{"text":[[{"start":5.35,"text":"Pope Leo was perturbed. The speed of change was dizzying. The elements of conflict were unmistakable: the vast expansion of industry, the marvellous discoveries of science, the changing relations between employers and workers, the enormous fortunes being made amid mass poverty and prevailing moral degeneracy. The gravity of the situation “fills every mind with painful apprehension”, he wrote in his landmark papal encyclical Rerum Novarum (Of New Things) in 1891."}],[{"start":33.35,"text":"Exactly 135 years later, the current Pope Leo, who chose his papal name in honour of his predecessor, issued his own encyclical echoing similar fears about the disruptive power of technology and the urgency of a moral response. His letter, Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity), focused on safeguarding the human in the time of AI. Everyone must benefit from the digital transformation, he said, while no one should be reduced to “productivity”, “cognitive performance” or “mere data”. AI should therefore be “disarmed” and must not become an instrument of “domination, exclusion or death”."}],[{"start":69.75,"text":"The encyclical is worth a considered read. But three points in particular leap out."}],[{"start":75.55,"text":"First, the Pope is not antagonistic to technology. Indeed, he embraces it. Besides being a fan of Duolingo and Wordle himself, the Vatican uses AI to provide translations of his homilies in 60 languages. He acknowledges that AI can accelerate scientific progress and improve life for all. But he argues that it is not morally neutral and must be designed within an ethical framework from its inception. “Let us not be afraid to get our hands dirty on the ‘construction site’ of our time,” he wrote."}],[{"start":110.65,"text":"Second, no matter how novel the technology, humanity should always strive to preserve precious human values. (You would expect that one from the Pope). AI systems may present themselves as objective but they reflect and reinforce ideological bias and power structures. Given the concentration of corporate power and the possibilities of exploiting personal data to create a new form of digital colonialism, the Pope rightly fears that innovation can become an accelerator of injustice."}],[{"start":139.95000000000002,"text":"Third, the world’s most influential American spiritual leader, who holds sway over 1.4bn Catholics, is grappling with the serious challenges of AI in ways that its most powerful American secular leader, the US president, is choosing to ignore. Shortly after the Pope issued his 42,300-word letter, Donald Trump scrapped a minimalist executive order that would have subjected frontier AI models to testing before their release. "}],[{"start":166.3,"text":"The participation of Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, in the presentation of the encyclical shows that at least some in Silicon Valley are prepared to engage in the debate. Olah warned that every frontier AI lab — including Anthropic — operated within a set of incentives and constraints that sometimes conflicted with doing the right thing. “We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend,” he said."}],[{"start":191.45000000000002,"text":"Other tech bros, though, are already brushing off the papal message. As they see it, Silicon Valley is disrupting the divinity industry, just like all the others, and it is natural for the Vatican to defend its turf. "}],[{"start":206.35000000000002,"text":"Yet the Pope showed he was prepared to mix it up a bit, too. He attacked both the transhumanism and posthumanism that are developing cult-like followings in some AI circles. And in a classy piece of papal trolling, he quoted Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings, a text more resonant than the Bible for many technologists, on the nature of responsibility. That appeared squarely aimed at the US military drone and data companies Anduril and Palantir, which both take their names from JRR Tolkien’s writings. "}],[{"start":239.05,"text":"Addressing the dangers of killer robots, the Pope warned that AI risked lowering the threshold for violence, rushing military commanders into acting on threat predictions and reducing victims to data. His clear red line was that it is not permissible to entrust lethal decisions to artificial systems."}],[{"start":256.7,"text":"To many, the Pope’s reflections will appear unworldly, but that is part of his job. And that only made his final appeal more telling in his call for “authentic realism”. Idealists tend to bend the facts to confirm their worldview. Cynics despair of any positive change, believing that force will always prevail. "}],[{"start":276.8,"text":"But authentic realists do not give up on changing the world for the better. Instead, they painstakingly persist in pursuing the common good through credible institutions, verifiable guarantees, patient negotiations, conflict prevention and the protection of civilians. Amen to that."}],[{"start":301.1,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1780061646_4980.mp3"}