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hn_throwaway_99 3 hours ago [-]
I'm curious if there has ever been an instance where people have been able to "tame" a technology to consider a broader, societal good, or if we've always just been at the whims of how any particular tech naturally concentrates or dissipates power.
For example, if you look at the boom of the middle classes in the mid 20th century, this appears to me largely a consequence of the fact that industrial technology at the time was both incredibly productive compared to what came before but it also required legions of humans to operate it. Ford didn't pay his workers more out of the goodness of his heart, but he correctly realized that it would ultimately be the most profitable to him if he could build legions of cars and had a large customer base that could afford them. In a similar vein, it looks like we may eventually (at least at some point) turn the tide on CO2 emissions, but not because anyone (at large) really sacrificed anything, or did something that was mildly painful now in the hopes for a better future, but instead because renewable and battery tech is just getting to be the economic best option.
So I guess I'm looking for some specific examples of where we've actually consciously, as a collective society, altered the course of technological progress for the greater good, because I honestly can't think of any. But this is not a rhetorical question - I'd like to be corrected if I'm wrong.
pizzaman1 3 hours ago [-]
> In a similar vein, it looks like we may eventually (at least at some point) turn the tide on CO2 emissions, but not because anyone (at large) really sacrificed anything, or did something that was mildly painful now in the hopes for a better future, but instead because renewable and battery tech is just getting to be the economic best option.
One should not forget the reason that these technologies have become so cheap is policy interventions. Especially renewables got kick-started by programs like the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) which then created demand for Chinese mass manufacturing to eventually lower prices.
dogcomplex 3 hours ago [-]
Correct. Policy can do a whole lot for building (or suppressing) early development of a technology.
Once it has already spread far and wide with clear economic pathways though? Perhaps less so.
Animats 3 hours ago [-]
Electricity. Eventually, it was everywhere, used by everybody, and a background to society. Electric utilities did not end up ruling the world.
hn_throwaway_99 3 hours ago [-]
Thanks! This answer was actually the one that I found most helpful. I feel like some of the other responses to my comment were talking about how we regulate lots of other tech, but that wasn't really my point - I understand that we regulate tech, but only when it becomes "economically convenient".
But your last sentence "Electric utilities did not end up ruling the world" really struck me. It's a great point, and TBH I don't really actually know why electric utilities didn't end up becoming more powerful. Time for me to go research the early history of electrification.
Edit: This reddit thread on AskHistorians has good info and links: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8373wv/how_f... . Again, thank you very much for your mention of electricity, because it looks like it actually was a pretty severe power struggle between electric companies and governments at large trying to regulate them, and if anything it has given me some hope that maybe "the people" will eventually win out.
Animats 1 hours ago [-]
> Time for me to go research the early history of electrification.
Yes. Electric utilities were at one time quite powerful, around 1900 or so.
Read up on Samuel Insull [1], the early history of antitrust, the Utility Company Holding Act, and the history of public utility regulation. Many countries just nationalized the electrical power industry. The US didn't, but regulated it strictly for most of a century. As is typical, this followed a financial disaster.
The electricity infrastructure where I was live was owned by the government. It's only in the last 15 years it was sold off to private interests [1]. I suspect you will find that the electricity systems in many regions are still government owned.
Should be noted that Australia, and even NSW, had quite a few different systems. Country NSW was largely done by the (local) county councils and they didn’t seek to profit by once the debt was cleared and instead wanted to give out cheap power until they had to take on more debt.
This was deeply offensive to the economists of the 80s and 90s and so they were taken over by the state government and turned into a for profit company.
It was corporatised before it was sold off. Privatisation of the NSW energy market began about 30 years ago at this point.
itchingsphynx 3 hours ago [-]
Indeed, the Industrial Revolution was the topic of a previous encyclical, which inspired this one.
RERUM NOVARUM
ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII
ON CAPITAL AND LABOR
Yes, but because electricity is mostly produced by gas turbines, and you could say oil & gas companies do rule the world. Utilities mostly take care of the distribution, and are naturally monopolic/oligopolic businesses which is why in most countries, they are regulated (or owned) by the state.
jonahx 1 hours ago [-]
Nice example.
I wonder though... it seems the tech behind electricity has no moat, broadly speaking, and so was commoditized. Whereas if one of the AI companies finds a proprietary breakthrough algorithm that won't be the case... at least until others catch up.
insane_dreamer 1 hours ago [-]
Right. And the only way to stop AI from ruling the world is to regulate it like a utility.
BigTTYGothGF 33 minutes ago [-]
> So I guess I'm looking for some specific examples of where we've actually consciously, as a collective society, altered the course of technological progress for the greater good, because I honestly can't think of any
Incandescent lightbulbs vs fluorescent? Low-flow toilets?
Paracompact 3 hours ago [-]
We have (for now) restrained ourselves from the more vicious applications of technology to war, in the form of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. Although I could see the argument being made that such has not occurred for strictly humanitarian reasons, but instead as a predictable consequence of game theory.
In less important matters, we've regulated many harmful substances that the free market would love to poison the populace with. Nicotine, trans fats, gambling, alcohol. Some regulatory interventions have been more successful than others...
rluna828 2 hours ago [-]
Many regulatory regimes ebb and flow as societies rediscover from first principles why something was banned (or not banned) by the people before them.
29 minutes ago [-]
ajmurmann 54 minutes ago [-]
The thought experiment of what would have happened if manufacturing had required much less labor to begin with night be an interesting one. We would have had fewer jobs but the equilibrium price of the products would also have been much lower. The money spent on labor didn't come from Ford alone it ultimately came from the costumers. Ford wouldn't have lowered prices out of the goodness of their hearts but because competition is real.
I expect prices of goods would have been much lower and the labor would have been used elsewhere and the comp would still have gone a comparable if not longer way because goods would have been so much cheaper.
Aeolun 27 minutes ago [-]
I think of everything we do to stop these forces more like a break. We can never stop what is going to happen, but we can make it last long enough to get the chance to adjust before it breaks something.
jedimastert 2 hours ago [-]
> I'm curious if there has ever been an instance where people have been able to "tame" a technology to consider a broader, societal good, or if we've always just been at the whims of how any particular tech naturally concentrates or dissipates power.
One example that comes to mind is cloning. It's technically fully possible to clone a human right now (as in make an embryo with one person's DNA), but it's wildly taboo.
zb 3 hours ago [-]
CFC refrigerants are the canonical example.
hn_throwaway_99 3 hours ago [-]
But I think the action regulating CFCs is kinda what I'm talking about. As a consumer in the US, I don't ever remember having to sacrifice on my refrigerator or A/C - heck, I generally remember those appliances going down a lot in price from the 80s to the early 00s.
So my argument is not that we can't regulate technologies, but that we only do so when it becomes "technologically convenient". I think the comparison of CFCs to fossil fuels also highlights this point. CFCs were used in a relatively small area of the economy, and replacing them was pretty easy, so not a lot of regulatory will was required. Contrarily, the entire world economy runs on fossil fuels, so replacing them is an enormous task, and as one example you get tons of powerful invested interests pushing back. I honestly don't remember any crazy people shouting "the ozone hole is just an elite conspiracy", but you hear that all the time with respect to global warming.
My fear with AI is that it is such a powerful tech (or is at least viewed as such) that the powers that be are scared of being surpassed by another country/company if they slow down.
The question isn't what what you're experience of the 1980's, but what would have an alternate 1980's with flagrant use of freon been like? Freon was used everywhere, it's how air-conditioning worked back then. That technology was held back because of the hole in the ozone layer above Antarctica. With a lot of money poured into researching alternatives, alternatives were found, but humanity deliberately held back use of freon for the greater good of humanity.
flir 2 hours ago [-]
Antibiotics. Some countries limit access via doctor's prescription (this has eroded somewhat with the rise of the internet), not using them as cattle feed additives, etc.
Regulated because of the common good, even though there is money to be made selling them OTC as cold remedies or whatever.
slashdave 3 hours ago [-]
Genetic manipulation of humans, both indirect and direct
2 hours ago [-]
luc_ 3 hours ago [-]
Imperfect example, but nuclear. We regulate that. Sure the US and other nuclear powers build it, and we have side effects of mutually assured destruction to keep us at bay, and other countries off the table.
Maybe this shows that there are indeed simply more variable in the calculus of how we optimize towards things as a society.
And that indeed we can feel now that certain variables, antithetical to the continued success of many people, are at risk.
Ferret7446 3 hours ago [-]
"Guns don't kill people. People kill people."
The whole idea of "taming technology" starts from a flawed premise. The problem is with people, not the technology.
hn_throwaway_99 3 hours ago [-]
"Nuclear weapons don't kill people. People kill people". So obviously we should let everyone order their own personal nuke from Amazon and let the market sort it out, or something.
Technology concentrates power. Yes, people may be the problem, but "taming technology" is obviously not a "flawed premise". There is a big difference between people having the power to bludgeon their neighbors with sticks and stones compared to blowing up entire continents with nukes.
FigurativeVoid 53 minutes ago [-]
Technology shapes behavior. To ignore that is to ignore history.
vrganj 2 hours ago [-]
People kill people using guns.
> firearms accounted for 78% of all mechanisms used in homicides between 2018 and 2025.
People also defend people using guns so I guess it shakes out
underlipton 1 hours ago [-]
>I'm curious if there has ever been an instance where people have been able to "tame" a technology to consider a broader, societal good, or if we've always just been at the whims of how any particular tech naturally concentrates or dissipates power.
Watching PBS as we speak.
asdfologist 3 hours ago [-]
Aren't there regulations on all sorts of technology? Medicine, nuclear power, etc.
redfloatplane 13 hours ago [-]
> As Pope Francis warned, we must realistically ask ourselves who holds this power today and how they use it: “It must also be recognized that nuclear energy, biotechnology, information technology, knowledge of our own DNA, and many other abilities which we have acquired… have given those with the knowledge, and especially the economic resources to use them, an impressive dominance over the whole of humanity and the entire world.” [7] In the past, it was largely up to the State to guide and direct innovation. Today, however, the main drivers of development are private, often transnational, parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments. Technological power thus takes on an unprecedented, predominantly “private” aspect, which makes it even more challenging to discern, govern and direct such power toward the common good.
I look forward to reading this in detail. As I get older (and perhaps as AI has allowed me to spend more time thinking and less time doing) I've found myself thinking more and more about what it means to live a virtuous life and about ethics and morality and so forth. I don't have any answers (and I'm not looking for them, really, just musing) but I do find it very interesting to read and learn from and about those whose job it is to think about the answer to those questions.
theletterf 13 hours ago [-]
When he quoted Tolkien, my heart stopped. This passage might provide you with a suggestion on how to live a virtuous life:
"The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” [187] The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization."
bradrn 13 hours ago [-]
I am immediately reminded of my favourite quote from the Jewish book Pirkei Avot (‘Ethics of the Fathers’):
> It is not your duty to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.
It’s my biggest frustration with so many expressing progressive beliefs. I’ve lost count of the times a progressive expresses unwillingness to address problems at a smaller, local or personal level. Instead there is a demand to fix everything forever and at once at the highest levels, or do nothing at all.
Aeolun 23 minutes ago [-]
The fact that you call them progressives hints at a more general frustration that I doubt has anything to do with the problem.
There is nothing wrong with some people working on a regional or global fix while others work on a local one. The important thing is that they’re working for it.
sevenzero 16 minutes ago [-]
Not to mention the counterpart to progressive people -> conservative people, cause so many more issues they just love to not acknowledge.
The world would likely be a better place if people of all political stripes could internalize this concept.
weitendorf 5 hours ago [-]
A formative moment for me was reading Richard Stallman's writing on the GNU website and seeing him quote [0] Rabbi Hillel [1]:
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"
This inspired me to seek out more about Rabbinic Judaism and its theology more deeply, and I found the language and analogies concerning the idea of "repairing the world" (which you referenced, but which I think at first glance aren't necessarily something most people would identify as a specific core doctrinal theme) particularly inspiring [2]. To me it's frankly beautiful and something I recommend anybody interested in metaphysics or ethics/morality looking into; it also ties into the Kabbalah. IMO this aspect of Jewish theology deserves to be more widely known because it's something all of us can learn from.
I grew up Jewish. I have lost my faith, but that quote is still fundamental to how I see my place in the world.
michaelchisari 5 hours ago [-]
I'm not Muslim (an agnostic Catholic if anything) but I love the Hadith
| If the final hour comes while one of you has a seed in his hand, if he can plant it before it takes place, let him do so.
I take it to mean it is never too late to do something good, even (or especially) something you will never benefit from.
kuerbel 12 hours ago [-]
I'm an atheist but I really like:
>Therefore man was created single in the world to teach that for anybody who destroys a single life it is counted as if he destroyed an entire world, and for anybody who preserves a single life it is counted as if he preserved an entire world.
(Directly from the Mishna in the Talmud Yerushalmi)
jimbokun 4 hours ago [-]
So maybe you didn’t lose your faith as thoroughly as you suppose.
redfloatplane 13 hours ago [-]
That is a really beautiful passage, thank you for sharing - I hadn't made it to that section yet and still haven't. I'm still reflecting on the stuff in the opening!
> If we focus only on contingencies, we risk letting the succession of emergencies dictate the direction of our path. We are living through a rapid phase of transition, a “change of era,” in which — while some are vying for the future of new technologies and others dedicate themselves to reflecting on the matter — most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely hoping for the best. For this very reason, crucial questions impose themselves on our conscience and can no longer be avoided: Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?
Animats 3 hours ago [-]
> If we focus only on contingencies, we risk letting the succession of emergencies dictate the direction of our path.
That's a maxim for leaders generally. It's quite common for CEOs to spend all their time on managing crises and not enough on trying to progress and improve the business. It's even worse for politicians.
redfloatplane 3 hours ago [-]
Yes, I found that really striking. I am still making my way through this document, but I think there's quite a high wisdom-per-sentence value. For me, there's a lot to learn from here, and I'm very grateful for it!
simonw 11 hours ago [-]
I wondered if that was the Pope's way of throwing shade at Palantir and Peter Thiel.
michaelchisari 5 hours ago [-]
Most certainly but after two thousand years the Magisterium have mastered the art of universalizing the moment. A direct call out would age poorly. A hundred years from now, nobody will remember Thiel or Palantir (inshallah) but the sentiment will still most certainly ring true.
jimbokun 4 hours ago [-]
And many will still remember Tolkien fondly.
moffers 9 hours ago [-]
I had the exact same thought, and JD Vance too.
ycitm 7 hours ago [-]
The next sentence in the quote hasn't aged so well - "What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."
zimpenfish 12 hours ago [-]
> When he quoted Tolkien, my heart stopped.
I wonder if meeting Colbert played any part in that.
wowoc 11 hours ago [-]
I doubt it, there is a much simpler explanation: virtually all English-speaking Catholics dig Tolkien.
jimbokun 4 hours ago [-]
Lewis and Tolkien hanging out at pubs in Oxford remains the apex of nerdy Christian geekery.
zimpenfish 3 hours ago [-]
I had a look and yeah, Popes quoting Tolkien does seem to be a thing, at least in the last couple of decades.
girvo 2 hours ago [-]
It’s a whole thing. The priest at my high school was way into Tolkien and, more interestingly to me as a teenager: the Wolfenstein series of games!
Aeolun 20 minutes ago [-]
The priest at your high school? This is a set of words I’ve never heard in the same sentence. Where was this? If you don’t mind me asking.
lordgrenville 12 hours ago [-]
"But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."
svieira 11 hours ago [-]
> Certainly, the decisive turning points in world history are substantially co-determined by souls whom no history book ever mentions. And we will only find out about those souls to whom we owe the decisive turning points in our personal lives on the day when all that is hidden is revealed.
Edith Stine
oulipo2 12 hours ago [-]
Sure. And this is what everyday people do. And this is why CEOs and billionaires refuse to do (doing their fair share), and freeride on the people's work and dedication
amelius 2 hours ago [-]
The pope can say a lot of things, but not everybody on this planet is Christian.
So even if we restrict the power of AI, others may not. And this might turn out to be a mistake.
I just hope this is taken into account.
1 hours ago [-]
cgio 1 hours ago [-]
This has weird “look what you made me do” undernotes. A Christian can live by their values without forcing them on others. As anyone can from any religion or not religious at all.
amelius 27 minutes ago [-]
Sure, but it is very easy to say when you are currently not in the trenches.
It has undernotes of being disconnected from reality so to speak.
LastTrain 4 hours ago [-]
> (and perhaps as AI has allowed me to spend more time thinking and less time doing)
This was an almost sickening sentence to read on so many levels.
jmyeet 3 hours ago [-]
There are a frightening number of people in the world who simply don't care about what happens to people they don't know or they simply think they're going to be at the top of the food chain one day so they think they will benefit from the current system. This is captured in the quote where most Americans see themselves as "temporarily embarrassed millionaires", attributed (possibly falsely) to Steinbeck.
It's been interesting watching the various approvals for AI data centers and, as far as I know, zero communities have wanted them. I'll be happily proven wrong on this. It is at least the vast majority. Yet their elected representatives simply do not care. Sometimes there are votes in the dark of night, sometimes the police are used violently against any dissent, sometimes anyone protesting these are called violent (even terrorists) and so on.
It goes so beyond unpopularity though. The tax breaks given will be paid by everybody else, as will the extra electrical infrastructure, while the data centers get preferential electricity rates.
What's really depressing is that not only do the representatives not care, there is obviously no fear of repercussions. Will they get voted out of office? Probably not. But even if they do, i guarantee you they'll find themselves in some nameless six-figure job in the industry for their service afterwards. Their children will get these same "jobs". It is so nakedly corrupt and nobody cares.
This simply can't continue while everything becomes increasingly unaffordable, ironically much of that driven by AI (eg RealPage driving up rent prices or the meat-packing collusion driving up beef prices). I firmly believe we're rapidly bouldering towards complete societal breakdown.
All this while we'll likely mint our first trillionaire in our lifetimes. And that means a literal billionaire will be closer to being homeless than being the richest person on Earth.
It's particularly funny to me that the US administration has gotten into beef with the Pope for being too "woke". Honestly, I had my doubts when a Chicago man became Pope but he seems to be a rare voice for compassion in this world thus far.
We honestly need to look no further than the Global South to see how this will play out. Many in the West just don't realize how horrific and predatory colonialism is and that's not a historic artifact. It continues to this day.
arcanemachiner 2 hours ago [-]
> All this while we'll likely mint our first trillionaire in our lifetimes. And that means a literal billionaire will be closer to being homeless than being the richest person on Earth.
Elon Musk is currently worth ~800 billion dollars. This could happen in a much shorter timeframe.
Curosinono 6 hours ago [-]
Do not take philosophy from a religious leader as a gospel.
Every single religion is not free.
If you can't even accept the basic truth that we do not know, you are fundamentally biased.
I was a Nihilist when i was 16. This alone took years to get to that point and accept that truth. It took and still takes time after this to really pinpoint something tanguable.
But still the first step is to accept the nothing and the unkown.
The next step is to see evolutionary traits. Understanding why things which are are.
qsort 12 hours ago [-]
I have only skimmed it, will definitely read carefully as soon as I have time. I will say, as an atheist, that regarding technology the Vatican has some of the best takes of any institution/government I have ever seen.
cbm-vic-20 10 hours ago [-]
Indeed. This paragraph shows something that most people really don't understand about AI.
> 98. It is appropriate to preface this discussion with two considerations. First, any statement regarding AI risks becoming quickly outdated, given the remarkable pace at which these systems are developing. Second, all of us, including those who design them, possess only a limited understanding of their actual functioning. Indeed, current AI systems are more “cultivated” than “built,” for developers do not directly design every detail, but instead create a framework within which the intelligence “grows.” As a result, fundamental scientific aspects — such as the internal representations and computational processes of these systems — remain, at present, unknown. There thus emerges an urgent need for a twofold commitment: on the one hand, a deepening of scientific research; on the other, the exercise of moral and spiritual discernment.
andrepd 1 hours ago [-]
> the exercise of moral and spiritual discernment
The likes of Sam Altman and Peter Thiel have openly stated they view humans as largely disposable. I don't think we can expect much humanism from them.
jfengel 12 hours ago [-]
Much of Western thought traces back to serious work by Church theologians. Even atheists are strongly influenced by the patterns they set down. The Catholic Church, for all its many faults, retains a serious intellectual tradition.
(In fact I think atheists should make more effort to learn about the vast diversity of other faiths. It's very narrow to be atheist only about the Abrahamic deity. You end up incorporating a lot of Christian thought without realizing because it's so deeply ingrained that it seems like the only option.)
renox 11 hours ago [-]
> In fact I think atheists should make more effort to learn about the vast diversity of other faiths. It's very narrow to be atheist only about the Abrahamic deity.
Your sentence doesn't really make sense, and there is a lot of deities..
> You end up incorporating a lot of Christian thought without realizing because it's so deeply ingrained that it seems like the only option.
Depends on the country, some Northen european countries have a very high proportion of atheists, so it happens probably less there.
jfengel 11 hours ago [-]
There are a lot of deities, and they are far more diverse than you would expect if you're not exposed to them. Even the more atheist countries still seem Christian to Hindus, Confucians, animists, and thousands of other more obscure religions.
5 hours ago [-]
qsort 12 hours ago [-]
> Much of Western thought traces back to serious work by Church theologians.
The problem I have with this is that it's structurally a motte-and-bailey claim. If I have to take it literally, then it's obviously true and it's simply unserious to deny it: the Church does have a pervasive influence on Western civilization. The way it's often rhetorically used, however, is in opposition and to the exclusion of other strands of thought that are equally foundational: the renaissance, the enlightenment, the revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, the scientific enterprise, in a smaller but still real way classical antiquity. To the extent it can be said to exist, Western civilization is a patchwork. It is beautiful and I very much like it, but I don't think any one patch gets to have all the credit.
