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Pope Leo XIV has released a new, 42k-word encyclical laying out the Vatican's position on many AI safety topics. You can read the full thing here, or read the vatican's press release here, or coverage in the NY Times, or perhaps consider having an LLM read the whole encyclical, then chatting about whatever specifics you're interested in!
Below is a portion of the NY Times story on the event:
Leo’s declaration outlined his desire to protect human dignity and agency in an age in which technology threatens to replace humans in many professional and social roles. He presented it alongside Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, a major A.I. developer, in a symbolic gesture of dialogue between leaders of the spiritual and technological worlds.
While emphasizing that “technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity,” he wrote that “the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice jobs.”
Among other things, Leo called for:
- government regulation of the private companies that are driving the development of A.I.
- protection and retraining for workers whose jobs are threatened
- education to help students think critically about the technology
- action to protect children from violent, hypersexualized or fake information online that is often generated by A.I.
- safeguards to ensure that humans, not artificial intelligence, remain responsible for all decisions regarding the use of weapons.
Above all he emphasized the importance of retaining a fundamental social role for all human beings. “A society that guarantees employment to only a small fraction of the population, despite having a high level of technical development, risks exposing many to forced inactivity,” he wrote. “This creates a paradox of material progress and anthropological regression that undermines the foundations of a just and stable social peace."
