the substance, not the style.

neves 43 days ago |

It blows my mind that the Pope can say more relevant words about AI than American billionaires.

NoboruWataya 43 days ago | |

I think it's a matter of incentives. American billionaires are mostly highly financially exposed to AI, so are not really incentivised to say anything interesting about it except "it's great, you should buy it".

Georgelemental 43 days ago | |

Saying relevant words is part of the Pope's job description. Not so for billionaires

jjtheblunt 43 days ago | |

the Pope is an American billionaire at this point, in some Vatican sense.

leflambeur 43 days ago | | |

It is fascinating (this word doesn't quite capture sentiment, but the best I can think of right now) how any mention of the Catholic Church, on whatever specific topic — in this case, an encyclical about AI — triggers the immediate desire in some to go full ad hominem.

"billionaire", "in some Vatican sense". Would you elaborate? This just sounds like such a low and lazy attack

Leeann1951 43 days ago |

Always interesting to see older philosophical texts discussed here. Often find surprising parallels to modern tech ethics debates.

NoboruWataya 43 days ago | |

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding you, but Magnifica Humanitas was published earlier this year.

EA-3167 43 days ago |

On one hand I appreciate the considerate scholarship on display, and since there are so many Catholics maybe some will even listen to their purported leader. On the other hand I find any talk of greed, selfishness, manipulation and degradation of humanity... really rich coming from a pope. Maybe I'm supposed to forgive, but I'm not going to forget that they spent decades abusing, hiding abuse, trying to force abortion to the margins along with birth control even when HIV became an obvious pandemic. I'm tired of the leader of an organization that owns a whole city preaching poverty to the masses, even if this particular leader has better PR than most.

Enough people have made these same points without the taint of that organization that I don't see this offering as necessary for the discussion, it mostly seems like a way to insert religion into something that simply doesn't require it. Faith can be a beautiful thing, personal and meaningful, but a giant organization with power and money is always going to be just that and should be treated with according suspicion.