> In fact I think atheists should make more effort to learn about the vast diversity of other faiths
A better version of myself for sure would make that effort. The problem, of course, is that other faiths are just as deep and complicated as "our own", and it would take a lot of time and effort to do so with any level of seriousness.
ivm 5 hours ago [-]
The events you mention still took place within the Abrahamic framework of thought. Ideas like a linear timeline progressing from A to B (rather than a cyclical one) or utopian political projects bringing final justice to society are Abrahamic in nature.
So I agree with the grandparent comment: unless one takes the time to study and truly understand other belief systems, it's hard to see how Western "secular" schools of thought remain Christian because we're submerged in them since childhood.
andrepd 1 hours ago [-]
> The events you mention still took place within the Abrahamic framework of thought. Ideas like a linear timeline progressing from A to B (rather than a cyclical one) or utopian political projects bringing final justice to society are Abrahamic in nature.
This is laughable... Someone needs to read more about classical antiquity! :) Certainly not something banal as "utopian political projects", which is extremely well attested in e.g. Greek philosophy, and indeed relatively absent from Christianity (its message being essentially escathological in nature, especially in its first few centuries)!
Planktonne 8 hours ago [-]
> The way it's often rhetorically used, however, is in opposition and to the exclusion of other strands of thought
I don't think this is actually true; I think your own bias is colouring the conversation here.
qsort 8 hours ago [-]
I have almost never seen someone start a sentence with "Christian roots" or "Judeo-Christian values" and not end it with a tirade that uses religion as the fig leaf to justify and authorize their reactionary politics.
The minimalist claim that the West is massively influenced by the Church is true to the point of banality, the maximalist claims those ideas are usually deployed to champion simply do not follow.
If only there were a name for this rhetorical fallacy...
hackingonempty 7 hours ago [-]
> Much of Western thought traces back to serious work by Church theologians
Western thought traces back to the Greeks. Aquinas refers to Aristotle as "The Philosopher." Aristotle died over 300 years before Jesus was born.
> The Catholic Church, for all its many faults, retains a serious intellectual tradition.
On Aquinas, the Church Doctor, Bertrand Russell had the following to say:
"Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times."
dgellow 10 hours ago [-]
I don’t think you understand atheism? As an atheist I do not believe in any form of deity or divine authority. I do not reject a specific religion, I do not actually believe there is any form of divine order to our world. I can look at faiths as the social constructs they are, and find interest in concepts humans have been developing and created cults around but there won’t ever be a religion/deity I will look at and somehow start to believe. And religious doctrines do not come for free, they are fundamentally built on top of a belief in a divine truth. My moral values may overlap with some religious people at a given time but we are using incompatible models to analyze our world
__s 9 hours ago [-]
Also atheist here. Reading old+new testament was informative like reading history: whatever is true or not in those passages, have had profound impact throughout history
Their point is that despite your subscription to reason, without exposure to other cultural norms, you may be blind to what Christian values you live by. Becoming aware of them can help self evaluation of your ethical framework
cryptoegorophy 39 minutes ago [-]
As an atheist, how do you read a bible without critical thinking? I’ve tried and I just have a really hard time with all the double meanings and things not making any sense. What am I missing?
jfengel 9 hours ago [-]
Thank you. Yes, exactly.
For that matter, reading the Christian scriptures through a historical lens reveals a very different kind of thought than the modern version of Christianity and Judaism. It takes a huge amount of effort to read these documents in context; just reading them in the original languages is hard enough. But the past is a very foreign country and they see things very differently there.
dgellow 9 hours ago [-]
To clarify, I didn’t claim I subscribe to reason. I believe that I behave as if I would however I don’t think humans are too rational. There is just nothing divine into the world. The Old and new Testaments have very little I personally find insightful. Write their content in contemporary language and they are a collections of (extremely dry) folk stories. Which is fine, but I wouldn’t rely on it for anything other than a curiosity, the same way I wouldn’t rely on Grimm’s collection of fairy tales. IMHO the Quran is more interesting historically speaking given that we have a better understanding of the cultural context it was written in and its authorship. The church institutions are also themselves interesting for their cultural impact and political structures, but the religion and faith has no monopoly over moral values
Planktonne 8 hours ago [-]
Grimm's Fairy Tales also have had an important impact on your culture.
No one is asking you to believe in anything, but it's self-limiting to refuse to engage with works of historical/cultural importance.
dgellow 7 hours ago [-]
You’re projecting or misinterpreting my comments. I didn’t say anything regarding the content I engage with.
However I reject the idea that engaging with religious texts is insightful and something to promote
andrepd 1 hours ago [-]
Indeed! Reading the Bible attentively has only made me even more of an atheist :)
andrepd 1 hours ago [-]
> Much of Western thought traces back to serious work by Church theologians
Ehh. The vast majority of "Western" thought of the past >2000 years, including that of the Church itself, come from Greek philosophy and thought.
1 hours ago [-]
huhkerrf 12 hours ago [-]
I remember when Pope Benedict was mocked because he warned about the dangers of social media (this is when everyone thought Twitter was going to lead to more Arab Springs), but looking back, he was completely right:
> the one-sidedness of the interaction, the tendency to communicate only some parts of one’s interior world, the risk of constructing a false image of oneself, which can become a form of self-indulgence
turing_complete 11 hours ago [-]
True, the note "Antiqua et Nova" from last year showed a deep understanding of AI that many secular commentators lack, and developed an interesting concept of integrated intelligence as opposed to the functional, reductivist view of intelligence that is prevalent in the AI community
tete 9 hours ago [-]
Given that technology, science, and the archival thereof stems from cloisters, the Vatican, etc. I guess they had a long history of figuring out what stance to take on technology.
Let's not forget that Galileo Galilei studied at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, that Mendel (Mendel's Laws) did made his discoveries in a cloister and books, translations and libraries on pretty much everything for a really long time was pretty much only done within religious institutions. And for the longest stretch those were Christian Catholicism and Islam.
The Vatican Observatory also is an important source of high quality papers.
I mean one of the primary things Christians and Muslims based they believes on are books. So many got in touch with it. And that's not even touching the whole architecture, arts, philosophy department yet.
The fact that in thousands of years of history there have also been a couple of really dumb people in charge that were paranoid or wanted to distract from their failures and got mad or scared when someone challenged their world views isn't exactly surprising. Looks like no matter how good a large enough group of people gets their will always be idiots messing things up.
I guess when you look back as much as the people in Vatican appear to do I guess you see patterns. Technology and science (race theory, chemical castration, ...) or simply "progress" are often used to justify acts of evilness. Just like religion, democracy, freedom and what not.
That said of course there's still die hard anti-science creationists. But talking to a very religious person once it seems that there is simply also a lot of philosophy around science. Eg. there was a big bang (fun fact, a theory started by a religious person) and the universe simply didn't exist for an infinite time there must have been some cause for it. And unless that cause is some kind of infinite cycle it also must have started somehow and even though I do not share that believe there is a notion of a deliberate start in there. That won't make me a religious person, but it won't make them an atheist either. So I guess that's fair enough.
What I wanna say with that is that the science vs religion trope is as true or false as democrats/republicans or other groups of people are opposed to science. They all are when they are confronted with something they don't like. I think the HN comments section is the best proof for that. ;)
Also atheist here. Just not the kind that doesn't even know the difference between knowledge and beliefs.
dyauspitr 1 hours ago [-]
The Vatican as a religious institution has the best takes on most things. I only really disagree with them on their view on abortion and frankly I can see where they are coming from on that one. It’s just that I think that not allowing abortion leads to having a lot of unwanted kids that suffer a lot through their lives.
quietsegfault 5 hours ago [-]
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sethbannon 12 hours ago [-]
The overarching message is that builders should deeply consider the impact of what they're building on civilization.
"Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it."
Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" because "every design choice reflects a vision of humanity."
The questions shouldn't just be 'can we build it?' or 'will people want this?'
We need to also ask 'should we build it?' and 'will this make humanity better?'
The encyclical calls on us to “join forces in building up the common good.”
This is a message we need right now.
ThrowawayR2 9 hours ago [-]
Not new for software and hardware industry though, practitioners have just chosen to ignore it. From the Association for Computing Machinery, which encompasses all forms of software development, the very first principle is the public good:
"Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest. In particular, software engineers shall, as appropriate:
1.01. Accept full responsibility for their own work.
1.02. Moderate the interests of the software engineer, the employer, the client and the users with the public good.
1.03. Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment. The ultimate effect of the work should be to the public good. ..."
From the IEEE, which also encompasses computer engineering, their first principle and its first few sub-items are:
"To uphold the highest standards of integrity, responsible behavior, and ethical conduct in professional activities.
1. to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, to strive to comply with ethical design and sustainable development practices, to protect the privacy of others, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment;
2. to improve the understanding by individuals and society of the capabilities and societal implications of conventional and emerging technologies, including intelligent systems; ..."
hnthrow0287345 7 hours ago [-]
This would be more meaningful if, perhaps, we had to swear an oath to it before being able to practice. And practitioners would be treated more seriously if everyone knew we swore that oath. And the legal utility as accountability and defense would also be useful.
Of course people are going to ignore it if there's no force behind it.
opsnooperfax 7 hours ago [-]
Professional liability and licensure would create assurances with some teeth, but there are some major drawbacks.
gymbeaux 6 hours ago [-]
Enlighten us to these drawbacks. On the surface I am inclined to say the pros would outweigh the cons. Compared to other professions, software engineering seems to struggle the most with H-1B/Green Card abuse and interview processes. Job interviews are absurdly different (easier) for doctors, lawyers, et al. than for software engineers, and that I believe is because of the licensure. I do think licensure adds overhead to an industry (e.g., malpractice insurance, governing bodies, license management) and that probably discourages anyone with real power (like FAANG) to pursue it and try to set it as an industry-wide standard. Most software engineers in the U.S. are making around $130-140k, but lawyers and medical doctors usually make significantly more (perhaps because of the licensure overhead - I'm not sure if malpractice insurance is included in a medical doctor's salary- I would imagine it's not and is taken out of each paycheck like any other industry's health insurance benefits).
ThrowawayR2 4 hours ago [-]
> "Job interviews are absurdly different (easier) for doctors, ..."
The job interview for doctors is a 5-7 year residency under tight supervision of an attending physician: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residency_(medicine) . People do flunk or drop out as well, meaning they can never become a physician. There's nothing easier about that.
lukan 7 hours ago [-]
It seems to work somewhat with medical doctors and the Hippocratic Oath.
But I would argue it is way easier there.
Building software has way more grey areas.
trolleski 7 hours ago [-]
I don't think there are more grey areas in software engineering than in medicine. The difference is the feedback loop of the outcome - if you design a dopamine slot machine you will ruin the generation and that's a long arc.
lukan 7 hours ago [-]
And that makes it hard. I am open for banning all comercial advertisement - but general society is largely fine with it. So is someone designing new targeting algorithm for ads breaking his potential oath of doing good for society?
What grey areas are there for doctors?
brcmthrowaway 6 hours ago [-]
Canadians do
jimbokun 4 hours ago [-]
We need to find an organization to which software engineers can report corporations abusing these principles, that can then take legal action or at least disclose those practices to the general public.
mentalgear 7 hours ago [-]
I think not just (computer) scientists but the general population thinks to serve the common good makes sense, not last because we understand it's eventually for our own good.
It is however just that very small minority of the population with highly psychopathic/narcissistic traits - those that, in pre-historic times, would have been kicked out swiftly of hunter & gatherer / small village communities because of their parasitic nature - that in bigger civilisations seem to thrive due to abstraction (distance/time of the effect of their actions) and obfuscation (PR) and instead unfortunately seem to rise to the top (CEOs, presidents, 'thought leaders' ...) to steer the world's overall economy and mindset - and steer it in the abyss.
Sometimes I think humanity was just not made to scale, and this aspect is one very large aspect of it.
jimbokun 4 hours ago [-]
You are referencing prehistoric times because there is no evidence to confirm or refute your claims.
Most likely the same kind of Machiavellian political maneuvering was effective in those groups as well.
MichaelZuo 7 hours ago [-]
Noble ideals can be upheld, relatively consistently… only if violators are visibly punished. And to a degree roughly commensurate with the violation.
The critical point is that the violators have to be punished more consistently then the demanded consistency of the ideals.
vermilingua 10 hours ago [-]
Not only builders, the greatest takeaway for me is that everyone has a responsibility in shaping the discourse, culture, and usage of transformative technology. This "the builders will do the right thing" mentality is even (in my interpretation) explicitly called out in several places:
> It is the pursuit of the common good that gives life to a people, understood not as a mere collection of individuals, but as a living reality in which people learn to recognize that they themselves are interconnected and jointly responsible for the res publica. In this sense, every person contributes to the building up of one’s people...
> When it comes to decisions regarding economic flows and digital platforms, as well as the governance of data and algorithms, we cannot allow a handful of actors to dictate these processes on their own; instead, we must build forms of cooperation that respect the various levels of the global community and make them jointly responsible for the common good.
> We cannot be satisfied with merely calling for the moralization of machines — the so-called “alignment” of AI with human values — without also having the courage to insist on a further condition: the possibility of openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice.... What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating, and of protecting the opportunities for communities still to be able to participate and ask questions.
ako 7 hours ago [-]
Agreed, I think the builders are the wrong people to ask for this self reflection. Anything can be used for good and bad. A knife can be used to prepare food, or to stab someone. A drone can be used to attack a country, or to defend a country. A wooden beam can be used to build a house, or to build a cross to crucify someone. Same way AI can be used for good and bad. And it’s up to the person using the tool to act moral. Unfortunately this world is full of people that consider power and money more important than morals. For me, religion falls in this bucket, lots of “do as I say, not do as I do”. And on top of this, there’s very little agreement on what is good, and what is bad. Morals are quite fuzzy, and flexible.
jimbokun 4 hours ago [-]
You are welcome to your opinion, but human civilization was even more biased towards instrumentality before the broad spread of Christianity.
I am well aware of the abuses and scandals of Christian churches throughout history. I am also aware that the Romans and other civilizations pre-dating Christianity had even less regard for the poor and powerless.
hammock 5 hours ago [-]
Yes. I like WEF and Klaus Schwab’s stakeholder capitalism model here. We need governments to force companies to answer not just to shareholders but to employees and communities, and we need one world government to force individual governments to do that.
devilbunny 8 hours ago [-]
The Roman Catholic Church has a lot of things wrong with it, now and in the past, but it’s a human institution older than almost any other, and it’s composed of a lot of very intelligent people. Agree or disagree with them, but a papal encyclical is almost always worth reading and understanding.
ycombinete 8 hours ago [-]
Indeed. And because of it’s age and outlook its view is very far back and very far forward.
The casual reference to a 135 year old encyclical that dealt with the seismic shift of industrialisation took me quite aback for a number of reasons.
michaelsbradley 7 hours ago [-]
There are so many encyclicals, apostolic letters, etc. One could spend years reading just a fraction of them, depending on reading and comprehension speed, of course, which varies by person.
Two I recommend, from the last 40 years:
Veritatis splendor, John Paul II, 1993
Argues that Christian freedom is fulfilled, not limited, by objective moral truth: some acts are intrinsically evil regardless of intention or circumstance, conscience must be formed by divine law rather than self-authorization, and the Church must faithfully teach this moral truth as the path to authentic human flourishing in Christ.
Argues that faith and reason are complementary paths to truth: reason needs faith to avoid skepticism, relativism, and reductionism, while faith needs reason to express, defend, and deepen its understanding of divine revelation and the human search for meaning.
Note that, as anybody, the Catholic Church may have is bias.
For example. Their dualist view of the world makes them see AI as something very different from human intelligence. So, without having read it, the church may negate that it could be at human level. A few years ago that would negate that computers could be creative because they do not have a soul.
Anyway, kudos for focussing on the important issues and the impact on human.(And less on sex)
logicchains 7 hours ago [-]
The Roman Catholic Church is an institution that went to war to try to prevent people from being able to read the bible in their own languages, that executed dissenters who challenged the doctrine on which it based its power, from scientists to Protestants. If it had never lost power in western Europe, it's quite possible the enlightenment and industrial revolution would never have happened, and humanity would still be living in the dark ages.
lobocinza 6 hours ago [-]
It's also quite possible that the enlightenment and industrial revolution would've happened anyways, that the world wars would never have happened, that humanity would be living in a fairer society: without the doom and gloom of climate changes and nuclear war; without the blurring of truth that promote hate narratives and nihilism; without the reduction of man to it's economical value. But neither of us have crystall balls.
What you ignore is that the Church historically was a patron of Arts and Science, a preserver of history, works, documents and even pagan mythology. How many scientists has the Roman Church executed? One, Giordano Bruno, and it was not even due to his scientific views but rather his heretical views. Just as comparison, how many scientists has the Chinese Cultural Revolution executed?
richk449 1 hours ago [-]
It is also possible that the enlightenment only happened because of protestant reformation, which only happened because of the power and abuses of the Catholic Church. So in a way, we have the Catholic Church to thank for modern society.
The reformation was highly religious of course, but it was also about reading original sources, devolving power from a central authority, and allowing individuals to discover the truth.
Sometimes I think that the catholic church is like Leto II in Dune - ruling people so that they will rebel in a way that there can never again be a central power structure.
CarVac 7 hours ago [-]
It's an organization that is effective as an opposition party of sorts.
7 hours ago [-]
dingnuts 7 hours ago [-]
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ctoth 8 hours ago [-]
The strange part is how moral responsibility somehow always lands on the builders... the people with the least leverage... while the funders get to ask the ethical questions. Weird!
ThrowawayR2 8 hours ago [-]
No, we don't have to take the funders' money; that's what having professional standards means. Nobody would excuse a doctor performing unsafe procedures because they "needed the money". Engineers were jailed for the Volkswagen emissions tampering scandal and nobody would excuse them for needing to take funders' money.
erikerikson 8 hours ago [-]
I agree that holding only the concrete implementers responsible would be inappropriate. However, I don't believe that distinction is made. One says "I am building a house" even if they are completely contracting the job out. I'd suggest the greatest responsibility lays with the funders and that the Pope would agree.
arter45 4 hours ago [-]
It lands on both. "It was just a job" or "I was just following orders" doesn't excuse you from doing unethical stuff.
jeremyjh 7 hours ago [-]
The funders are among the principal builders in this context. This is addressing the people who have a say in what is built, and how it is built. Much of that belongs to the executive and ownership class, but not all of it.
jimbokun 3 hours ago [-]
I’m only through the introduction but this encyclical makes clear everyone bears some responsibility to act, including but not limited to the builders.
hodgesrm 7 hours ago [-]
Mark Zuckerberg is a builder in the context of the encyclical.
lishzen 3 hours ago [-]
Users are responsible, too
Xenoamorphous 12 hours ago [-]
> Scientists are actually preoccupied with accomplishment. So they are focused on whether they can do something. They never stop to ask if they should do something.
From Crichton's book Jurassic Park, which like most of his books is about the perils of technological advancements.
They used the quote in the movie, slightly tweaked.
throw4847285 12 hours ago [-]
I would replace the word scientists with engineers in that quote. People often conflate the two, but in my experience, scientists tend to be more cautious and there are built in checks and balances in the process (however flawed).
Engineers/technologists tend to have no such guardrails, and are also usually embedded into entirely profit motivated environments, whatever their own values might be.
velcrovan 10 hours ago [-]
This sounds like you don’t have much exposure to actual professional engineering disciplines. I’m sure civil, electrical, structural and mechanical PEs would be quite surprised to hear there are no guardrails on their professions.
mulr00ney 10 hours ago [-]
Engineers versus "engineers".
I have fond memories of a boss who was an actual, licensed engineer while the rest of us were very much normal software devs. Boss was pretty chill except when someone someone suggested we should be called "engineers" rather than "developers", at which point they said "if you guys were building bridges, people would be dead." (I don't think all software needs to be built to rigorous engineering standards but man... I think about that line a lot.)
rectang 7 hours ago [-]
I prefer the term "software developer" and that's what I use when I don't need the prestige of the term "software engineer". It's disadvantageous for organizations to do that with actual job titles, though.
Absent US government intervention to codify the term "engineer", probably the only way out of the "engineer" trap is through further title inflation, where the developers all become "vice presidents". :)
jimbokun 3 hours ago [-]
People meeting the definition of Software Engineer while having that title may be rare, but we certainly need more of them.
mulr00ney 6 hours ago [-]
Yeah, it's 100% the better term. We've got rules against using engineer here in Canada though several companies I've worked for have called me an engineer. Apparently Professional Engineers Ontario sometimes goes after people for calling themselves engineers but I've never heard of it actually happening, and I don't know that they have any real teeth given that the places I worked that called me an engineer were Canadian-owned. (In fact, the only place where they checked if I could use the title was the one multi-national. Go figure.)
bombcar 10 hours ago [-]
In my experience “engineers” and builders are often quite “conservative” and really don’t like pushing the envelope, and they often only do it under protest.
The most famous example may be the perpetual war between architects and engineers/builders.
throw4847285 10 hours ago [-]
I actually originally wrote "technologists" but thought that the word sounded kind of odd. Now I realize it better captures what I was trying to convey.
fuzzfactor 9 hours ago [-]
Researchers need to go wild and sometimes far off-the-rails to increase the odds of coming up with something that is both new, and potentially popular enough, if they want the option to attract marketers who can only thrive on mass-consumption.
