Analysis: Pope Leo XIV adopts critical tone amid AI hopes

Pope Leo XIV announced this Monday (25) the first encyclical of his papacy, entitled Humanitas. The document, signed on May 15, focuses on the impact of the advancement of artificial intelligence on the job market and on wars around the world, with a strong emphasis on ethical and geopolitical issues.

In participation in WW this Monday, International analyst Lourival Sant'Anna pointed out a weakness in this aspect of the document.

"The issue of employment will hardly follow an economic logic. A speech by a pope will not alter the replacement, fortunately or unfortunately, of human beings in a series of tasks, as has happened throughout the history of technology", stated Lourival.

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Encyclicals are one of the highest forms of teaching from a pontiff to the 1.4 billion faithful of the Catholic Church.

The date chosen for the signing is not accidental: it is the exact 135th anniversary of Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum, in which the then pontiff demanded better conditions for the working classes in the midst of the Industrial Revolution.

Leo XIV presented the document alongside Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, developer of the Claude tool, who also spoke during the presentation of the letter.

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In the encyclical, the pope demands that governments and other political organizations cooperate at an international level to regulate the market for artificial intelligence tools.

For the leader of the Catholic Church, the increase in work automation must be accompanied by employment protection and requalification measures, with the aim that technologies free up time and human capabilities, instead of generating social and economic exclusion.

"Culture of power"
The encyclical also warns about the relationship between the military use of artificial intelligence and what the pope classifies as a "culture of power", when the military force of domination over others overrides any limit in decision-making.

Leo XIV cites weapons and military systems that make decisions against targets based on data, without relying on direct human analysis, as examples of the intensification of the dehumanization of war.

For the pontiff, it is not lawful to entrust lethal decisions to these systems, and a clear chain of accountability is needed that goes from those who design them to those who apply them.

Alexandre Gonçalves, an expert in artificial intelligence and communication at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, highlighted to WW that the encyclical directly addresses two popular ideologies in Silicon Valley.

"In one of the chapters of the encyclical, he specifically talks about two ideologies that are very popular in Silicon Valley, which are transhumanism and posthumanism," he explained.

Alexandre explains that transhumanism argues that technology will accelerate human evolution, while post-humanism maintains that human beings will be overcome, even using the comparison that carbon, the foundation of organic life, would be replaced by silica, the basis for the manufacture of chips.

"Basically the entire encyclical is the pope saying that the human has to be at the center, that he needs to flourish more and more. Artificial intelligence, not only artificial intelligence, but all technologies, have to be at the service of the human and not the human being shaped by these technologies", summarized Gonçalves.

The influence of the Church
When asked about the pope's real ability to influence large technological corporations, Lourival Sant'Anna noted that the choice to present the encyclical in English, and not in Italian, the Vatican's official language, was a direct signal to the big tech audience.

He also highlighted the role of Christopher Olah, who helped Leo XIV, along with other scientists and technicians on the subject, to prepare this encyclical.

"Anthropic has resisted the Pentagon's advances in using means that, in Anthropic's opinion, invade the privacy of American and foreign citizens.

Anthropic also sought to inject Claude with visions based on the Declaration of Human Rights to place ethical limits on the tool", added Lourival.

Gonçalves, in turn, believes that, although the pope does not mention names directly, the document represents a criticism of the oligopoly of companies that concentrate the development of artificial intelligence models.

"He knows his power is limited. The power of the Church, in this case, is the power of ideas. But this power is not small", he stated.

He drew a parallel with Leo XIII, whose ideas he said helped fuel Christian democracy and social democracy in Europe decades later.

For Gonçalves, Leo XIV chose his name with the hope of exerting similar influence, based on the premise that economic power needs to be controlled by political power, which, in turn, must be guided by an ethical and moral vision.

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Source: CNN