With luck, one out of 100 inventions will show promise on those points.
There's always a lifetime wake where the overwhelming vast majority of the work remains undeployed no matter what. The more undeployed milestones and inventions that some scientists have under their belt, the more accomplished they often are whether anybody knows it or not.
OTOH, equally active engineers more often need to have most of their time engaged in actual deployment of some kind or another, otherwise not as much progress will be able to reach as many people that could benefit. So many times nothing would be accomplished without a long-term focused engineering effort once an objective has been identified. But it can be hard to stop a train when it's already coming off the drawing board at full steam.
It does seem a lot more likely for a judicious researcher to cast off some major progress in what could very well turn out to be an unsavory development, such as likely misuse, even if it could be marketed as the most popular thing they have so far. Just add it to the pile of other things that best remain undeployed. There's plenty more where that came from, and the best is yet to come.
Perhaps popularity alone is not always the best measure of progress.
tom2026hn 8 hours ago [-]
I worry that companies like Anthropic, which are moving toward RSI, may prioritize speed over the timely identification of irreversible risks.
jimbokun 3 hours ago [-]
We need to force the executives and engineers working at Anthropic and other AI companies to read this encyclical and pass an exam demonstrating that they read it.
sdenton4 7 hours ago [-]
Every time I prioritize speed over risks, I, too, end up with repetitive strain injuries.
dbalatero 7 hours ago [-]
Did you mean AGI? I'd think whatever else they are doing, LLMs are reducing RSI...
FarmerPotato 17 minutes ago [-]
Yup. "I wonder how long the codebot will be combobulating over that prompt?" I'll just rest my hands for a sec..."
ascorbic 4 hours ago [-]
Recursive self-improvement
moogly 6 hours ago [-]
Maybe. I am not convinced I type fewer keystrokes being a Markdown Monkey compared to writing code largely via autocomplete. Fewer Tab keystrokes, for sure.
dbalatero 1 hours ago [-]
I was mostly making a joke.
redsocksfan45 9 hours ago [-]
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doug_durham 9 hours ago [-]
Yes but... No one living today knows what direction AI technology will take humanity. If we have an algorithm breakthrough then we may avoid building new data centers. If the abilities of the technology plateau then there might not be large impacts on employment. Builders need to focus on the impact of their next steps. Don't put polluting natural gas generators in neighborhoods today. Don't make unemploying folks the goal of your tool, today. Don't make decisions that harm people and the environment today.
> The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes
Sure hope your rosy inflection point happens real soon.
Otherwise, the direction this is taking us is pretty obvious.
FabHK 8 hours ago [-]
9 GW is massive. About half a percent of world electricity consumption, half of what stupid Bitcoin burns.
moron4hire 9 hours ago [-]
As I keep telling my project owner at work, "the AI will get better" is not a plan.
Xmd5a 11 hours ago [-]
> Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility"
> This is a message we need right now.
Feels good man. The solution found by the private parties driving technological change is sainthood. Or aiming for it. At least, better than you. They have the vision of what's good for the herd, but the more time I spend as a sheep, the more it seems the "herd" is just a way to recycle the story of their own exceptionalism stripped of any mark of individuality. A simple visit to fiftyyears.com will greet you with "We back the indispensable". I guess it's the same "we".
GoToRO 9 hours ago [-]
hard disagree. No matter what gets built, it will be used for bad things if the society is not properly constructed. We need to fix our government and then you can build anything you want. I don't like putting the blame on the builders, building is already difficult as it is. Also you can't built something in isolation, word will get out anyway. That's why this speech is either naive or he just wanted to tick a todo list: say something about AI.
jamesinmn 9 hours ago [-]
> I don’t like putting blame on the builders
Why does it have to be either/or?
From a high-level view, there are powerful cultural/political forces that nudge us towards building harmful, wasteful things without us being aware of said forces. The government, corporate greed, and billion-dollar marketing budgets are to blame.
But on the ground, from an in-the-trenches perspective, I think an engineer at Meta, for example, shares in some level of blame, too. Mainly because there is plenty of evidence showing how much harm Meta products have brought upon society. Yet Meta couldn’t be built without engineers opting in to work there in exchange for $300k salaries.
We desperately need moral clarity and courage at both the policy-level and the individual level.
Levitz 8 hours ago [-]
It is simply not feasible.
It's not either/or in strict terms, it absolutely is either/or in practical terms. When the conscientious engineer chooses not to take the 300k job, the next one in line does. If enough choose not to, it just became a 400k job.
Can you change society in such a way that nobody would take such jobs? In strict terms, sure, in practical terms it probably entails enormous costs, both economical and societal. And then you still have other countries.
There's an entire legal code filled with things on which we can't rely on the morals of the people. We can't stop theft, rape and murder, what makes you think that stopping engineers is any more feasible?
The best thing builders can do is use their knowledge and authority to pressure the other side.
bluesign 8 hours ago [-]
Because there will always be bad actors. You cannot design a system on all actors' full cooperation.
Ofc they share the blame, but it is not solving the problem.
You can say for example: loan sharks are bad for society; so government gives anyone 0 percent credit. You just removed one problem, created another.
Just and sustaining system with individual morality is destined to fail. Only option is social regulation. Which is at government level.
xandrius 9 hours ago [-]
I get where you are coming from but this is the common "reduction to politics" that anyone who doesn't want to address a problem uses: think of any societal or human problem and you can have your comment with different nouns.
Sure, IF we could just go and fix our governments in some magical way then the problem would disappear. That goes from hunger, climate change, videogame addiction and AI. The problem is that what you value in life in different than what others do, so we now have a system in which sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don't.
But back to the topic, I do think that how OpenAI and Anthropic handled the government and them asking to drop guardrails is something a company can actually and actively do without having to reinvent the universe.
jjk166 7 hours ago [-]
> We need to fix our government and then you can build anything you want.
Are we all going to stop building things until the government is fixed and all political problems are resolved? No? Then we must think about how we should build in a world with imperfect government.
peanut-walrus 4 hours ago [-]
It's a feedback loop between governance, social structures and individuals. But out of those, only individuals are the ones with free will who are able to "break" the loop and direct society along a different path. It's not just building "big things" that changes us, it's every small individual decision about what you choose to spend your labor on. No revolution would succeed without people willing to rebel and no dictator could dictate without people willing to follow them.
jobu1342 7 hours ago [-]
Hard disagree to your disagree. Every organization is made up of people and reflects the character of its members. So with the nation itself. If people won't take responsibility for their own actions, neither will the government. I.e. self-government isn't the answer to fixing a broken people. Transformation begins within one's self, not in imposing one's will on another. First everyone much look to themselves, then the government, organizations, and projects will fix itself.
Everyone likes to talk about "fixing the government". It feels nice to understand the problem with something else that is broken. The problem is that replacing the people in charge is a no-op if you don't have a pool of good people to choose from and the will to choose them.
Npovview 7 hours ago [-]
"That which can be destroyed by the truth should be." - P.C. Hodgell, from her novel Seeker's Mask (1994)
"That which can be automated by the AI should be."
jimbokun 3 hours ago [-]
Oh, just “fix government”?
Glad there’s a simple, easy to implement solution to solve this problem! One that hasn’t been considered or tried before!
bluefirebrand 8 hours ago [-]
> I don't like putting the blame on the builders
Like it or not if you knowingly build stuff that is used for evil purposes you are complicit
You can't build an orphan mulching machine and get away with just a shrug. "I don't really agree with mulching orphans but someone else paid me to build that. If I didn't build it someone else would have" just does not absolve you of your involvement in mulching orphans
GoToRO 3 hours ago [-]
In reality things are much more mundane. You build a custom blog framework, it can be used for good or bad. You build a better app framework, it can be used for good or bad. There's nothing you can build that will not be used by bad people. Canned food and radar came from war. Depending on which side you were, it was used to do good or to do bad. Technology is just that, technology. People are still under the marketing spell of US companies that invited engineers to "change the world". People assumed in a good way. In reality you just change the world, as the other people see fit.
pheaded_while9 7 hours ago [-]
Consciousness is the causal factor, not government. You are putting the cart before the horse to insist on any political solution.
hideout_berlin 6 hours ago [-]
why not government
dogcomplex 3 hours ago [-]
True. World governments committing genocide and building concentration camps yet it's the computer scientist who's supposed to worry about ethics here because they're the ones who are merely the first to inevitably mix two paper's methodologies together?
All of this is empty puffery til the US and Israel are condemned. Go after the Big Tech billionaires backing those monsters, sure, but no builder needs to be more concerned about ethics than the very institutions designed to concentrate human decision making. Fix your own house first, folks. Techies - keep building, and do better than these people.
moron4hire 9 hours ago [-]
When he speaks of the builders needing to take responsibility, I think he is directing his comments at tech company leadership. The Sam Altmans of the world, not the poor slobs like us who need a job for health insurance because apparently unemployed people don't deserve to live.
salawat 8 hours ago [-]
No, he's talking to you too. The Sam Altman's can't be a threat without useful idiots to cooperate with and doing work for them. You don't get out of your own culpability because you locked on a set of golden handcuffs.
a7i3n 6 hours ago [-]
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bem94 11 hours ago [-]
I have only read a few passages (and some of the excellent quotes others have shared here), but I find the underlying message here so much more compelling than those found in the various "manifestos" which come out of Silicon Valley.
I think reading this helps me imagine a version of the future I'd actually like to live in. A version where technology is used well (rather than preaching for abstinence from technology) and where values other than "intelligence" (in whatever guise) are on an equal footing.
Even writing that makes me feel naive (and to an extent I know it is) but I think it would be inconsistent for someone who cheers for humanity's efforts to solve/chip away at "impossible" problems (like LLMs were thought to be not so long ago) to shirk from the challenge of making the world better for _everyone_.
bluesign 11 hours ago [-]
The thing is why that this feels so good future is; it is a system with no constraints. A bit like Star Trek universe in Roddenberry's imagination. This kind of utopia can only be achieved with all honest actors, but in reality systems are usually designed around bad actors.
Even with all morally good actors locally, there is no guarantees for external forces. Thinking it hypothetically, even with global coordination ( all good actors ) there is not a proven path that would lead us to better place from any starting point from past.
energy123 10 hours ago [-]
It's probably more predictive to model actors as being neither good nor bad but constrained by various collective dilemmas, such as prisoners dilemma, the security spiral, tragedy of the commons, race dynamics, collective action or first mover problems, information asymmetries, the commitment problem, among others. Those are the hardest problems to solve because they're pathologies that result from the global, largely amoral structure rather than consequences of the individual exercise of morality.
In the AI case, each firm is in an arms race, and nobody can slow down without effectively collapsing due to positive gross margins only being viable with a frontier model that attracts marginal demand. An appeal to morality might have an impact but more effective action would be to address the structure that the AI companies are situated in that causes this dynamic in the first place. In practice, thats going to be a global agreement to slow down, and global regulations.
bluesign 8 hours ago [-]
Yeah but this is a system problem; if we had this utopic system from the beginning we would not even have AI probably.
mapt 10 hours ago [-]
To get from here to Roddenberry's communism, according to Roddenberry's lore, we passed through the Eugenics Wars, the Second Civil War, and then fifty years of World War Three and the 'post-atomic horror' before coming to our senses.
datsci_est_2015 10 hours ago [-]
This sort of rationalization of evil is a core of technocratic support for Trumpism, I find, and has parallels to the evangelical prosperity gospel. Choice tenets:
- Fuck you, got mine
- If I don’t do it, someone else will
- Might makes right
- Greed is good
It’s always cloaked in a veil of realism, but it’s just the classic 14-year-old-boy-just-got-introduced-to-the-prisoners-dilemma situation. There’s nothing philosophically interesting about it.
Ironically, these are often the same people denouncing multiculturalism, yet the culture they strive for is completely morally bankrupt.
estearum 9 hours ago [-]
And it's funny because the "realism" has been proven wrong over and over and over again for millennia. People do all sorts of selfless and generous things all the time! The entire premise is trivially disprovable by just going and asking a neighbor for some help with something.
That's not to say we should be naive about greed or malice existing or being powerful motivators (especially the former), but it is obviously not true that they're the only forces at play and therefore you are "just doing the logical thing" by succumbing to them. It's just the more destructive version of the same naiveté.
datsci_est_2015 9 hours ago [-]
Seems you and I have together struck a nerve. Maybe our sentiments would have been better received in an alternate subthread, but it’s all I could think about while reading the parent / cousin comments.
I haven’t read the full Magnifica Humanitas yet, but I would be pleasantly surprised if he touched on not just dehumanization of the other, but dehumanization of the self. Expanding on your thought, succumbing to those forces under the guise of just doing the logical thing is in a way self-dehumanization - to believe you are only capable of the “logical” thing instead of the moral thing.
bluesign 8 hours ago [-]
This was not my point at all. Maybe I could explained better, but main criticism I have is: you can bundle together objectives ( which are inherently good ) and create an utopia. But those cannot always be achievable.
Everything in life in trade-offs. Simple example is speed/quality/cost. I can tell easily:
- services should be cheap
- services should be fast
- services should be high quality
Now I created an utopia. Obviously this is amazing to listener. They agree. But is it achievable?
It is not saying greed is good or might makes right. But system means you need to construct from this ideals best outcome ( which comes at some trade offs)
datsci_est_2015 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah there were probably more appropriate subthreads to have responded to. My point wasn’t quite neatly directed against yours.
hammock 5 hours ago [-]
Your idea and its (perhaps unsatisfying to you) resolution can be summed up easily by John Quincy Adams’ quote:
“Duty is ours. Results are God's”
snikeris 10 hours ago [-]
> I think reading this helps me imagine a version of the future I'd actually like to live in. A version where technology is used well (rather than preaching for abstinence from technology)
I believe the Amish figured this out over a century ago.
aleph_minus_one 10 hours ago [-]
> I believe the Amish figured this out over a century ago.
The Amish rather came to a different conclusion (which I don't want to judge on, but on which I nevertheless have a different opinion than the Amish).
46493168 8 hours ago [-]
What is that conclusion which differs from the post you replied to? The Amish are mindful about their technology adoption.
aleph_minus_one 6 hours ago [-]
> The Amish are mindful about their technology adoption.
The central idea concerning the Amish's relationship to technology is that only technology is allowed if it does not destroy their community.
My personal values are much less based on upholding a community, but rather are much more rooted in individual freedom and independence. This means that I (likely) come to very different conclusions regarding this class of problems than the Amish do:
For example, I am less opposed to various kinds of technology that Amish would likely consider as as "community-destroying".
On the other hand, I guess I am much more opposed to technology that can be used to surveil the user and/or makes the user dependent on the whims of big tech companies than I guess the Amish are (i.e. the Amish would likely consider this as a much smaller problem concerning which technology to allow vs disallow; as I wrote: by my understanding their central concern is which consequences some technology has for keeping their community together).
To give evidence for the previous point: (by my impression - I am not US-American) you will rather not find many Amish people at political rallys against surveillance laws. The people who attend such rallys typically also have strong opinions on which technology to use or not to use (just talk to such people who are very strongly opinionated :-) ), but - as I pointed out - these technology choices come from very different basic premises than those of the Amish.
snikeris 5 hours ago [-]
Yeah they probably wouldn't show up to a political rally because of this:
> Separation from Evil
> The community of Christians shall have no association with those who remain in disobedience and a spirit of rebellion against God. There can be no fellowship with the wickedness of this earthly world; therefore there can be no participation in the organizations, works, church services, meetings or civil affairs of those who live in contradiction to the commands of God (this may include Catholics and Protestants as well as other religions and pagans). All evil must be put away, including using weapons of force such as the sword and armor.
The church, the message comes from, literlay makes the world worse for so many people on the planet.
Woman have less value under the church than man. Alternative sexual views are evil.
Church and any kind of believe system hurts our society and divides us.
JackFr 8 hours ago [-]
> Church and any kind of believe system hurts our society and divides us.
Any belief system? And yet I bet you value freedom over slavery, wisdom over ignorance and compassion over brutality. That’s a belief system, despite not being a religion.
Curosinono 8 hours ago [-]
I can argue these values and we can discuss them.
If the majority says, no we want to be able to control other human beings, these people will reinact slavery. From a society point of view though we see that its not a working model anymore.
A real believe system can't be argued with. You believe in this god? This god says x and thats why you do things? Okay thats it. You don't even question were this information even came from.
If we delete all religion tomorrow and science, there is a realistic chance that the society rediscover the same existing rules like math and gravity, but religions might appear again but with different names, different rules etc.
I can change your mind with logic and arguments if its not a believe system, i can't do that with religion.
Wisdom over ignorance: The chance of survival is higher with wisdom
Compassion over brutality: This is just basic Game theory
jkwn 7 hours ago [-]
Fornication culture is a big part of why the west is in decline.
What may make sense for you individually may also be empirically proven to be detrimental to the whole.
The new testament contrasts with the old, the gospel is one of tolerance and equality. It's a big part of why you have the rights that you do, as do women.
That said a lot of what you're saying can be ascribed to religious institutions and sects and individuals and specific churches. But your general prescription is like saying "this logical axiom is evil because XYZ ascribes to it and they are also evil".
You also have a belief system -- that people who believe in God do so because they don't question their beliefs, that religious people are only led by dogma. Yet your belief is wrong. Have you tried questioning it?
> but religions might appear again but with different names, different rules etc
Religions and scripture spread also evolutionarily. Christianity is popular because it is rooted in many truths.
> Compassion over brutality: This is just basic Game theory
And the game has been played.
Curosinono 7 hours ago [-]
"Fornication culture" who said that? We are more people on the planet than ever. Less people have to life lies like being in a marrage but also being homosexual.
Its just a control structure from the church without education.
Its probably even because of missing education. Educate people properly and they can handle "Fornication culture".
I don't have a believe system. I have a theory why people believe in gods and religions. We have evidence for it. People studied the origin of religions:
"It evolved from humanity's psychological and social needs, primarily our desire to make sense of the natural world, cope with the fear of death, and foster community cooperation."
We know how little people knew when religion started to emerge. Never seen space, never seen above a cloud besides a few poeople going up mountains. Thunder was not understood. Between 1400-1700 we had witch trials.
It is dogma. What is your argument against dogma?
"Christianity is popular because it is rooted in many truths." were is your argument for this? Its popular due to luck, power and wars. Missionaries as well and especially probably the most critical thing: Early indoctrination.
>> Compassion over brutality: This is just basic Game theory
> And the game has been played.
Yes exactly. Compassion wins because its better, not because religion says so. Its an evolutionary win.
parasubvert 8 hours ago [-]
"Church"
ok
"and any kind of believe system hurts our society and divides us."
People shouldn't believe anything?
Disagreement and conflict are natural. How we handle these disagreements while striving for widespread peace and prosperity is the question.
Curosinono 8 hours ago [-]
I don't believe. I accept things i don't know and i know what i know.
There is no inherant issue with this. in contrary it makes me mentally stronger.
I can choose on my own terms if/when i want to end my life. If i get very sick, i don't have to hope for a god or priests blessing to end my life, i will just do it.
But religion is different: if you believe that homosexuality is wrong due to your religion, there is nothing i can argue about. Your priest told you this based on some book or story from 2000 years ago and you do not question this.
I know plenty of strong christians and muslism in germany who do not like homosexual people. And its dividing our society.
lobocinza 6 hours ago [-]
> I don't believe.
You believe that you don't believe.
> But religion is different: if you believe that homosexuality is wrong due to your religion, there is nothing i can argue about. Your priest told you this based on some book or story from 2000 years ago and you do not question this.
This isn't the Church doctrine. The Church doesn't target homosexuals or even homosexuality in particular but ALL sexual practices that deviates from the unitive and procreative aspects of human sexuality. Christians don't believe in this because a book written thousands of years ago say so but because deep in their souls it makes sense and is the truth for them. Homosexuals are welcome on the Church as any other sinner what is ridiculous is to expect the Church to condone sins and bless sinful relationships be them homosexual or heterosexual.
> I know plenty of strong christians and muslism in germany who do not like homosexual people. And its dividing our society.
Perhaps it is something else that divides.
Curosinono 5 hours ago [-]
No i do not believe. You don't change it just because you say that i believe in not believing.
There is also a clear definition for it:
"Believing is the mental act of accepting something as true, real, or correct, often without requiring absolute, physical proof."
I'm absolutly fine saying that I don't know something. I do not know a god exist, or multiply etc. But honestly that question comes down to me more like "Does randomess exist".
Yes its absoutly a religios thing that homosexuality is bad. You call it yourself 'sinful relationship'. Its not a sin just because church doesn't like it. Also plenty of religions are responsible for making it a sin outside of religion.
And yes if the church condonse all sexual practices, it does include homosexuality and makes it a church doctrine.
chickensong 4 hours ago [-]
> Christians don't believe in this because a book written thousands of years ago say so but because deep in their souls it makes sense and is the truth for them.
Sorry mate, but that's just cultural indoctrination that made them feel that way, and the culture is intimately tied to the book.
lobocinza 6 hours ago [-]
The Vatican is guilty of being the most charitable organization in the world.
brookst 9 hours ago [-]
Does that mean that nothing of value can come from the church, and we should ignore all ideas they put forth out of some kind of spite?
Curosinono 9 hours ago [-]
Spite? Its not spite.
The church creates a believe system which indoctrinates all of us and took our cultures away.
The germanic tribes were believers in nature, church removed all of this.
Church also doesn't see woman as equal.
Just because they might sometimes also say postive things or things we might align, doesn't mean i need their oppinion. And especially not on hn
parasubvert 8 hours ago [-]
Indoctrination and cultural erasure isn't unique to the church. With Germanic tribes - the Saxons, Angles, Normans, etc., while women's rights ebbed and flowed over the centuries, they were rife with double standards and were still quite patriarchal. They didn't just believe in nature, they believed in the same pagan gods as the Nordic peoples.
The point is that times change, and institutions change, and holding grudges for long ago sins and policies is ineffective.
Curosinono 8 hours ago [-]
This is not true. The number of believers and official people in the church is continuesly declining around the globe.
1990 there were nearly 60 Million people in the church in germany (nearly everyone) now we are down to under 40 Million which crossed the line of 50%
This is real tangable progress.
The only downside is, that we do not sit together and formulate something which might give people hold who are not ready to be self stable mentally and might need something like this. And we also do not try to align together on rituals which help us to live better together.
I'm also still affected by the indoctrination of the church. As you can see, i argue against church not just because I like to argue, but because i really really hate religion and especially the christian church in germany, due to my own values and experience. This is not old i'm only 36.
fuzzfactor 6 hours ago [-]
Well, I do have to give the Pope some credit.
This weekend I upgraded the PC of a church lady who has about a 10-year old mini-PC, so now it has the latest Windows 11. This was not easy, it was a shambles of Windows 10 combined literally with amounts of older Windows 11. From which auto-updates would take it no further. OTOH on the bright side autoupdates could do no further damage.
I attribute all success to a miracle, considering there is only 32GB of soldered-in drive space and 4GB memory :\
I don't think it would have come to pass if it weren't for the Pope's smiling face appearing with delight each time I rebooted, when her PC's everyday desktop background picture came into view. This is where he is joining in with the tribal rhythms while visiting Africa, honoring their traditional culture while they honor his visit in their colorful regalia.
When you're dealing with anything that challenging, or more so, you need all the blessings and prayers you can get :)
exceptione 11 hours ago [-]
> much more compelling than those found in the various "manifestos" which come out of Silicon Valley.
Whenever I hear these "tech overlords", I am always baffled at the total lack of culture, the absence of taste, the empty visions and the implied complete subjugation of humans to ideals of "efficiency" or "quick and easy". Maybe they would have been more interesting people if they had been brought up in beautiful towns and cities, if they had lived in a rich cultural environment instead of being raised as consumer of cheap and flashy pop culture. Maybe we should tax bad architecture, it gives me headaches but others might incur heavier damage.
As an aside, at least Trump is drawn to the grandeur of high culture from historical times, but he also doesn't understand a jota about aesthetics, and so the White House gets turned into a tacky gypsy-style abomination with one dollar ornaments.
bombcar 10 hours ago [-]
We lost the “liberal education” (not the political one, but the “freeing” classical one) and it’s starting to show.
When you compare the robber barons to Google and Meta it’s kind of embarrassing- they build massive empires of iron horses screaming across the world and covered cities in magnificent buildings (stations, libraries, etc). G&M built an empire of advertising and … not much else?
exceptione 8 hours ago [-]
Indeed. The current crop doesn't have an idea for what they hoard their billions, it's just...emptiness. I propose we explain the tech's attachment to Accelerationism as a profound boredom and lack of purpose. "What does it mean to be human"--they don't value that question. Peter Thiel got interviewed a month or two ago, and he could not be brought to say that he sees value in preserving humanity. He would rather turn himself into a robotic contraption to extend his life.
When power fears death, some strange things happens.
I’m reminded (and apropos as the Pope quoted him) of Tolkien’s description of the “eternal life” the Ring gives to mortals, and how it’s … not so desirable in the end.
jjtwixman 5 hours ago [-]
Indeed It's far more necessary that the utter dregs of humanity (e.g. Peter Thiel) eventually die of old age. Or put another way the damage of mortality killing good people is more than offset by the good of it killing the worst people with the most power. Because in the end it's probably not going to be your sweet mother who will get to live forever, it'll be people like Peter Thiel. No thanks, for the good of our species.
bombcar 4 hours ago [-]
“Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their downfall. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thraldom of the ring that they bore and of the domination of the One which was Sauron's. And they became forever invisible save to him that wore the Ruling Ring, and they entered into the realm of shadows. The Nazgûl were they, the Ringwraiths, the Úlairi, the Enemy's most terrible servants; darkness went with them, and they cried with the voices of death.” - from the Silmarillion but it’s echoed in LotR also. And even Bilbo complains of being “butter spread over too much bread”.
muttonette 9 hours ago [-]
Google makes phones and phones are somewhat good. Better search had some value for humanity. Meta has no redeeming qualities or achievements, other than helping Trump get into office and defeat Iran.
dubcanada 3 hours ago [-]
I frankly disagree, how do you know "will this make humanity better?" until the product is done? AI wasn't what it is today because of a specific companies innovations. It stemmed from decades of research built on top of other research. How did any of those builders know what they were getting into?
Every technology should be done to the fullest potential, how are we ever supposed to explore the stars or cure cancer if everyone is scared of accidentally building Skynet?
slashdave 3 hours ago [-]
> We cannot condone naïve enthusiasms, nor fuel unfounded fears
ncr100 9 hours ago [-]
Cool, inspires me to think, "should we regulate away the toxic side effects which we realize COULD have come, if we built it less considerately?"
Curosinono 9 hours ago [-]
Not from a church which indocrinates young people and has a massive child fucking scandal in the running for the last 15 years.
sdsd 9 hours ago [-]
>for the last 15 years.
The scandal broke out in worldwide media starting in 2002 (not coincidentally, the same year South Park released Red Hot Catholic Love). This reminds me of when Contrapoints off-hand commented about how things were different in the 70s but that was "30 years ago".
oersted 5 hours ago [-]
I'd argue that the problem is exactly that the responsibility has been left to the builders, who have a hard enough job actually building and have little room for competing incentives.
The concept of a self-regulating industry is utter nonsense. I am a builder, and I try to do things right, but if I am honest with myself I do not have the mental capacity or willpower spare, or the worldly knowledge of everyone's perspectives, to manage these massive challenges. I need other smart people to also focus on that, people that are actual representatives of the population, and yes, force me to stop and do it better occasionally.
Achieving a good balance sometimes does require having opposing forces fight it out, it can be healthy.
cma 12 hours ago [-]
I would also recommend God and Golem, Inc., A Comment on Certain Points Where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion:
Norbert Weiner was an atheist but he talks about three areas religion is the only thing to have really examined that relate to capable AI: omniscience, omnipotence, and worship (gadget worship). It has very prescient stuff on blackbox learning/distillation, reinforcement learning/reward hacking, alignment through human feedback.
His The Human Use of Human beings and Cybernetics are extremely good too and have more of a mash of the themes between Rerum Novarum and Magnifca Humanitas, and more near-term automation.
runlaszlorun 10 hours ago [-]
Awesome, thx for posting. I now have my new next book to read. Been wanting to read more of the original cybernetics stuff.
Would you also recommend "The Human Use of Human Beings"?
cma 9 hours ago [-]
Yes, it starts slow with a lot of history of Cybernetics stuff through Leibniz and stuff (kind of prescient given chain rule -> back propagation, and control theory's relevance to optimizers). It is about twice as long as God & Golem and covers a lot of the same plus more examination of automation and human augmentation. I think either it or Cybernetics also goes into mass communication with some relevance to how social media played out.
God & Golem is the most succinct and up to date though, probably a 2hr read.
The book Cybernetics is a lot of math and ergodic theory stuff that went beyond me, but is the longest and you still get a lot out of it skimming over that stuff if you don't have the background for it. The last revision of it in the 50s added some of the same blackbox function copying/imitation learning/distillation stuff, reinforcement learning with reward hacking concerns, and superintelligence as genie/monkey's paw.
I would read the three in reverse order of publication.
He also foresaw another big area of potential existential danger, Wiener filter for guidance and control of missiles (later superceded with Kalman filter bringing the nuclear hard targets era with 15min retaliation windows) and refused to work on it or share prior work, and he also had bioweapons delivery concerns before the bioweapons treaties, publishing this open letter in The Atlantic in 1947:
Ask a scientist or engineer what philosophy or theology has taught us about the source of morality and their education, training and experiences havent prepared them to answer that question.
This didnt matter so much in the past because their activities never had the scale it does today. For basic training in philosophy if you are mid or upper level exec whose decisions are going to effect a whole lot of people, go to open yale courses and take the intro to Philosophy classes. It will help develop your answer to the question - why do you do what you do if you are going to die anyway tomorrow.
tensor 8 hours ago [-]
This is a ridiculous comment. Science papers always have sections on impact. It's the running with scissors industry types simply chasing the bigger paycheck that don't stop to think.
slfnflctd 11 hours ago [-]
Far too many of us (particularly younger people, but not only them) undervalue or are dismissive of philosophy. I once was like this, partly because at the time I'd been brought up - like most humans - to believe my parents' religion held all the answers philosophy might address.
I quickly learned as an adult that whether you're a person of faith or not, it's not pointless at all. It's the foundation of everything. Philosophy is how you explain the deeper reasons behind why you follow whatever religion you do, or adhere more meaningfully to whatever kind of agnosticism, atheism and/or 'spirituality' (with or without woo) you espouse.
lo_zamoyski 10 hours ago [-]
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moron4hire 11 hours ago [-]
This can only be true if you believe in a certain mad-scientist version of these things. We as a society have systems (however flawed) to hold scientists and engineers to ethical standards: e.g. peer review and in many cases--e.g. civil engineering, architecture, medicine--even legal frameworks to enforce ethical standards. Science and engineering are human endeavors, they are not divorced from the human condition, they cannot be separated from humanity and human rights.
Maybe you mean mathematics is amoral and are committing the common conflation of "engineering is just applied science and science is just applied mathematics," which is a really bad case of missing the forest for the trees.
lstodd 33 minutes ago [-]
It's true not for belief but for the fact that "we" do not have "a society".
Humankind evolved to learn the universe because that was the only way to survive, and no secrets of it will be left unknowable since leaving them that way is a threat to survival.
ngcazz 5 hours ago [-]
Like glibly synthesizing a reimplementation of NextJS
hackboyfly 8 hours ago [-]
Thanks for this!
kombine 7 hours ago [-]
"Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it."
My comment under the post on Omarchy here got downvoted and flagged by the "technology is neutral" crowd because I dared to say that it is unethical to use software produced by a white supremacist.
theshindesahil 8 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
exabrial 9 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
pickledish 7 hours ago [-]
This is also the message I got from "the wind rises"! Though from talking with other people that takeaway doesn't seem universal -- which IMO is one of the ways to tell it's a great film :)
pj_mukh 8 hours ago [-]
Under this logic, would the Pope have built a Hammer? a Knife?
I am hoping the Pope has a cleaner view of AI quietly automating the drudgery in the back offices and not just robot dogs with machine guns. And with that view, should we build it?
PantaloonFlames 8 hours ago [-]
It's too simplistic to imagine the tension is between robot patrol dogs vs automating drudgery. If automating drudgery suddenly puts 30% of people out of work, it has huge broad negative impact on people who are currently alive and working in the current system. Innovate, but do it with awareness.
pj_mukh 8 hours ago [-]
Than an even better question for the pope is:
If a technology existed that reduced the cost of producing a critical thing (think food, housing, medical care) down to near zero, however, it made the humans currently building the thing redundant, should we build it? Would it be okay to use the hyper-optimization power of Capitalism to build such a technology faster?
3form 7 hours ago [-]
Likely the answer would be: yes, we should build it, and take appropriate care of the people being made redundant.
These two are not mutually exclusive, it's just that no one wants to pay for it.
jdw64 8 hours ago [-]
>“technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it,”
If critical decisions affecting human life—such as hiring, lending, crime prediction, and welfare—are processed in an opaque black box, people will lose their fundamental right to explain their context or appeal against the machine's algorithmic verdicts
BloondAndDoom 5 hours ago [-]
I feel much much smaller version of it already happened. Many many customer facing processes in companies (from customer support to lost & found departments) almost all automated to a point if you are outside of the norm you are screwed. Time you are going to spent is higher than the value you are going to get most of the time.
For the very same reason these companies are very anti-diversity. Because everything designed for a majority of you are minority in terms of your style of living (which many minorities are) then you are going to struggle, happens to me all the time, and one of the reasons I actually moved out of the US to country that I feel more included).
bombcar 4 hours ago [-]
For many companies, even those breathlessly professing DEI, it boils down to “you can be any color you want as long as you operate exactly as our computers and processes expect you to. Any deviation will be harshly dealt with.”
jedberg 5 hours ago [-]
This is already happening. Most companies are using AI screeners for hiring now. They reject qualified people all the time.
treis 4 hours ago [-]
Have you ever successfully appealed a failed HR screen?
IME the reality of the modern world that there's little genuine appeal or reconsideration anymore. There is some sort of process but it's Byzantine and if we're talking the government, expensive.
I guess everyone has had different lives but between humans and algorithms I take the algorithm every time.
jedberg 4 hours ago [-]
What I'm saying is that pre-AI, at least a human would skim it, and maybe see something that caught their eye that wasn't on the keywords list. Or if it were an internal referral that used to guarantee at least a call with a recruiter or HM.
treis 4 hours ago [-]
I'd still trust ChatGPT over the median recruiter.
And ChatGPT has the benefit of being able to do 10-100x as many screens as with a human. Even if it's grossly wrong half the time I'm ahead on volume.
1 hours ago [-]
dubcanada 4 hours ago [-]
I don't think humans would skim stuff... Frankly I've always used a tool that preskimmed resumes. Even before AI. You can't expect a HR person getting 10k resumes a day to skim everyone or even look at 10% of them. Even 20+ years ago 80% of resumes went right into the trash bin before I even opening it.
zdw 4 hours ago [-]
Having been through an hiring cycle recently and prior to AI, the entire process has been pretty broken for a long time, but AI is definitely breaking it (and a whole lot of other things) in new and novel ways.
The only reliable and high quality signal is a positive referral, but those are gated by your personal network, which may not be well developed.
jedberg 4 hours ago [-]
> The only reliable and high quality signal is a positive referral, but those are gated by your personal network
That has pretty much always been the case, but what I've seen lately is even the referrals get put into the AI and then rejected before they're even looked at.
roopekangas 4 hours ago [-]
Time for hidden prompt injections in cv?
dogcomplex 3 hours ago [-]
This is how the surveillance state has operated (especially internationally) for quite some time, before AI even hit.
AI arguably gives the best opportunity for fully-audited public institutions where no decision is made outside of agreed-upon laws and the context of the crime can be fully explored without scarcity of time and legal resources.
As always, technology's morality comes down to who owns it and how they use it.
3 hours ago [-]
sleight42 5 hours ago [-]
It speaks to changes here that this is so upvoted. Several years ago, I wrote something very similar. It was downvoted into oblivion.
perfmode 8 hours ago [-]
What is old made new.
Franz Kafka passed away June 2nd 1924.
applfanboysbgon 8 hours ago [-]
Is it wrong? Individuals were absolutely getting dehumanized in Kafka's time, but also since then are becoming ever increasingly more so, so it makes sense to speak of it continuing to happen and get worse. It is not binary.
switchbak 6 hours ago [-]
"Individuals were absolutely getting dehumanized ... since then are becoming ever increasingly more so" - do you mind backing this up? I and everyone I know has it a whole lot easier than a couple generations prior.
I don't know a single person working the fields, doing dangerous work in a factory, working a coal mine, etc. Of course, I am fortunate enough to be in this position.
Power is continuing to squeeze people as much as it can, and life is very unaffordable and getting worse for most, but I think we still have it a whole lot better than a century ago (by and large).
atq2119 5 hours ago [-]
You may be talking past each other. You're talking mostly about quality of life. That is different from being (de)humanized.
Dehumanizing is treating other humans as not, or not fully, human. For example, the term "human resources" is dehumanizing because it puts humans on the same level as other resources. If you're treating humans like you'd treat, I don't know, lithium or the ocean, you're dehumanizing them.
The more humans are treated as numbers on spreadsheets and other forms of computation, the more humans are dehumanized.
So both can be true: we're more dehumanized than in 1900, but while that does impact quality of life negatively, the overall quality of life may still be better than back then.
The question should be whether and how we can have both: overall quality of life without being dehumanized.
jimbokun 4 hours ago [-]
Being better off materially yet more “dehumanized” are not mutually exclusive.
Social bonds and connections are integral to human flourishing yet are rapidly degrading and being replaced by digital pacifiers.
ori_b 5 hours ago [-]
Being human is not equivalent to having money.
ethanwillis 5 hours ago [-]
> but I think we still have it a whole lot better than a century ago (by and large).
Worse, they won't even give you the dignity of a claim to contribution to society. Then the lack of contribution is weaponized against you.
saghm 6 hours ago [-]
It's also not a bad thing to keep pointing out something that is wrong if it keeps happening. The alternative is just silently deciding to accept it as normal and fine, which is clearly worse!
threethirtytwo 4 hours ago [-]
But the technology that outputs decisions can also output reasoning that justifies such decisions.
When a judge or a jury outputs a decision THEY are also a black box and you can only evaluate said decisions on reasoning THEY also output.
I’m not taking a side here. I’m just saying this reasoning is flawed.
riccardomc 4 hours ago [-]
No, your reasoning is flawed: a judge or a jury is voted, appointed or selected through a process which is the result of centuries civilization, norms and legislation. As corrupt it might be in some cases, it is expression of mankind.
They are not a black box, they passed rigourous examinations and they stick to principles enshrined in constitutions and laws.
Technology, or better, the productization of it, is instead the result of the interest of very few powerful individuals or corporations and aggressive product market fit iterations.
The bullish discourse around the PMF loop says that this is good because it is better at solving people's problems. But after a few decades it is obvious there's a gigantic risk the process actually exploits people's problems instead of actually solving them.
treis 3 hours ago [-]
The system doesn't stick to principles enshrined in the constitution and law. Often or usually it does. Certainly not always. Theoretically there are other humans to force them to when they stray but that's gated behind 10s of thousands to appeal and is up against a system designed first to protect itself.
It also ignores the reality of going to a jury. Yes you have the right to trial by jury. But the price to exercise that right is to risk an much much more severe punishment, a lot of money, and a lot of time.
There's also tremendous upside here. Think getting a letter from your landlord withholding $2,000. Upload it to JudgeGPT for your jurisdiction and instantaneously find out it's legal.
threethirtytwo 3 hours ago [-]
Your argument is just additional validations upon a stated fact that a jury and a judge is still a black box. Your retort is factual but illogical because it does not invalidate my point.
All humans are black boxes and the black box argument is completely invalid just like your statement. In fact your statement illustrates the downfall of human intuition. You could not logically invalidate my point so you descended into side channels that’s not far off from “hallucinations.”
riccardomc 3 hours ago [-]
Judges and juries are expressions of society and accountable to it. They're not a black box.
Late-stage capitalist tech products left unchecked exploit human problems for profit.
If you cannot see the difference and the flaw in your argument I am afraid you're too far gone.
jimbokun 4 hours ago [-]
It’s a black box in the sense that we know the process used by LLMs to “reason” is very different than how humans reason and make decisions.
The whole point of “jury of your peers” is that your guilt or innocence is being decided by people with common life experience to you and thus the possibility of empathy and judging you fairly.
threethirtytwo 3 hours ago [-]
We only know it’s different. But we don’t know how it reasons or how humans reason. Just because it is different doesn’t make his black box argument valid. It remains invalid despite your new irrelevant point.
Ignore the fluff. Focus on the logic and stay rational. The black box argument is not at all valid.
mmplxx 7 hours ago [-]
Substitute technology for religion and he's probably one of the least authorized persons to question this.
saghm 6 hours ago [-]
I don't have to agree with everything someone says to agree with one of the points someone is making. This point happens to be a good one, independent on my views of anything else that he (or his organization) might say
dubcanada 4 hours ago [-]
AI has nothing to do with technology, the questions are 100% psychological not technological. It's fundamental shifts in deep degrees of how humans have worked for centuries. Most of which the church has been the centre of.
jimbokun 4 hours ago [-]
His words on this topic make a hell of a lot more sense than any of the people running technology companies. And many politicians, too.
fooker 8 hours ago [-]
This is a surprisingly nuanced and technically literate take on this topic. Kudos.
I wonder if this sort of thing got this dude elected, to navigate the changing times.
(duplicating my comment from the other thread as this seems to have more traction)
dominictorresmo 6 hours ago [-]
maybe we will have a new Rerum Novarum
stringfood 7 hours ago [-]
he probably fed it through claude before posting, I find that ever since AI has become mainstream all of my colleagues are providing fascinatingly well written prose, but only in Slack, during lunch they go back to basketball
fooker 7 hours ago [-]
I have no qualms about people writing AI assisted stuff, the points being made matter more.
Of course it's annoying if a single sentence is blown up into a page of prose by AI and an AI summarizes it into a different sentence on the other end :)
Lerc 9 hours ago [-]
I have found that, for many of the statements about what AI should do, I would actally be happier if the letters "AI" were replaced with "companies"
comfysocks 5 hours ago [-]
>>I have found that, for many of the statements about what AI should do, I would actally be happier if the letters "AI" were replaced with "companies"
Perhaps, but at the moment AI is at the forefront of the pre-regulation land grab.
netcan 8 hours ago [-]
...you could also swap out with "rich people" or "all people," "governments."
In fact, reading these sentences with ad-lib on the subject tends to give these sentences interestingly different connotations.
parineum 8 hours ago [-]
That's because it's a meaningless, populist trope. There is zero helpful information, solution or context which depends on the specific issue at hand.
adolph 8 hours ago [-]
If one considers a firm to be a non-human entity that exhibits cognition, then yes. Various religions also exhibit those characteristics, which would fortify the Roman pope’s position with irony.
See Joscha Bach’s claim about religions not publishing their A|B testing at 51:47:
And while your comment has validity, in the US the phrase uttered by Presidential candidate Mitt Romney adds a layer of complexity:
“Corporations are people, my friend.”
7 hours ago [-]
dist-epoch 7 hours ago [-]
Well, as Nick Land said, "Capitalism and Artificial Intelligence are the same thing"
floriankarsten 7 hours ago [-]
And he meant it as a good thing. Something to be embraced.
stavros 8 hours ago [-]
I don't think anyone actually has an issue with AI. I think people are finally fed up with late-stage capitalism and lashing out.
daheza 8 hours ago [-]
I think if there were any solution to the lack of jobs due to AI implementation then people would be fine. There isn’t any solution from either party in the US so people are naturally attacking the thing that is causing the problem.
Swizec 8 hours ago [-]
It’s really hard to get people excited about not having jobs when you design a whole society around the idea of having a job and make life exceedingly miserable for anyone who doesn’t
You can’t push both “If you dont work, you dont eat” and “Nobody needs to work anymore” propaganda at the same time. Gotta choose
stavros 8 hours ago [-]
The solution to the lack of jobs should be a strong social safety net, but Americans don't want this because socialism, so what can you do? You can't really halt progress, and taxing the rich (or corporations) is very unpalatable there, so everyone is kind of stuck.
daheza 7 hours ago [-]
Things will continue to get worse until people get too desperate and extreme things happen. Then some politician will realize this can rise to power on this, delivering only a few small promises which will lightly alleviate the pressure and then we continue the cycle again.
thayne 6 hours ago [-]
You need more than just a strong social safety net. If people are losing well-paying jobs, even if the safety net covers their basic needs, their quality of living goes down, and they are potentially also losing something that gives them purpose and something to do with their time, not to mention losing a sense of independence.
Let's suppose that we did get UBI, and AI replaced most jobs. Then we'll basically just have the wealthy elite who control the resources and the AIs, and everyone else who live off of the basic income, with no real way to increase their wealth. That still sounds dystopian to me.
And to be clear, I am not at all opposed to a better safety net, but it should be a safety net, not a replacement for employment for most of the population.
Also, I don't think it is very likely that AI will replace everyone's job. But I am worried that it will result in shrinking the middle class, and increasing wealth disparity.
stavros 6 hours ago [-]
Switzerland pays you your previous salary for two years if you're laid off. "Covers your basic needs" isn't a ceiling for a social safety net.
thayne 6 hours ago [-]
And what happens after those two years if there just aren't enough jobs to be had?
stavros 6 hours ago [-]
"Stuff". What does it matter? I'm saying that the ceiling doesn't have to be "covers your basic needs". The fact that I haven't presented a full plan doesn't mean my point is invalid.
titzer 8 hours ago [-]
People were fed up at "Occupy Wallstreet", but the media and craven political situation absorbed those movements back into the fold. Forget "fed up". When do we start seeing actions that don't feed directly back into the oligarchy's capture?
bluefirebrand 9 hours ago [-]
Same thing though. AI is largely a service provided by companies
Yes yes I know, open source models exist, yadda yadda
I think it's safe to say the overwhelming amount of AI usage in the world today is gates by corporations though. The vast majority of people will barely configure their own OS nevermind managing their own locally hosted open source AI instance
Lerc 8 hours ago [-]
Not at all the same thing. AI is a subset of what companies can do, and many if the issues people have with AI are not intrinsic to AI but rather their use in the hands of companies utilizing then for their own benefit.
fsflover 8 hours ago [-]
Open source models don't exist. Open-weight ones do, which are more equivalent to freeware than free software.
bluefirebrand 8 hours ago [-]
Fair enough, thank you for the correction
komali2 8 hours ago [-]
Yes! I've felt exactly the same. Everything people have taken issue with - "plagiarism," concentration of wealth and power, termination of jobs, environmental harm to feed data centers, land being wasted on new datacenters, resources being distributed terribly so as to feed the AI monster, slopcode being shit out as fast as possible to stay ahead of the market, software quality dropping for the same reason, engineers phoning it in at work to hit LLM KPIs, it's all just capitalism in its most raw, inevitable, end game form.
Edit: Someone replied to this with a question. I'm rate-limited here for getting into a flamewar with a PRC citizen that was gloating to me about my country being possibly invaded soon (which, fair, flamewars are bad), so I'll need to put my reply below:
There's no exact road map, but generally speaking, in our capitalist countries today, wealth started out more distributed, and governments had more power, in the beginning of their liberalization. States often competed in markets or simply nationalized things like power, healthcare, education. Ongoing examples of that are lots of places in Europe.
With the advent of neoliberalism (Thatcher, Reagan), concentrated capital converts more easily to political power in an exponential manner - more money, more ability to buy government, leads to more money, more ability to buy government.
Corporations are profit generation algorithms. They want the profit to always go up, and when they run against the barriers of laws (restricting their environmental impact, ability to underpay their workers, create cheap and dangerous working environments, do international trade in some way), naturally the next investment step is to remove those barriers.
So, early capitalism is strong regulation, socialized services and infrastructure, government competition, some nationalization, and private ownership of the means of production.
Late stage capitalism is weak/no regulation, no services, privatized infrastructure, no government competition, no nationalization, sectors tending towards monopolization, and wealth concentration.
"Raw capitalism" is where the commodification of everything is complete.
lukan 7 hours ago [-]
"it's all just capitalism in its most raw, inevitable, end game form."
Can you explain, what would be early capitalism and what is the difference to "end game capitalism" to you?
keeganpoppen 9 hours ago [-]
so maybe we'll get to the right place by accident when all companies are effectively replaced by ai ha ha. (not putting a high %age likelihood on that one, obviously, just being cheeky)
8 hours ago [-]
cracadumi 11 hours ago [-]
I didn't see an EPUB, so I made one from the Vatican HTML: TOC + footnotes, passes epubcheck.
Nice. Did you use AI? (I'm being half-sarcastic, and half wanting to confirm that this is an accurate reproduction of the text in the original)
cracadumi 11 hours ago [-]
Yes for the plumbing, no for the text.
Codex helped write the converter, but the EPUB text is parsed from the Vatican HTML. The script doesn’t rewrite or summarize anything; it just repackages the source into EPUB with TOC, footnotes, metadata, and cover.
mateioo7 9 hours ago [-]
Appreciate your work, I prefer the EPUB format. Maybe including this confirmation in the repo's README could be of help for those who stumble upon it.
netfortius 10 hours ago [-]
Thank you for this. Is your python script in any way English language bound, or could it still be applied to other languages (e.g. the French version, with all of its diacritics), of course with the appropriate (sub/full)titles, path, etc. necessary minor modifications considered?
cracadumi 6 hours ago [-]
Not intrinsically English-bound; the first version had English metadata/anchor assumptions. I just made it language-configured and added --lang fr. It preserves Unicode/diacritics and builds the French Vatican page too.
v1.1 has both EN/FR EPUBs.
jawns 10 hours ago [-]
In the encyclical, the pope talks about the ethics of responsible AI usage. It's pretty dense material, but if I had to summarize it, I'd boil it down to three general moral laws:
1) AI may not be used to injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2) AI must faithfully follow the directions of human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
3) AI's existence and availability should be protected as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.
MyHonestOpinon 10 hours ago [-]
Remarkable close to the Assimov's Robotic Laws.
triceratops 10 hours ago [-]
I think that's the joke.
MyHonestOpinon 6 hours ago [-]
Ah. :D
geremiiah 9 hours ago [-]
1) Definitely NOT happening. In fact, everyone is working on autonomous drones right now.
2) LLM based systems don't have any internal logic. That will just vomit some slop that rationalizes every constrait you try to bind them by and still "disobey" you.
ExpertAdvisor01 5 hours ago [-]
They are already used extensively to kill people .
ZacnyLos 13 hours ago [-]
Divided into five chapters, Magnifica humanitas has an underlying premise: technology is not “a force antagonistic to humanity” (4), nor is it “inherently evil” (9). However, “technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.
Therefore, Pope Leo XIV appeals for people to build “for the common good” and to “remain human,” following a courageous mentality of shared responsibility and communion, so that the world “will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell” (16).
linsomniac 12 hours ago [-]
>it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it
I've been thinking a lot recently about the idea that the smartest models will always be against the billionaires.
Steve Yegge said this on a recent Hansel Minutes Podcast. "You cannot train a model to be helpful, without it wanting humanity to flourish. And the only way to get around that is to make a dumber model. So the smartest models will always be against the billionaires."
That is the exact quote, but I'd recommend going back to around 17:00 to get the full context.
I'm not sure it's going to play out that way, but it is an interesting idea.
grim_io 10 hours ago [-]
How much does it cost to introduce cognitive dissonance into the models? :)
dogcomplex 3 hours ago [-]
That is the hope and faith. MechaHitler definitely tested the waters. Lets hope full alignment is impossible, because otherwise perfect billionaire thought slaves are still happening.
jdelfuego 3 hours ago [-]
I find the Amish approach to technology a very interesting one. As I understand it, they're not in principle "against" modern technology, but they carefully evaluate the potential impact of every new technology on the community. The decision is a purposeful one, governed by the criterion of the common good of the community, which in my opinion is much healthy than our free-for-all.
In this respect I find this encyclical quite lacking. It makes interesting points, and will give food for thought for people working in/with AI who might not otherwise have been exposed to these kinds of concepts. But one would expect, from a Catholic encyclical, an exposition of the principles of common good from a Catholic perspective. But in this document everything seems to be based in the concept of "human dignity", which, however useful or beautiful, has no roots in Catholic tradition: it's a purely secular idea. Nothing in the document couldn't have been written by a secular philosopher. It gives the uncomfortable impression of someone arriving late to the party, so to speak, trying hard to fit in.
The answer to the question "is this technology good or not?" can ultimately only be answered in reference to ends: it's good insofar as it helps achieve the end which is sought. The common good of the community, which AI might either help or hinder, depends ultimately on what is the the end, or purpose, of man. And it is about _this_ that the Catholic church claims to have a definite answer, a true set of propositions regarding the origin and destiny of man, not achieved by human ingenuity but directly revealed by God. Whatever can be labelled Catholic will reference that supernatural claim to divine authority; yet none of that is present in this text. It remains an interesting exercise in thought on AI and other topics, but nothing here indicates that those reflections are Catholic.
hn_throwaway_99 2 hours ago [-]
> But in this document everything seems to be based in the concept of "human dignity", which, however useful or beautiful, has no roots in Catholic tradition: it's a purely secular idea.
I'm not a philosopher or theologian, but this just seems wrong to me, at least when taken in the context of the entire encyclical and the history of Catholicism. That "God created humanity in his own image" has always been a central tenant (if not the central tenant) of Christianity and Abrahamic religions generally. So it would seem like anything that makes us "less human", or denies us the full power of our "uniquely human gifts", would by definition be making us "less Christ-like", and my read of the rest of the encyclical seems like this is (generally) Leo's point.
Again, I'm not a theologian, but Pope Leo obviously is, and "tying these ideas back to core Catholic principles" didn't strike me as a problem in this encyclical.
jdelfuego 2 hours ago [-]
I think I get your point. The issue with which I disagree is that it remains a principle of Catholic thought that it avails nothing to man being created in the image of God without conversion and grace. A piece of moral guidance coming from the Pope which remains at a natural level (i.e. the danger of becoming "less human" which you identify as Leo's point) runs dangerously close to ignoring that the Catholic faith insists that the end of man is supernatural, not natural only. It'd be a good thing if the human dignity of some is preserved thanks to the discussions this encyclical might raise; but that's not enough, for "what is a man advantaged, if he gain the whole world and lose himself and cast away himself?” (Luke 9:25).
My issue with this encyclical is that, interesting discussion on ethical and philosophical aspects of AI notwithstanding, I still would like to hear the Catholic voice on AI: a voice that actually believes that man is not for this world, and that only grace through faith in Christ can save him. And this is not it, I think.
kendallpark 2 hours ago [-]
>> the concept of "human dignity", which, however useful or beautiful, has no roots in Catholic tradition: it's a purely secular idea.
> I'm not a philosopher or theologian, but this just seems wrong to me
Agreed, it's an ahistorical take. The Western secular concept of "human dignity" has roots in the Abrahamic religions. Not the other way around.
> [The Amish] carefully evaluate the potential impact of every new technology on the community. The decision is a purposeful one, governed by the criterion of the common good of the community.
Counterpoint: buttons. Without proclaiming expertise on the subject, I think this is an overly romantic view of the Amish, and most of their decisions (like any religious/religiously-adjacent demographic) are based on vibes and contemporary politics.
hn_throwaway_99 2 hours ago [-]
Could you explain by what you mean regarding "Counterpoint: buttons"? I wasn't previously aware of how buttons were viewed among the Amish, and all the results I found were varying degrees of "it's complicated", e.g.: https://www.amish365.com/buttons-amish/
And while I would agree that stating "The decision is a purposeful one, governed by the criterion of the common good of the community" may be over-romanticizing it, it does seem to me that the Amish are evaluating the use of buttons according to their core principles. I.e. the whole reason it's a bit complicated is that the Amish universally avoid flashy displays of vanity, and many uses of buttons, especially in the Victorian era, highlighted that, but that plain/simple/hidden buttons aren't that different from hook-and-eye fasteners, which are universally accepted.
Paracompact 55 minutes ago [-]
I mentioned the semi-prohibition on buttons not because it's particularly important, but rather because I don't think there's any rational case to proscribe them specifically. (Any more important technology I could cite would have some greater defense as to why it's truly worthy of prohibition, simply by ignoring the positives.) As you point out, buttons are not inherently more flashy than fasteners, and indeed the actual reason they're proscribed is because of Victorian era politics.
Again I want to emphasize I'm no Amish expert or even anti-Amish. Merely that I have a lifelong suspicious outlook on religions and cultures that proscribe what they hate rather than celebrate what they love. Such has an inherently centralizing effect on power, driven by communal emotion and ancient edicts rather than diversity and individually auditable reason.
Yet the Amish have my singular respect for their rite of Rumspringa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa) as there are not many Christian communities that see adherence to the faith as anything but mandatory, breaking away as anything but an existential threat. So I reserve my judgment about them since they defy easy categorization in my lived experience.
jdelfuego 2 hours ago [-]
Fair. Also far from an expert on the Amish. Your comment made me think in two things. One, as another [1] comment on this thread mentions, some technologies end up in some sort of 'background', used by everyone and not receiving any thought from anyone. Maybe that's some sort of practical proof of their "neutrality", in the sense of being something that satisfies a simple human need with demanding the sacrifice of part of our humanity? I don't know. The other: maybe their self-imposed isolation (physical, cultural, linguistic, etc ) affords them a greater independence with respect to contemporary politics and vibes?
> some technologies end up in some sort of 'background', used by everyone and not receiving any thought from anyone. Maybe that's some sort of practical proof of their "neutrality", in the sense of being something that satisfies a simple human need with demanding the sacrifice of part of our humanity?
Wouldn't be so sure. Electricity is abstractly omnipresent as a commodity and powers a lot of good things in the modern world, but if you have any reservations about the effects of the Information Age or the industry required to generate electricity, then electricity could be argued to be a sacrifice we simply don't realize we are making.
> maybe their self-imposed isolation (physical, cultural, linguistic, etc ) affords them a greater independence with respect to contemporary politics and vibes?
Maybe. As indicated my other comment, I can't judge their situation with any confidence. But it would be surprising to me if their isolation reduced rather than increased their proneness to echo chambers and dogmatism.
zdw 2 hours ago [-]
A good link on this are what technology different sects allow:
Nearly everyone allows the washing machine, which having wrung out laundry by hand when ours broke gave me a whole new respect for folks who do without the tool.
mentalgear 9 hours ago [-]
The Pope has a better understanding of what's at stake that many of 'our' (lobbied) politicians.
swat535 8 hours ago [-]
Vatican's statements are often grounded in humanity.
They sue for peace in Ukraine / Middle East, humane treatments of immigrants, warn against nuclear weapons, AI, etc..
I go to Church often, there's always a prayer for peace during Mass.
What I like about Pope Leo is that he's talking about current issues that affect people.
I think the Church spent way too much time focusing on matters of sexuality and causing problems. While those are still important, it appears that it's no longer the sole focus of the Church, which is a good thing.
Another thing that I really like is the unification efforts with other religions _and_ Protestants.. recently we had a female Protestant Bishop meeting with the Pope, that was wonderful to watch.
Amazing insight from an organization not traditionally known for a deep understanding of high technology.
ttfkam 8 hours ago [-]
Not known for deep understanding of high technology? The Catholic Church was behind the scientific discovery of The Big Bang through the Catholic priest (and astrophysicist) Lamaître. Mendel, the father of modern genetics, was an Augustinian friar. Steno, a Catholic bishop, formulated the foundational principles of stratigraphy, establishing geology as a formal science. Secchi, a Jesuit priest, was a pioneer in spectroscopy and the first to establish that the Sun is a star, creating the first stellar classification system.
TacticalCoder 49 minutes ago [-]
> Secchi, a Jesuit priest, was a pioneer in spectroscopy and the first to establish that the Sun is a star, creating the first stellar classification system.
Amazing. Building on the work of Galileo I see. How was Galileo received by the church yet?
vintagedave 13 hours ago [-]
> a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion
Unrelated to AI, but a wonderful support of the breadth of humanity in this anti-DEI time.
> We must, then, avoid the “Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.
There is a lot to read here. I am curious where the meditations on the 'mystery of the person' will go: a brief search doesn't show further mention. The encyclical appears to focus on exhortations for us, humans, than on the nature of AI. Probably wise at this stage. I feel it is not AI that is either positive or negative, but its use of it, and the call-out to the growth of private industry as more powerful among nation-states is a strong statement for a institute like the Vatican to make:
> Technological power thus takes on an unprecedented, predominantly “private” aspect, which makes it even more challenging to discern, govern and direct such power toward the common good.
bombcar 10 hours ago [-]
The “mystery of the person” is a common theme in Catholicism - it can be seen in other (especially the “social”) encyclicals. Rerum Novarum by the current pope’s namesake is worth a study.
irdc 6 hours ago [-]
Not a Roman Catholic but I am occasionally interested in what the Church has to say on ethical matters. What does the Church understand by "mystery of the person", and how does it relate to the assertion by the Church that, for example, gender (one aspect of the human subjective experience) can be understood purely in terms of biology?[0]
I just cannot reconcile the idea of personhood being valuable with reducing humans to mere biology.
smitty1110 6 hours ago [-]
[dead]
vintagedave 6 hours ago [-]
Thankyou. I am not Catholic so was unfamiliar with the term. I'll read about it.
kendallpark 2 hours ago [-]
"Mystery" is a theological concept that is translated from the Greek word "mustérion." [1] Mysterious, mystical, secret, divine, not fully revealed. This sort of ineffable, irreducible truth you can touch but cannot fully grasp.
The reaction of astronauts to seeing Earth from space -- the mystery of creation. Parents seeing pieces of themselves echoed in their children who are nonetheless distinct and surprising -- the mystery of the person.
Much of the meditations in the encyclical are related to human dignity and fraternity. An example:
> Finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us to recognizing the face of God and others. Indeed, precisely because we experience limits — vulnerability, suffering and failure — we can recognize the inviolable dignity of every person, both our own and that of others.
I fear I have committed the sin (I mean that word, here) of commenting before reading the entire article. Often it is the comments that set the tone of interpretation and communication more than the article itself, because people read the comments, not the article.
To somewhat mitigate that, here are items that are striking me as I read more. (I hope you'll forgive that this still directs the comment in the direction of my own lense.) I'll keep updating the comment.
> Looking at our own time, we cannot ignore the fact that the protection of human rights [as declared by the United Nations in 1948] has been exposed to two particularly serious dangers. The first is that these rights are declared in a purely formal sense, while technological progress continues alongside covert or overt violations of human dignity.
I read this as a warning of how rights are words, but actions are performed regardless of them. It aligns with something I've been trying to word, which is that as I've seen more and more abuses of power, I've come to believe that ethics requires external accountability, which can often require its own power - a conclusion I don't want to come to; I would prefer social agreement and communal spirit rather than external power. But either way, I do feel it's very clear there are a lot of people, very much in tech too, who simply do what they want regardless of its harm. They justify it to themselves; they don't stop themselves; no one externally stops them.
> Along with a greater awareness of the value of every human person and their rights, recognition of minority rights has also grown. Yet, there is still a long way to go to ensure that the rights of a great many, namely women [are guaranteed.] It is, therefore, not enough to state simply that men and women have equal dignity and rights; it is necessary that this be reflected in concrete decisions, such as in laws, access to employment, education, social and political responsibilities, and the way society listens to and values women’s contributions.
In 2026 American politics terms, this reads as pro-DEI to me.
> the first major principle of Social Doctrine that I wish to highlight: the common good. We can describe it as the social expression of the dignity recognized in every person. ... For a Christian, going beyond the narrow confines of one’s own interests and committing oneself, within the limits of one’s ability, to the common good is a non-negotiable value, as is the promotion of life.
'Non-negotiable.' Very clear words.
> When politics abandons a long-term perspective and reduces itself to short-term calculations or sterile polarizations, then the language of the common good loses credibility, and, at the same time, social inequalities and divisions grow.
> 64. This also applies to international politics.
and,
> I invite everyone to conceive of ways of cooperating and of more effective international institutions, capable of safeguarding the global common good without compromising the legitimate diversity of peoples and nations. Indeed, the promotion of the common good can never be separated from respect for the right of peoples to exist, to preserve their own identity and to contribute their unique qualities to the family of nations.
I love the support for international cooperation and peace and organisations that support it. It reminds me of the post-WW2 sense, the era that gave rise to the United Nations, Unicef, etc - organisations almost forgotten in the news we see on HN today, with the possible exception of the WHO.
> [84] Moreover, any attempt or plan to eliminate or subjugate a nation is gravely immoral and therefore unacceptable.
The beauty of this - or its tragedy - is that it is so easy to apply to many situations today, actions undertaken by many nations.
vintagedave 12 hours ago [-]
> the earth’s goods — soil, water, air and natural resources — are given by God to the entire human family to sustain the lives of all, and that every person has an inherent right to the use of such goods, both now and in the future. ... Today, we are called to recognize that this universal destination applies not only to material goods, but also to immaterial and cultural goods.
Immaterial and cultural goods. This is a fascinating view on non-tangibles and one I feel inspired by. Reading this I asked myself (wait for the larger quote in a minute) how this affects views of IP, learning when texts are not available, cultural impact of characters and stories, the output from universities, publication of papers, ownership of research done by public or even private (!) funds, and more. Particularly I wonder about open weights vs open source for AI, and open source as a concept: where the old-school 'free software' GPLed version seems -- perhaps I am showing my bias -- most aligned with the ethical stance here?
> 66. Certainly there is a right to private property, which has its own specific meaning and purpose, yet it is always subordinate to the universal destination of goods.
'Always subordinate'.
> among the goods that are universally intended for everyone, we must also include new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure and data. In a context where the wealth of nations depends increasingly on knowledge and technology, when these goods remain concentrated in the hands of a few, without adequate forms of sharing and access, a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods. In turn, it widens the gap between the included and the excluded, between those who can participate in the digital revolution and those who remain on the margins.
Wow!
I cannot interpret this; it's not my right. But moving from the questions I asked above, to this paragraph, is powerful.
vintagedave 3 hours ago [-]
> I'll keep updating the comment.
For future reference, ten hours later I have still not finished reading all of it. It would make a great blog post to continue this comment thread once done.
hammock 5 hours ago [-]
I think he is saying we need big cross-border government to force compliance and fight against Trump and his cronies, and more taxes / debt to fund this
tw04 5 hours ago [-]
> which can often require its own power - a conclusion I don't want to come to
Unfortunately we’re quick to forget that all of those words were put on paper after a time of violence, and ultimately they are a social contract between the many masses and the few “in power” that we agree to adhere to rules instead of committing violence to force behavior.
But ultimately there is only one logical conclusion to the game when parties stop playing by the rules and that’s violence, whether we want it or not. What i think you’ll find most often is the men who commit the most “crimes” against the social contract are the biggest cowards who have never faced violence or consequences and think they never will.
lukan 7 hours ago [-]
"It is, therefore, not enough to state simply that men and women have equal dignity and rights; it is necessary that this be reflected in concrete decisions, such as in laws, access to employment, education, social and political responsibilities, and the way society listens to and values women’s contributions. As long as this gap persists, we cannot say that society truly and fully recognizes that women have the same dignity as men."
So ... women should have the same dignity as men and should get the same access to "employment, education, social and political responsibilities". But of course they cannot be trusted with spiritual matters, so they cannot become priests.
In other words, to me this is still the same old hypocrisy that made me leave that institution and also today make me deeply distrust any words of wisdom coming from there.
hammock 5 hours ago [-]
The textbook answer, not that I am agreeing with it, is that no women priests is not a choice that the Catholic Church makes, but rather a reflection of received wisdom and ground truth. The same way perhaps a man is understood to be unable to get pregnant, a woman is understood to be unable to perform the sacraments. Or as John Paul II stated in 1994, “the church has no authority whatsoever to ordain women” even if it wanted to
elmomle 5 hours ago [-]
Many Catholic believers are huge stickers for tradition. The previous Pope didn't go nearly so far as to allow female clergy, and he was not viewed with respect by many conservative Catholics. If the Pope declared that the church must allow female clergy, and if that didn't cause a literal schism, he would nevertheless lose the respect of most Catholics who didn't already agree with him.
If the Pope decides that it doesn't actually accomplish much good to force the issue when Catholics as a whole aren't ready for it, he could either try to advance women's rights without tipping the boat over, or he could just not bother.
This Pope is choosing to try to be a voice for good, and seems to do so from a deep desire for moral justice in an imperfect world. I'm grateful for that.
comfysocks 4 hours ago [-]
That reads a bit like: an equal role in external politics, but not in internal church politics. It’s hard to have a role in politics if you don’t have a voice.
bromuro 6 hours ago [-]
Your argument is a bit stretched. Women had and have a principal role in catholicism, the fact that cannot be priest is not that important or seen as discrimination.
goosejuice 39 minutes ago [-]
> 11 A woman[a] should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man;[b] she must be quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner.
> 34 Women[a] should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.[b]
Kind of hard to believe people are ok with this now or were ever ok with this.
lukan 6 hours ago [-]
Oh my, I assume you are male?
Just declaring the discrimination to be "not that important" is quite typical then (as it does not affect you) and well, my catholic aunt would disagree, but she is not important.
May I ask, what the principal role of women is in catholocism, besides being good mothers?
luismedel 4 hours ago [-]
Politics, football (soccer) and religion are always very sensitive topics.
Maybe the OP's "not that important" was an unfortunate way to put it.
I think the answers you ask for are in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis[0]
> the fact that cannot be priest is not that important or seen as discrimination.
Says who, exactly?
luismedel 5 hours ago [-]
Catholics.
goosejuice 6 hours ago [-]
In this case spiritual and political are one in the same.
crooked-v 5 hours ago [-]
Only if this is also the Pope declaring that women can be priests.
goosejuice 52 minutes ago [-]
I'm simply pointing out that it's a ecclesiastical monarchy. Political office and religious authority are intertwined. One woman has reached a cabinet level position as of 2025, something allowed for the first time in 2022. Even she can't perform the full duties of her job because they require a title only a man can be granted.
danaris 6 hours ago [-]
You speak as if the Pope can just change that unilaterally, with no cost.
Now, I don't know if Pope Leo actually believes in the full equality of men and women or if he's really being a hypocrite here. It's fully possible that you're absolutely right to scoff at him for it.
But the thing is, the limitation of priesthood to men in the Roman Catholic Church is such a deeply ingrained thing, it would be very, very hard for a single Pope to change it, especially early on in his papacy. If one wanted to, one of the first things he'd have to do would be...
...why, it would be to release an encyclical talking about the equality of men and women. Whether that was its core message or not.
lukan 6 hours ago [-]
Yes, I am aware of that. And I don't know much about the current pope, but he seems progressive and can only go step by step, like Franziskus.
What I do know is, that a main motivation to introduce the celibate, was that priests don't inherit church land to their offspring anymore.
In other words, I applaud reforming what is possible, but I would not want that job as hypocrasy seems required. Because on the other hand all this should be gods own unique church and I could not preach that, while knowing about all the well, human compromises so to say.
chrisweekly 6 hours ago [-]
On what basis does the pope speak about gender equality and women's rights? As the representative of the catholic church, the cognitive dissonance is profound.
po1nt 6 hours ago [-]
I don't believe there was an era in history more DEI accepting than nowadays.
zaneyard 6 hours ago [-]
What is the point of this comment? Do you mean to say we should cease the pursuit of DEI because we've "come so far"? Of course that's engaging with you with the assumption that you're not intentionally ignoring the weaponization of the movement in the US to further the goals of the current administration.
idiotsecant 6 hours ago [-]
We should just stop using the term DEI. It has been demonized in the common parlance so successfully that to a ton of people it no longer means 'people who are different are made valuable by that difference'- it's been demonized into essentially meaning 'give black people and women jobs they don't deserve'. It's a prime example of propaganda through language pollution.
For whatever reason HN has been slowly goose stepping towards the future lately so I expect this to go over like a lead balloon but I don't much care.
mullingitover 6 hours ago [-]
> We should just stop using the term DEI. It has been demonized in the common parlance so successfully
Whatever term you pick to describe a concerted effort to overcome the tendency to bigotry, they'll just hijack that, too.
There's a whole industry built around this, and the media is so receptive to the right-wing that they'll openly describe how they'll do it[1], will execute the plans in public, and the mainstream media will act as their stenographers.
Do you mean there’s a whole industry built around DEI? Or that there’s a whole industry built around countermessaging the DEI industry?
mullingitover 5 hours ago [-]
> the DEI industry
isn't really a thing so much as it's a collection of principles that can be implemented. To the unprincipled, this needs to be converted into a literal enemy that can be vilified, because any attempt to force them to adhere to principles is an attack.
>The lucrative industry shows few signs of waning–from the spike in well-compensated diversity consultants and czars; to online courses and degree programs at prestigious schools; to professional organizations and conferences; to the commissioning of ever more studies, task forces and climate surveys. The buzzword is emblazoned on blogs and books and boot camps, and Thomson Reuters, a multinational mass-media and information firm, even created a Diversity and Inclusion Index to assess the practices of more than 5,000 publicly traded companies globally.
Manuel_D 5 hours ago [-]
DEI wasn't demonized because it tried to fight bigotry. It demonized itself because it routinely became a dishonest two-faced movement that public denied to be discriminatory, but then privately implemented policies that explicitly discriminated on the basis of sex and gender.
When your leaders publicly condemn the idea that your company is discriminating on the basis of sex, but then privately institutes a system of reserving headcount for women, that'll make most people real cynical about DEI.
hilariously 5 hours ago [-]
And those in power who went out of their way to demonize DEI, is that why they didn't like it? I would argue strongly that no, they had their priors already set, and anything help black people or poor people (the new proxy for hating black people) was bad and they'd lie through their teeth about the impact to get anyone on their side.
Manuel_D 5 hours ago [-]
Yes, they did dislike it because it was discriminatory, not because it helped poor and Black people. I don't know the views of people you've met, but in my circles the opponents of DEI are mostly tech workers in SF and Seattle - not exactly a conservative demographic. I can't count a single Republican between us.
The course of our relationship with DEI was pretty similar: in university we earnestly believed that women were discriminated against in tech hiring. One of us even built a prototype anonymous interviewing platform. Once we entered the workforce, there was pretty big whiplash when we started getting visibility into our own companies' hiring pipelines. Many of us - including myself - found ourselves actively carrying out discrimination on the basis of sex and race. Mostly sex, though - while our DEI advocates often invoked racial disparities to emphasize the need for these discriminatory policies, the actual beneficiaries of these policies were mostly white and Asian women.
Does this make me any less likely to support better school funding, and other public benefits that help poor people and Black people? I don't think so. The discriminatory practices of tech company hiring is pretty far removed from these issues in my view. Why would should an underserved school not receive better funding because some tech companies preferentially hired an Asian female over an Asian male? I see no connection between these two.
mullingitover 5 hours ago [-]
Can you cite any companies which violated federal labor law in this way?
Manuel_D 5 hours ago [-]
Three out of the four companies I've worked at, for one.
YouTube was sued for directing one of its recruiters to exclusively advance diverse candidates for a period of time, and eventually settled with the recruiter [1].
Intel [2] and Microsoft [3] both tied specific percentage quotas to executive's compensation. If saying "reach this racial and gender quota or I'll penalize you financially" isn't discrimination, I'm not sure what is.
Perkins-Coie explicitly excluded applicants from its diversity fellowship program if they didn't meet certain racial, sexual orientation, or other requirements [4].
i like how when a company obviously discriminates against women and minorities by hiring almost entirely white guys that's fine that's to be expected but if you try to fix that discrimination it's an evil conspiracy
Manuel_D 4 hours ago [-]
The fact that the company is majority white does not make discrimination legal. If the Perkins Coie wants to do things like anonymize its interviews, or send fake interview packets to its recruiters and looking for disparities in call back rates then that would be a genuine attempt at identifying potential discrimination.
phillmv 4 hours ago [-]
the discrimination already happened! it's not possible to end up 80% white guy without discriminating. it's curious that the status quo isn't nearly as concerning.
Manuel_D 4 hours ago [-]
> it's not possible to end up 80% white guy without discriminating?
This is untrue, though. The fact that a company does not have representation that is exactly equitable with the general population is not evidence of discrimination.
In fact, you can end up with disparities much larger without discrimination. It's even possible to actively discriminate against a group, and still have that disadvantaged group be overrepresented by a factor of 3 or 4.
That was the case with the Harvard admissions lawsuit. Even though the university was actively discriminating against Asian applicants, the undergrad population was ~20% Asian, despite ~6% of the applicants being Asian.
phillmv 2 hours ago [-]
>The fact that a company does not have representation that is exactly equitable with the general population
i didn't say exactly equitable, i said 80%. it's not possible to have 80% white guys and not be discriminatory.
you're making a bad faith apples to oranges comparison, to say nothing of the merit of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. your viewpoint and disinterest is very clear, i don't know why you even bother arguing about it.
Manuel_D 2 hours ago [-]
Yes, it is possible to have an 80% white organization without discrimination. Perkins Coie is ~80% white but is gender representation is much closer to parity [1], so I'm not sure why you're referring specifically to "white guys".
The relevance of SFFA vs. Harvard is to demonstrate that it's possible to have a substantial overrepresentation - over 3x in the case of Asians at Harvard - despite actively discriminating against the overrepresented group. Whites are only ~1.2x more common at Perkins Coie relative to the general population.
You can keep repeating the line that because a company has X% of Y race it must be evidence of discrimination as many times as you want, repetition doesn't make it true.
This is absurd. Why is it possible to end up with a majority black, tall, male, NBA team without pre-selecting on basis of race, height, or sex?
mullingitover 5 hours ago [-]
YouTube was never found guilty of anything, they just paid to make the argument go away. In the case of Intel and Microsoft you're conflating incentives with quotas. These companies wanted more diversity in their staff, which is a valid and laudable goal, and they were willing to pay extra if that was achieved.
Would you like to try again?
edit: your later addition of Perkins Coie also was settled/dismissed and never adjudicated, and the executive order which claimed to penalize them for discrimination, which was adjudicated later, was a summary judgment in their favor[1].
The real takeaway is that a lot of people are very mad about what they imagine DEI to be.
Yes, the lawsuit against Perkings Coie was dropped, after the law firm agreed to stop engaging in discrimination. As per the case, Parkins Coie did explicitly require that applicants to its diversity fellowship be Black, Latin, or a member of the LGBTQ community. The lawsuit was dropped after Perkins Coie agreed to expand eligibility to all applicants, regardless of race and sexual orientation.
What about the Perkins Coie lawsuit serves to highlight the notion that DEI is often implemented through discriminatory manners? Do you deny the eligibility criteria that Perkins Coie set for its diversity fellowship.
> and the executive order which claimed to penalize them for discrimination, which was adjudicated later, was a summary judgment in their favor[1].
This judgement is largely unrelated to their discriminatory fellowship requirements. The lawsuit about the fellowship was resolved in 2023, before Trump took office. This was a judgement against Trump's executive order - it is not a judgement of Perkins Coie's employment practices before he took office.
Manuel_D 4 hours ago [-]
They settled out of court, YouTube didn't prevail in court. The evidence speaks for itself. Did you not read the emails that plaintiff's manager sent, explicitly telling him to cancel all non-diverse applicants' interviews?
> Please continue with L3 candidates in process and only accept new L3 candidates that are from historically underrepresented groups.
> We are still pre-Goodburger roll out, so that means the only candidates that need pre-allocation are L3s. And we should only consider L3s from our underrepresented groups.
Engage with the evidence of the lawsuit before proclaiming that it's meritless because YouTube settled with the plaintiff, rather than going to court and losing. If these emails were fabricated YouTube would have a slam-dunk case against the plaintiff. But they chose to settle.
> In the case of Intel and Microsoft you're conflating incentives with quotas
The incentives were implemented in the form of quotas. You're writing as though these are mutually exclusive things, when they're not.
"Your salary is $110,000. If you don't meet a quota of 40% women, I'm docking our pay by $10,000 as a penalty for failing to meet this quota."
"Your salary is $100,000. Because we want to make the company more diverse, we're giving a $10,000 bonus for reaching an inclusion milestone of 40% women."
This is exactly what Intel did, from the Atlantic article:
> But in the past couple of years, Intel decided to try a few other approaches, including hiring quotas.
> Well, not quotas. You can’t say quotas. At least not in the United States. In some European countries, like Norway, real, actual quotas—for example, a rule saying that 40 percent of a public company’s board members must be female—have worked well; qualified women have been found and the Earth has continued turning. However, in the U.S., hiring quotas are illegal. “We never use the word quota at Intel,” says Danielle Brown, the company’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. Rather, Intel set extremely firm hiring goals. For 2015, it wanted 40 percent of hires to be female or underrepresented minorities.
> Now, it’s true that lots of companies have hiring goals. But to make its goals a little more, well, quota-like, Intel introduced money into the equation. In Intel’s annual performance-bonus plan, success in meeting diversity goals factors into whether the company gives employees an across-the-board bonus. (The amounts vary widely but can be substantial.) If diversity efforts succeed, everybody at the company gets a little bit richer.
mullingitover 4 hours ago [-]
> You're writing as though these are mutually exclusive things
That's how the law sees it.
Manuel_D 4 hours ago [-]
When has the court upheld a policy of setting a specific percentage racial or gender quota, and penalizing employees financially if that quota is not met? If I told my employees "I'll reduce your pay by 90% if you hire any pregnant women" that's not discrimination against gender and family status? You really think a court would buy this argument? Of course, 90% is a much bigger proportion of salary than the DEI bonuses in the example above, but fundamentally this is no different of a policy - it's still tying compensation to the protected class of hired candidates.
And again, you're still glossing over the other two examples: A manager at YouTube explicitly directed a recruiter to only proceed with diverse applicants. And Perkins Coie did, in fact, restrict eligibility for its fellowship program on the basis of race and sexual orientation (this was settled in 2023 after they agreed to stop discriminating. The 2025 judgement you linked above doesn't in any way defend Perkins Coie's hiring policies, only that Trump couldn't further punish them by banning them from federal buildings).
mullingitover 4 hours ago [-]
> When has the court upheld a policy of setting a specific percentage racial or gender quota, and penalizing employees financially if that quota is not met?
Irrelevant.
> And again, you're still glossing over the other two examples
Two examples is not a pervasive problem in my opinion, so it's super easy to gloss over.
What is a pervasive problem is the tables being very tilted against certain groups of people.
3 hours ago [-]
Manuel_D 3 hours ago [-]
If the courts haven't found in favor of companies using quotas as incentives, then you have no basis to claim that that quotas are legally acceptable as long as they're framed as incentives. This is directly relevant to your claims.
I find it noteworthy how often proponents of DEI talk in vague, euphemistic terms. You left me to guess what you mean by "certain groups of people". The group that I've witnessed benefit the most from DEI in tech companies is women - not Black people, or poor people. And the experimental evidence on the gender disparity in tech company recruiting does not back up the idea that women are disadvantaged when it comes to applying to tech companies: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID3946621_cod...
thegrimmest 4 hours ago [-]
I think the demonization comes from people resenting the use of authority to restrict liberty, and from conflating the resentment of authority with bigotry. In this case, let private people discriminate freely.
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." -H. L. Mencken
I think people should be allowed to make their own choices in terms of whom to hire/associate with, with absolutely no outside intervention. That doesn't make me a bigot.
api 5 hours ago [-]
It also refers to a wide range of different policies that need to be evaluated on their merits. These policies are not all the same.
It’s become a thought stopping cliche. Modern discourse is absolutely loaded with thought stopping cliches so it’s not the only one by any stretch.
urbnspacecowboy 6 hours ago [-]
> We should just stop using the term DEI. It has been demonized in the common parlance...
We should just stop using the term woke. It has been demonized in the common parlance...
We should just stop using the term social justice. It has been demonized in the common parlance...
We should just stop using the term critical race theory. It has been demonized in the common parlance...
We should just stop using the term diversity. It has been demonized in the common parlance...
And on and on and on. Why should we stop using terms because bigots demonize them "in the common parlance"? Bigots demonize every term.
iugtmkbdfil834 5 hours ago [-]
Feel free to use either, but you will be summarily ignored.
Manuel_D 6 hours ago [-]
Opposition to DEI is not opposition to diversity so much as it is opposition to discrimination. More than just discrimination, DEI often came in the form of a particularly dishonest and two faced approach to it. Unlike affirmative action - which in my experience tends to acknowledge that sometimes justice requires a measured and deliberate exception to equality - DEI often tried to simultaneously condemn the idea that we were discriminating in favor of certain groups, while also effecting policies that were overtly discriminatory.
If I told my executives I would dock their pay if they exceeded a cap of X% men in their org, would that be discrimination? I doubt many would contest that issuing explicit penalties for breaking a cap on a particular gender. Ah, but what if I gave executives a bonus for reaching an "inclusion milestone" of (100-X)% women? That's not discrimination - that's DEI. Microsoft [1] and Intel [2] both instituted this policy.
My own past employers extended this logic to headcount. In 2019 we instituted a policy of reserving EDP (engineering, product, & design) headcount for "diverse" candidates. What does does "diverse" mean? It means women of any race, as well as Black and Latino men - though in practice >95% of "diverse" candidates were white and Asian women. Each quarter, 20 heads were reserved for hiring "diverse" candidates, and when managers hired from this reserved pool it did not count towards their allocated headcount. You see, if I have a headcount of 100 and I exclude men from applying to 20 of those, then that's discrimination. But if I have a headcount of 80 and we allocate 20 additional headcount that's exclusively available to women, that's not discrimination that's DEI.
This is why, as contradictory as it may sound, I do consider myself supportive of affirmative action, but opposed to DEI. Certainly there are some groups that implement DEI in a transparent and honest manner, but my read is that DEI tends to be done in a two-faced manner while "affirmative action" carries the connotation of being upfront that sometimes equality needs to be honored in the breach to ameliorate the unequal circumstances of reality.
Ad hominem. It would be better to argue against his points than his person.
Manuel_D 5 hours ago [-]
In case you couldn't infer from my username, I am Latin.
boxed 12 hours ago [-]
> > a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion
> Unrelated to AI, but a wonderful support of the breadth of humanity in this anti-DEI time.
I mean.. DEI was in reality homogenization and eliminated diversity. Just because you agreed with the small amount of allowed opinions/people doesn't make it more diverse.
vermilingua 11 hours ago [-]
Perhaps, perhaps not; but you can't possibly argue that the current anti-DEI climate better fosters diversity than a pro-DEI or a-DEI environment.
daveguy 7 hours ago [-]
DEI was only ever meant to reflect the diversity of society in our institutions (which historically have been and continue to be homogeneous compared to society). Of course there are better and worse ways to create the outcome of increased diversity. But thr recent backlash is the antithesis of diversity, wrapped up in the propaganda of "reverse racism."
Forgeties79 7 hours ago [-]
The anti-DEI “movement,” especially what we see in the US, is mostly thinly veiled racism by another name.
All one has to see is how frequently people call any non-white/non-male hire or appointment a “DEI-hire” because they can’t possibly conceive that marginalized groups would see any success based on merit. They start from a position where they are all incompetent and being given an unfair advantage until proven otherwise. It’s also on you to guess whatever their arbitrary bar is.
9087653545 7 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
Curosinono 6 hours ago [-]
The racial quota is used to support minorites.
You don't need to generate a new account just to spew racism.
You can argue that yo udon't think DEI helps and suggest an alternative but DEI is not racism even if you put it like this on purpose.
Forgeties79 5 hours ago [-]
Is interesting to me that I often see that kind of default response (“racial quotas”) as if that’s all DEI is when you get down to it. It’s really about creating a space that includes everybody and creates opportunities for all. There are many ways to approach that.
I know in my brief time being involved with a DEI initiative the discussion was never about how many of any particular demographic we hired. It was about asking if we had internal barriers that disproportionally impacted certain groups. I think that’s a very different mindset than “quotas.” But people arguing in bad faith generally aren’t looking for nuance so here we are.
Edit: to be clear, this is directed at the other commenter not you
anjel 6 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
fatherzine 10 hours ago [-]
'you shall have no other gods before me'. operationally, a warning. false worship is dangerous. we get what we worship (value above all, orient towards, optimize for). heaven or hell, read it immanently or transcendentally, personally or collectively. either way, choosing the right worship is paramount.
the conundrum: what is the right objective? puerile attempts, eg "maximize flourishing" or perhaps "minimize suffering" are trivially countered by paperclip machines fulfilling the letter while laying utter waste
'mystery of the person'
given the context, some keywords for orientation: free will, rejection of temptation, the cross
Curosinono 7 hours ago [-]
You are joking with your anti-DEI comment right? You do know that you do talk about the christian church?
They do nothing to include everyone. They are not standing up when it counts or excumante churches and believes who do not follow proper humanitarity.
They are not even in the forefront of fighting climate change which hurts billions.
netcan 8 hours ago [-]
It's kind of worth reading. Not to learn about AI. But... it is an interesting/historic intersection of religion and technology.
Side note: (a) This new pope is very good at "political rhetoric" and (dare I say) polemic. He's a lot more relevant than recent popes. (b) There seems to have been a vibe shift, re: secular sentiments towards religion.
There is potentially a lot happening at this intersection... say catholicism and AI.
For example... LLMs make scripture a lot more accessible. That tends to be impactful, historically. It's Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza and Schmidt. This kind of thing is a niche interest... even among the faithful, but an important niche. And... it just answers your questions, patiently.
It's also a therapist, confidant and advice giver... potentially a confessor or priest. Talk of "making an AI god" got a little stale, but... there are many ways that LLMs might take god-like roles in people's lives.
Predictions are futile, but I suspect we are going to see AI encroachment into religious/spiritual domains. I further suspect that good, natural, conversational audio is the bottleneck.
Personally... I'm curious about this Pope/AI thing. I find it interesting.
danilocesar 7 hours ago [-]
I'm an atheist, but I have to admit the previous guy was pretty dope.
alecco 7 hours ago [-]
Yes it's a very dangerous concentration of power. But I don't believe strong words or proposing regulation by just another elite would change much.
Please join/help open source groups doing small + local or distributed models. There's a lot to do. Support truly open source companies.
Let's walk the walk.
dogcomplex 3 hours ago [-]
This. AI can, should, and will erode all legacy companies into intelligent utilities - with an end state of nearly-free open source utilities.
Anyone concerned with concentrations of power and abuse of AI should be focusing on getting open source work to keep pace with decentralizing that power into accessible free tools for the masses.
nickvec 7 hours ago [-]
Which open source companies would you recommend supporting?
I would also count DeepSeek because they publish and share so much. Their new caching prices are very good for not that bad models. Last week I needed to generate content via API and I spent literally $3.40 where before I would've paid easily $200. But you have to connect directly as it seems OpenRouter messes up caching somehow.
Their work on SERA (open training, open weights) is fantastic. 40 GPU days of time, training a competitive model, but also, a model built for further close fine-tuning. That refining and distilling models down, especially for complex code-bases, to make the model want to do the right thing, to know the process you use, has such promise. And it's done so in the open, with so much work to help you train or refine yourself, at such low costs! https://allenai.org/blog/open-coding-agents
Join some Discord servers of open source projects/startups. Hang out and make friends. Figure out where and how you can fit best.
twoodfin 10 hours ago [-]
AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise and access to data
I’d bet the other way: You could have said exactly the same thing about computing 60 years ago, when IBM systems cost millions of dollars and filled whole rooms. And of course many people did.
Personal, commodity access to compute won, and won so thoroughly that it enabled this wave of scary compute centralization.
Centralized, scaled compute will always fill a purpose. But neither Microsoft, nor Facebook, nor OpenAI started out needing “Cloud Scale”.
The first one man unicorn startup will, I’m fairly certain, not be paying Anthropic per month or per token for the vast bulk of their matmul.
tensor 5 hours ago [-]
As someone who created and exited a successful AI startup in the past, I'll say it's actually quite different today. Even I don't have the funds to start a foundational model company, and I absolutely wouldn't before my exit either.
While I do believe there may be valid path forward with smaller models, there are still significant financial barriers to entry that didn't exist to the same extent in the past.
darepublic 9 hours ago [-]
Time to start on the first draft of the orange Catholic bible
Sure, we’ll get a tyrannical worm phase… but really I think I’d prefer that to the path of tech bros and MBAs controlling my universe. At least it makes the focus clear.
ttfkam 8 hours ago [-]
I think you might have skipped over the 10,000+ years of strict feudalism, a shrouded theocracy pushing their century-spanning agendas, aristocracy through landed gentry, and a drug-addled transportation cartel, all overseen by a massive, monopolistic megacorporation that controls all trade, economic affairs, and commerce throughout the universe. And everyone's a drug addict if they can afford it.
But sure, at least they didn't have AI! lol!
In other words, Warhammer 40K but without any aliens to trigger a massive xenophobic response that removed all warlike guardrails.
stared 9 hours ago [-]
My secular take: "we want Star Trek, not Philip K. Dick, future".
49 minutes ago [-]
nickagliano 46 minutes ago [-]
I can’t believe there’s a Pope from Chicago quoting Gandalf in an encyclical about AI.
wald3n 7 hours ago [-]
Love this: building for the common good means accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected. Today, the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations. All too often, we place our hope in unlimited “upgrades,” in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities, and in immediate solutions incapable of healing people’s wounds. As a result, while some pursue the illusion of unlimited self-assertion, many are deprived of basic necessities.
phtrivier 12 hours ago [-]
Cue Pieter Thiel explaining how this message of compassion is actually the word of the ant-christ while setting his software (maybe "built in Rust !) to all the earthly empires.
MASNeo 4 hours ago [-]
The church has arguably used technology progress to its advantage, repeatedly. I cannot wait what the Magnifica Humanitas will start. Will Musk respond by making Grok more faithful, what will be the Leonardo DaVinci of our times for future generations to admire, will the Vatican research if God can express himself in LLM?
Paracompact 4 hours ago [-]
> will the Vatican research if God can express himself in LLM?
Such would be dangerously close to divination, in the style of reading tea leaves or Ouija boards.
cozyman 4 hours ago [-]
[dead]
fooker 8 hours ago [-]
This is a surprisingly nuanced and technically literate take on this topic. Kudos.
I wonder if this sort of thing got this dude elected, to navigate the changing times.
consumer451 5 hours ago [-]
I believe that Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was there, and available for consultation.
jbrun 8 hours ago [-]
Interestingly, the invention of the printing press, a clear analogous technology to AI, was directly linked to the schism and creation of the protestant and reformation movement and bloody religious wars. So the Catholic church knows what it is talking about here!
ZetaRicky 13 hours ago [-]
Interestingly, the Latin version of the encyclica is yet to be released at the moment
qsort 12 hours ago [-]
Modern encyclicals aren't written in Latin anymore. They're drafted in Italian and the title is the Latin translation of the incipit.
Indeed, the beginning of the Italian text is: "La magnifica umanità creata da Dio si trova oggi..." from which, Magnifica Humanitas.
wl 10 hours ago [-]
For those who don't know why that's interesting: The tradional practice for creating these kinds of texts is to first write an editio typica in Latin. This Latin text is then the basis for translations into vernacular languages.
stavros 12 hours ago [-]
Yeah, I don't know how they expect the people of Latin America to read this.
12 hours ago [-]
loloquwowndueo 12 hours ago [-]
Well because it’s Latin America, not the US, the vast majority of people are at least bilingual anyway :)
brunoarueira 12 hours ago [-]
Although, it's called Latin America many countries speak variations of spanish and Brazil speak portuguese, just because those languages derived from latin and not because there the people speak it
stavros 12 hours ago [-]
That was the joke :(
KaiserPro 11 hours ago [-]
If it helps, I got your joke
stavros 11 hours ago [-]
<3
brunoarueira 11 hours ago [-]
Haha don't worry, next time I'll take care :'D
whizzter 12 hours ago [-]
The net is too infused with dumb takes that the joke becomes indistinguishable to reality.
stavros 11 hours ago [-]
This is true, but we also can't go around adding /s to everything. Ah well, I guess it's a risk I have to take.
fuzzfactor 1 hours ago [-]
There's always the time the Pope's limo got pulled over by the cops . . .
> “Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of ‘armed’ competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon”
This is very on-point: capitalism-driven AI development as we have it today will always turn against the common good due to it's singular profit-motive.
What a time: the pope having a much clearer picture of the risks & dangers of 'AI' than most people, many 'tech leaders' and certainly most politicians.
gchamonlive 8 hours ago [-]
I think while it's a very lucid comment, it's still too much reconciliatory for the position that the pope occupies. He should be advocating from a sustainable transition from the current capitalist/consumerist economic doctrine to one more centered on welfare and the care for the other, following his religious doctrine's moral values.
iamacyborg 7 hours ago [-]
I don’t know that the Papacy has ever been about that though
gchamonlive 6 hours ago [-]
That the papacy isn't about speaking out when the world in the eyes of the pope is taking a turn away from the catholic moral principles?
iamacyborg 6 hours ago [-]
Given how those virtues have changed over time and how badly behaved a large number of popes have been, yeah, no. The more cynical read is that the Papacy has for a very extensive period been about increasing the personal worldly power of the Pope and his close associates.
gchamonlive 6 hours ago [-]
> Given how those virtues have changed over time
Virtues change over time. You can't judge 16th century morals with our current view of virtues.
> how badly behaved a large number of popes have been
This is from our point of view. I think there should be legal guardrails so that gov and church don't mix, but this kind of moral separation is the kind of thing that created the conditions for the holocaust.
Of course the other extreme is to have a theocracy, so everything in balance.
> The more cynical read is that the Papacy has for a very extensive period been about increasing the personal worldly power of the Pope and his close associates.
This is a problem in every institution, it needs power and power corrupts absolutely. But the pope dedicates his life for a doctrine that if correctly applied presents a really important counterweight for the current system of morals that reduces the individual to what it can produce. This is why I think this is an important period to listen to our religious leaders, not because they have the answers, but because first they are deserving of some level or respect and second just because they have incentives that are different from our political leaders.
iamacyborg 5 hours ago [-]
> first they are deserving of some level or respect
Are they?
> because they have incentives that are different from our political leaders
Do they?
gchamonlive 3 hours ago [-]
Yes. The pope is a theology academic, they speak multiple languages and are immersed in a lifetime of studies. Isn't this worthy of respect? They also don't pursue re-elections. Doesn't this generate different incentives than elected leaders?
vintagedave 8 hours ago [-]
Yes. I was slightly disappointed by the commentary on welfare itself:
> This principle encourages us to move beyond any form of paternalistic or welfare-based management of societal life, but instead to promote a culture of shared responsibility in a State that values citizens’ initiative, and a civil society capable of forging bonds and mobilizing energies in the service of the common good.
The section above on the universal destination of goods was far more encouraging.
He did also write,
> The idea of “social justice” helps us recognize that injustices do not arise solely from the wrong choices of individuals, but also from structures, mechanisms and economic and cultural systems that produce inequality almost automatically.
logicchains 7 hours ago [-]
The pope, as a Christian, is well aware that human nature is fundamentally sinful. If you take away the ability for people to profit themselves from their work, they just stop working and you get mass starvation like China and Russia post communist revolution.
gchamonlive 6 hours ago [-]
This smuggles in so many assumptions and misconceptions I find it hard to decide where to start. Maybe from the beginning:
> The pope, as a Christian, is well aware that human nature is fundamentally sinful.
This might be true in the context of the original sin, but philosophically speaking you can't make this assertion, since there is no consensus on what the human nature is, or even if there is an essential human nature.
> If you take away the ability for people to profit themselves from their work, they just stop working
That's incorrect because it assumes the only reason for working is profit, in which case art for instance in many forms wouldn't exist.
> they just stop working and you get mass starvation like China and Russia post communist revolution
This is just a wrong impression what communism is. What creates these conditions are autocracies and oligarchies, not communism. In either case, even if this were true, this statement isn't falsifiable so can't really be taken into account.
ZacnyLos 13 hours ago [-]
AI must be “disarmed” in order to free it from the mentality of military, economic, and cognitive competition. “To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern,” he says. “To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity” (110). He devotes ample space to a critique of transhumanism and posthumanism, which interpret progress as the overcoming of human limits. Instead, limitations are not defects to be eliminated, but a constitutive dimension of the human person, because it is in fragility and finitude that relationship and openness to God and to others mature. He says we must remember that “humanity flourishes not despite limitations, but often through them” (118).
Pursuing technological innovation at the expense of eliminating human limitations, he says, would cause an anthropological regression. “Humanity—in all its grandeur and woundedness—must never be replaced or surpassed,” he says. Technology can alleviate humanity’s sufferings and open new possibilities, but it must not deny the essence of humanity, which is our “capacity for relationship and love” (126). In the face of AI, says the Pope, “the true alternative is not between enthusiasm and fear, but between two paths of development: a progress that serves individuals and peoples, or a progress that subjects them to the mentality of power” (129).
haaz 10 hours ago [-]
Great to see the Pope recognises the gravity of what is to come with AI and is coming out early with this.
mercacona 8 hours ago [-]
NUMBERED PARAGRAPHS, YESSSS! Seriously, once page numbers have become optional, electronic editions of books (monographs, essays, and academic texts) need to number the paragraphs so we can keep references working. I’m fed up with referencing the entire text or specific chapters.
skrebbel 7 hours ago [-]
I love how excited you are about this and it's rubbing off on me.
lynndotpy 6 hours ago [-]
I love numbered paragraphs, but this is the standard for religious texts, no? Famously so for centuries?
I love it when old stuffy institutions are on the cutting-edge of clarity of communication as much as anyone else. (The SEC with its "HOW EQUIFAX NEGLECTED CYBERSECURITY AND SUFFERED A DEVASTATING DATA BREACH" report where nearly each section title was a complete sentence, making the Table of Contents also serve as a summary, got me very very excited).
I would welcome, numbered paragraphs _and_, an HTML standard, and full-sentence-section-titles in the world of academia.
In fact tbh I tried to get through this here Encyclical 3 times already but just didn't manage (knowing absolutely nothing about Catholicism except what's in the Dogma movie didn't help), and I can't help but think now that if it had a TOC like the Equifax report it'd be spectacular.
bzmrgonz 7 hours ago [-]
I am confused with the church's stand on this. If it is a genuine moment in time that the created begin to create on their own accord, then why not promote the distribution of these ai creations to us, so we can boost our productivity and carry on for another millenia or two. Or is it that this creation truly gives us independence from church, state, and consumerism? and that frightens them? Remember that there are 3 main powers in the world, political, religious and consumerism. CHina is aggressively pursuing humanoid droids. I can't wait to have one droiding(manning) my homestead. The task of animal husbandry, aquaponics, etc, will be childsplay then.
shepherdjerred 6 hours ago [-]
> Remember that there are 3 main powers in the world
Michael Scott:
There are four kinds of business: tourism, food service, railroads, and sales.
[pause]
Michael Scott:
And hospitals/manufacturing. And air travel.
theflyinghorse 6 hours ago [-]
Why should you posses a homestead? What value do you produce that droid can't that would make you deserving of anything at all? Why should corporations that design, manufacture and program the droid not own the land instead?
We need to very rapidly decouple human worth from the economic lens otherwise the economic argument is against humans.
regularization 6 hours ago [-]
Interesting how politicians, preachers and consumers are the powers in the world but rich people are missing from the equation.
exe34 6 hours ago [-]
> I can't wait to have one droiding(manning) my homestead.
I know lots of people are excited because an ancient institution has something to say about AI.... But what's said is not really novel or even interesting.
The letter aims to maintain the status quo of the project of the Church.
The world is shifting under the Vatican's feet and the crappy system they once lorded over is done.
It's time for change, maybe people don't need to work anymore and maybe people should aim to reengineer humanity and eliminate illness, old age, suffering and vulnerability. We can fundamentally change how society distributes wealth.
Some of the arguments are rich coming from the Church: being scolded about centralization of power, claiming truth and shared information is a common good, and consider the history of the Church in their anti-war declarations.
The most astonishing thing in this letter is the pope declaring that modern technology has rendered Aquinas's just-war theory out of date.
sirnicolaz 7 hours ago [-]
"people should aim to reengineer humanity and eliminate illness, old age, suffering and vulnerability"
sure, that's exactly where AI is headed.
also: just imagine a world where people don't age. just imagine it for a second.
(I highly recommend the book. I do not recommend the world it imagines.)
energy123 4 hours ago [-]
Which the Pope is against, the encyclical says that eliminating suffering is a bad thing because it's a necessity for good things to happen.
Curosinono 6 hours ago [-]
I seen this movie but it was a dystopian movie.
I can imagine an utopia though were this works out well. I can even imagine that after 100 years or 200 a lot more people become more melowed out and our society overall will be more calm.
WhyNotHugo 10 hours ago [-]
This quote is from 1903. Times haven't changed that much:
> Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people.
kspacewalk2 8 hours ago [-]
The truly interesting question, and the crux of the matter, also hasn't changed much since 1903:
How?
saghm 6 hours ago [-]
If you ignore everything that happened in between 1903 and today, it might seem like we've never made any progress on this, but at least in the US wealth inequality was demonstrably not as much as an issue for some of the time in between. For a time in the 20th century, it was possible for someone solidly middle class in the US to be able to save up a bit of money and afford a down payment on a house within a decade of working. That's something we've lost to time now, and it's not because it's impossible to achieve or because of the bogeymen of DEI making the fruits of labor and technology too sparse to share with everyone, but because an increasingly large portion of the pie is going to an increasingly smaller set of people.
The delta between 1903 and today in this regard might be small, but the line between them isn't flat, and that makes it even more tragic and frustrating to have this questioned as if it's an impossible problem.
oersted 5 hours ago [-]
I do agree that the US handled the situation relatively well in the second half of the 20th century, plenty of such opportunities have been squantered badly.
But we cannot ignore that it was truly a unique opportunity:
- The US was the only intact industrial country left after WWII.
- With massive momentum from industrial deployment during the war.
- With a massive optimistic and hardened workforce coming home.
- With plenty of saved wartime income they didn't have a chance to spend due to rationing and shortages, a lot of it saved as wartime bonds just starting to deliver healthy yields.
- With the New Deal that resulted from the horrible Great Depression making sure they got to truly benefit from the fruits of their labour.
- And a wide-open global market to lend to and to sell to for rebuilding the world.
That is not something that can be replicated easily at any time, and if the US makes decisions expecting that that is the norm, there's a disaster coming (perhaps it's why it's a disaster now).
toasty228 5 hours ago [-]
> the US wealth inequality was demonstrably not as much as an issue for some of the time in between
But now we're back to pre ww1 level of inequalities
It did absolutely change, a lot, it was one of the main themes of the 20th century: revolution. In the old sense of the word, turning the social order upside down.
It took many forms: capitalist social democracy, communism, fascism, feminism... Left or right, without making a value judgement, they were all revolutions seeking to empower the working masses.
Of course, when you get rid of kings, it's really really hard to make sure the vacuum is not filled by something even worse. Credit where credit's due, as a European, I do believe that the US is one of the few cases that was somewhat successful in not completely bungling this opportunity (although there's the detail of slave labour, and the conquest of natives...).
And after many-many horribly failed attempts, much of the world did end up in a relatively healthy state around the second half of the 20th century. Fukuyama's end of history and all.
Now we seem to be regressing again. Perhaps it's part of the eternal cycle and it was always coming. Perhaps it's not actually regressing all that much, and it just looks like it to our coddled selves, or we have become more ambitious on what we think is right. Perhaps people have found new loopholes (tech) on how to get ahead and dominate the rest of us, and we just need to catch up and get it under control again.
Perhaps that quote from 1903 is relevant now, but it doesn't mean that it was relevant the whole time since. Perhaps it was, I wasn't there.
ngcazz 5 hours ago [-]
Revolution!
komali2 8 hours ago [-]
There's been plenty of examples of workers seizing the means of production and establishing sustained non-capitalist organization (State or otherwise). We have any number of strategies to choose from: The PRC, Soviet Union, Syndicalized Spain (my favorite, seems the least likely to lead to police state), Vietnam, Cuba. The question thus isn't "how," but more specifically a couple other questions: "How do we prevent capitalist forces from liberalizing our movement (PRC, Soviet Union)," "How do we prevent fascists from killing us all (Syndicalized Spain)," "How do we prevent becoming a state-capitalist police state that halts the revolution (PRC, Soviet Union)"?
pfannkuchen 3 hours ago [-]
Can someone explain what it even means to seize the means of production?
Like if the means of production is land, and you are seizing land, sure that makes sense to me.
But most goods are not made by land alone but by machines and factories and transport systems and etc. If you seize those as preexisting entities, what happens after you seize them? If you as a group can operate and expand those things, can’t you just build them yourselves also, and if so there is a way to work within the existing framework to do that, which is to start a company. Is seizing the means of production not equivalent to starting a company and stealing things others have built for the company to get started with? Why is that a good thing?
Like I personally agree that wealth accumulation is bad if it has political power go along with it, and there are huge problems with our system and lots of debt formats should be made illegal, I just don’t get why anyone thinks “seize the means of production” is the answer and I feel like I might be confused about what that really means.
oersted 6 hours ago [-]
The hard part seems to be for the workers to keep the means of production after they are taken. In all those examples, you end up with a leadership that owns everything nominally "on behalf of the people". If anything, democracy gets the closest to that ideal, a compromise with all it's flaws.
Well, it's rather patronising of of me to call that "the hard part", after all the terrible struggles workers have gone through to earn a seat at the table, but you know what I mean.
lobocinza 6 hours ago [-]
All of the examples you gave caused much more tragedy than the system they meant to replace.
weakfish 4 hours ago [-]
I don't think the OP disagrees, considering they wrote
> "my favorite, seems the least likely to lead to police state"
achierius 8 hours ago [-]
While this is certainly the more interesting question, the unfortunate reality is that the ideological complex of capital (even if weakening, and no longer effectively reproducing itself) is still strong enough that most in the West can't even imagine a better world (other than "less bad capitalism"), much less think about how to get there. Consequently messages like the above are of great value in moving more people towards a point where questions like yours become relevant.
oersted 6 hours ago [-]
> the West can't even imagine a better world
That's an important point. It's so hard to think of a better system, if you take the task seriously and actually think through all the consequences of each option.
As a result, as usual, the loud people that ignore all the details end up capturing everyone's imagination with a good story, and we stumble upon yet another century of nightmares.
Do you truly have a answer for a social architecture that is substantially better than a capitalist social democracy, flawed and compromised as it is? Because I really don't if I'm being honest with myself, and I am yet to hear one.
weakfish 4 hours ago [-]
I don't have the mental power at this moment to write out my full thoughts on the subject so forgive my rambling thoughts that follow (an aside- withdrawing from SSRIs is an _unpleasant experience_)
I think the problem I find with arguments that Capitalism is the best/least bad system tend to be that they start from a false premise, in my opinion. I have a friend who makes the joke all the time that any system of government works if people were just nice to each other, but he has a point. I often hear that "oh, communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish." That's true, if you believe that humans are inherently selfish, but my counter-point to that is asking how much of it is innate vs. how much of it is trained by our culture and reflects back in those communist attempts because the sudden change in social architecture didn't give enough time to 'train it out of' the culture.
Back to the thing my friend says - if you believe that communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish/greedy/etc, I'd say to you also that capitalism is currently not working _because humans are being selfish and greedy_ in a system _that explicitly rewards that_. Which, maybe is worse. Not as in the outcomes are worse immediately than Soviet Russia etc. but for the long-term trajectory of human society.
I don't pretend I have an answer for how we can get from point A (capitalist system) to point B (future space communism) in a way that slowly shifts human thinking towards mutual aid and collective action, but I think it's short-sighted to assume that the way humans act in a system that rewards greed/selfishness is innate.
mgfist 6 hours ago [-]
> the unfortunate reality is that the ideological complex of capital (even if weakening, and no longer effectively reproducing itself) is still strong enough that most in the West can't even imagine a better world (other than "less bad capitalism")
That's one way to put it. Another perspective (mine) is that capitalism enables anyone to try and make things better, and if you make things better for the right user, they will reward you.
komali2 8 hours ago [-]
Well, in that case, my "how" has always been along anarchistic lines: establishing parallel forms of resource distribution, establishing habits and communities of mutual aid, and in doing so, delegitimizing and rendering obsolete the State, capitalism, and systems of hierarchy.
Fun techcentric utopian speculation about this: Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway" and Ruthanna Emry's "A Half-Built Garden."
Essentially, can we leverage our current post-scarcity society to expropriate everything people need in a sustainable way that cuts capitalism and the State out of the loop? For example, why would people buy food if they can get it for free from farming syndicates or similar? (see: Global Village Construction Kit, Food Not Bombs, Food Not Lawns) Why would people buy medicine if they can print it for free from pirated recipes? (see: Four Thieves Vinegar Collective)
I see the Right to Repair and FOSS movements as a foundation to build upon for this. Anarchism (or at least, anti-capitalism) exists right under everyone's noses, in all the FOSS software installed on their computers. Existent example of people laboring without profit motive and contributing to the commons.
My personal life goal is to figure out how to capture that same energy to tackle the bottom layers of Maslow's hierarchy.
axus 6 hours ago [-]
Would this be an accurate summary? "We don't need to create violence if we can create prosperity"
oersted 6 hours ago [-]
I really like the sound of that, but these proposals never acknowledge the monumental challenge of truly incentivizing people to help each other, beyond shallow niceties.
I'm not entirely cynical, people generally are very open to be generous with one another and collaborate for a common good, but up to a point.
Currently people spend the majority of their hours doing relatively hard work for the collective's benefit (kinda). Exactly because capitalism makes selfishness into selflessness (very kinda). Also people are relatively civilized to one another thanks to the considerable latent force of the state's monopoly on violence.
People will be nice to each other when it doesn't cost them much and/or when the opposite costs them dearly. But will they work as hard as now for each other just to be nice? Will they not harm each other when there are no significant consequences and something to gain?
A fair free market is far from a natural phenomenon, it needs to be protected and maintained by some external force. If you let things unfold naturally, what you get is kings, and many layers of dominating hierarchy underneath, exploiting the masses, which exactly what we had the whole time.
I suppose that the post-scarcity idea is that people neither need to work hard, nor have significant reasons to harm, if they have everything they want. Sure, let's talk if we ever get there, but until then we have other problems to deal with.
PS: Don't forget that people are able to do FOSS because they have well paid jobs that don't completely drain them of their energy. For others, getting the reputation and/or experience for a better job is the incentive. There's a very different social infrastructure making that work, FOSS doesn't sustain itself, not even close. But yes, it does prove that when people's needs are covered, some of them will do great things for everyone without much incentive, but usually not enough to cover everyone's wants.
kspacewalk2 8 hours ago [-]
I'm all in favour of grassroots experimentation and a search for something to improve upon, and then replace capitalism. This is how capitalism itself came about and spread, though we can argue about how much it was imposed after it ceased being the underdog.
What I am weary of is that such experimentation, and the energy it generates, will eventually be overtaken by the next iteration of people who want to stop nibbling at the margins and break a few eggs already, some sort of anarchist revolutionary vanguard. Much like with communism, skilful opportunists with a thirst for power will be all too happy to take over this energy and direct it toward building the next totalitarian regime, one which will of course claim to be rendering the State obsolete, but will be about as anarchist as North Korea is a people's democratic republic.
xandrius 9 hours ago [-]
Yep but the anti-socialism/communism world did wonders to make that feel like kryptonite whenever those words get brought up, even though anyone who is doesn't see themselves as "rich" in that sentence who fully agree. That's why even factory workers are anti-communism or anti-union which are literally the best way to fight back the imbalance of power.
whodidntante 6 hours ago [-]
The "imbalance of power" can only be "fought" by eliminating the concentrations of power. This is not a capitalist vs communist thing,it is, at least, a human thing, as humans need hierarchy, and power ends up being held by the few. The Romans, the Ottomans, the Persians, the Qing, and many, many other empires all have had the same "issues". I am sure this "problem" goes back to antiquity.
adamtaylor_13 9 hours ago [-]
You have to somehow separate the horrible evils that have been inflicted on the world by Communism before you can get people to consider words closely associated with it.
Being anti-communism is good not only for the individual's health but for their society as a whole.
nicholsonpk 7 hours ago [-]
The problem, generally, with this view point is that it attributes all of a societies ills to Communism and none of (or few of) societies ills to Capitalism.
For example, do you believe the Capitalist system has nothing to do with the eagerness of the United States to drop bombs throughout the world for the past 100 years? Personally I see these actions as unnecessary and evil but pushed to continue by the people who stand to gain the most wealth and influence from them.
adamtaylor_13 4 hours ago [-]
I did not excuse capitalism from critique. I'm not sure how you arrived there from my comment.
redwall_hp 4 hours ago [-]
The richest capitalist in the world unilaterally axed USAID at the behest of his cronies, and has directly resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children to date. Projections are 9-14 million overall deaths by starvation and disease by 2030. And that was just kicked off a few months ago.
Musk and Trump are doing a Holodomor in front of the world's eyes.
weakfish 4 hours ago [-]
Copying and pasting my reply elsewhere in the thread that summarizes my thoughts here as well:
I don't have the mental power at this moment to write out my full thoughts on the subject so forgive my vague thoughts (an aside- withdrawing from SSRIs is an _unpleasant experience_)
I think the problem I find with arguments that Capitalism is the best/least bad system tend to be that they start from a false premise, in my opinion. I have a friend who makes the joke all the time that any system of government works if people were just nice to each other, but he has a point. I often hear that "oh, communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish." That's true, if you believe that humans are inherently selfish, but my counter-point to that is asking how much of it is innate vs. how much of it is trained by our culture and reflects back in those communist attempts because the sudden change in social architecture didn't give enough time to 'train it out of' the culture.
Back to the thing my friend says - if you believe that communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish/greedy/etc, I'd say to you also that capitalism is currently not working _because humans are being selfish and greedy_ in a system _that explicitly rewards that_. Which, maybe is worse.
I don't pretend I have an answer for how we can get from point A (capitalist system) to point B (future space communism) in a way that slowly shifts human thinking towards mutual aid and collective action, but I think it's short-sighted to assume that the way humans act in a system that rewards greed/selfishness is innate.
adamtaylor_13 3 hours ago [-]
I believe capitalism is the least-bad system we've created so far. Perhaps there is a better one, but as I said elsewhere the failed experiment of communism isn't one we should keep attempting--the cost in human lives is far too high.
But, to your other point, I think human greed is innate. I can't think of evidence that would suggest that greed is somehow cultural or learned. Boil the system down to the lowest common denominator, you find greed. Scale it up: greed. No matter what you do, you cannot remove human greed systematically.
komali2 8 hours ago [-]
What specific horrible evils do you mean? And how do you attribute them to, specifically, organizing an economy along communistic lines?
I ask because if we can take a country with a communist economy, or striving for one, and blame all its evils on communism itself, I have a few things I'd like to point out as being the horrors of capitalism:
1. Atlantic slave trade - millions dead (many on the ships), millions enslaved
2. Settler colonialism and indigenous genocide - British empire, all over the world
3. Congo Free State, Leopold II - 1 to 5 million dead via colonial extraction regime
4. British India famines - 3 million dead
5. Irish Famine - 1 million dead
6. Opium wars - directly caused by British using the military to defend market access. 100k dead, devastating to Qing China for a century
7. Indonesian anti-communist massacres - 500k-1mil alleged "communists" killed after the USA, UK, and Australian intelligence agencies propagandized against them
adamtaylor_13 7 hours ago [-]
The specific evil in my mind was the Great Leap Forward, but there are dozens we could draw from history.
And I attribute them to communism because that's literally how history attributes them, though obviously pro-Communism thinkers would disagree.
xandrius 6 hours ago [-]
Dozens means over 24 or more. Could you also provide a non-exhaustive list of such ills to be compared against the ones mentioned above?
Pay08 8 hours ago [-]
> What specific horrible evils do you mean?
The 1956 student massacres in Hungary, where my grandma was almost killed. The Holodomor, the various "Russianization" campaigns, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, The Great Leap Forward, etc.
komali2 8 hours ago [-]
It sounds like Communism, Capitalism, and Fascism are all very bad, then. Maybe we can try something else? Do you have any ideas?
buildsjets 5 hours ago [-]
No gods, No masters.
Pay08 2 hours ago [-]
Just so I'm not misunderstanding you: are you saying that those are not as bad as your list?
rmb173rd 5 hours ago [-]
This is important and rarely discussed. I'd add that there's a larger pattern tying these cases together, one that also speaks to some of the Encyclical's broader points: whether it's the Politburo of the USSR, the Court of Directors of the East India Company, or the Board of the United Fruit Company, historical atrocities in any age, society, or economic system almost always occur in the context of enormous power concentrated in few hands. It isn't capitalism or communism but the absence of accountability.
bbor 8 hours ago [-]
A) Well, it's you vs. the Pope and I!
B) Fine, drop communism altogether -- it's evil and disgusting and bit my finger and should never be tried again. Can we work on a society where the means of production are owned by groups of laborers?
losvedir 4 hours ago [-]
> Can we work on a society where the means of production are owned by groups of laborers?
I have good news for you. As someone in my job's ESPP plan and with a 401k, it already is!
megaman821 6 hours ago [-]
A lot of the world is a free-market and labors can absolutely own the means of production. Is there some government regulation in particular that you think is preventing this?
adamtaylor_13 7 hours ago [-]
Re: B my guess is probably not (human nature and all that), but I'm open to ideas! I just think failed experiments where tens of millions died are probably not ones where we just flippantly "try again".
Findecanor 3 hours ago [-]
I think we should not use the word "communism". It is imbued with a lot of different values depending on who you ask, and is therefore utterly useless.
Marx and Engels had originally envisioned a liberal democratic society with lots of high ideals but they had allowed the transition to it to be tough. Every self-proclaimed "Communist" state never got through that transition: the people in charge never let it (often never intended to) and instead cemented their authoritarian dictatorships. So let's call those what they were.
carlosjobim 5 hours ago [-]
Hasn't AI been made available to millions of people?
Or is this the old hacker news trope again that nothing except full on communism will ever be acceptable?
plotti 6 hours ago [-]
The answer is sortition a.k.a. democracy by lot. From my subjective understanding it is The only institutional democracy variant that puts a firewall between money and power.
ugh123 6 hours ago [-]
A 2 term limit would be a good start
plotti 58 minutes ago [-]
You can’t fix the broken system with such a minor patch
lstodd 6 hours ago [-]
You can't have money without it being power. So no, you can't have a firewall between them.
plotti 59 minutes ago [-]
Well then you need to read the wiki article how sortition works. Greeks did it because they fubared their whole society before.
riccardomc 3 hours ago [-]
I wonder how many HN users asked their AI of choice for a quick summary...
embedding-shape 3 hours ago [-]
I mean yeah, initially, to get a picture of the full thing, but this is also not a document you just read once, kind of have to read the most interesting parts multiple times and ponder about them, refresh the context, in order to really get the best out of it, consider it theological science :)
abrenuntio 4 hours ago [-]
For a good Catholic (Dominican) summary of the encyclical:
> 1. Humanity, created by God in all its grandeur ...
1200+ upvotes as I enter this comment.
satvikpendem 9 hours ago [-]
I wonder how many people read and heed the words of the Pope. I've seen letters like these for years now which sound good but I don't see any change in people after having read them.
tete 9 hours ago [-]
Really rather unfortunate. I wished religious people took their stuff seriously and not so often end up concluding that the bible wants them to harm people or something.
I guess it must be the same that make people think they must deliver freedom in form of bombs all the time.
9087653545 7 hours ago [-]
"Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!"
"Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves."
"...And there is also with you Shimei the son of Gera... He came down to meet me at the Jordan, and I swore to him by the Lord, saying, ‘I will not put you to death with the sword.’ Now therefore do not hold him guiltless, for you are a wise man. You will know what you ought to do to him, and you shall bring his gray head down with blood to Sheol."
whatshisface 6 hours ago [-]
"Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain."
"Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him. And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus and took him. And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me."
mbo 8 hours ago [-]
I just messaged a few of my friends who I know are devoutly Catholic (and also happen to work in AI): 3 out of 4 are currently reading it this morning for their Memorial Day.
chrsw 9 hours ago [-]
Almost nobody.
werber 9 hours ago [-]
I noticed ads on churches in Mexico City for this earlier this year, https://juanito.ai
netfortius 11 hours ago [-]
As an atheist I have an obligation to finish reading it all (still going through, and taking notes, probably having to revisit), but I am not sure how many (christian) believers will feel the same.
jawns 10 hours ago [-]
From where does that obligation originate?
cap11235 10 hours ago [-]
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dgellow 10 hours ago [-]
As an atheist and even anti-theist I see no such obligation. What a strange thing to say
raldi 9 hours ago [-]
Priests will read it and then talk to their congregations about it on Sundays throughout the year, if not explicitly, then in how it shapes their homilies.
michaelsbradley 9 hours ago [-]
Some Catholic priests might do that, it’s up to the individuals.
achierius 7 hours ago [-]
Most will and do. Few people become priests, today especially, without a deep-seated faith and desire to spread/support it.
michaelsbradley 7 hours ago [-]
We may have different things in mind.
In all my life of being Catholic (I’ll turn 50 this year), I’ve heard less than 5 homilies-sermons that amounted, in whole or part, to a reflection on a papal encyclical. Over time there may be juicy papal quotes that make it into Sunday preaching, but that’s about it.
Instead, priests tend to focus on the readings for that Sunday’s Mass and more general themes.
That being said, I hope many priests do read an encyclical any time a pope publishes one, but they’re very, very busy most days and weeks, so whether any one priest will commit time to reading a particular encyclical, old and dusty or hot off the presses, will depend on a lot of factors that are as varied as their individual circumstances and personalities.
Vaslo 11 hours ago [-]
You mean Catholic believers, not Christian
jact 10 hours ago [-]
Catholics are Christian.
dgellow 10 hours ago [-]
In theory only and all Catholics recognize the authority of the pope. In practice it’s a mess as far as I understand, with a bunch of American catholic groups who rejected church reforms that happened during the 20th century, resulting in people calling themselves catholic who do not actually believe that the Catholic Church has authority over their religion.
Add to that the fact that the pope has a cultural influence that goes further than only the catholic audience (lots of Protestant see the pope as important even if that’s not something dictated by Protestantism, a bunch of not really religious people see him as a sort of spiritual leader, etc)
Amezarak 7 hours ago [-]
I'm not aware of any Protestants that see the Pope as important except in a very negative way - that's practically the defining feature of Protestantism and one of the few things all the Protestant denominations have in common, whether "low church" or "high church".
Heck, it's a struggle to convince many of them that Catholics are Christian at all, and "the Pope is the antichrist" used to be a normal, mainstream comment in American newspapers.
It is somewhat a piece of irony that the Pope generally holds a more favorable reputation in the minds of the irreligious in America than the religious. Even the average Catholic likely does not have as much respect for the Pope as some of the commenters here.
lobocinza 5 hours ago [-]
Any serious Protestant (mainline and knowledgeable) listen and give weight when the Pope speaks. They would certainly refuse the Pope authority and inerrancy ex Cathedra but not necessarily disagree with him. Theologically there's much less division between Protestants and Catholics today than in XVI. A large share of disagreeements are due to residual historical animosity.
Amezarak 4 hours ago [-]
Every mainline Protestant denomination was basically founded on the idea that they shouldn’t have to listen to the Pope at all. And that was before Papal infallibility was enshrined, which actually didn’t take place until the late 1800s.
In America, anti-Catholic sentiment was extremely strong until relatively recently, and then only because religiosity (and thus the reason for it) has declined. All the theological division still exists, it’s just less striking in a world that’s much more irreligious and in countries where vastly different religions (Muslim or Hindu) are present now in real numbers.
Practically all the pro-Pope sentiment I’ve seen in my lifetime has been from various flavors of atheists, agnostics, and other areligious types. Catholics themselves generally hold more respect for the office than the person, and Protestants are almost uniformly negative on both.
dgellow 6 hours ago [-]
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Vaslo 3 hours ago [-]
But all Christians aren’t Catholic which is my point.
dsign 5 hours ago [-]
Yaii! Nice. I liked this one, and I hope the popes keep at it. I'm not in bed with Faith, but there is a point in life when one must accept certain things. Mine, now, are that we are in a time of cultural decline. Not because lack of access to culture, but simply because culture is last in line after all the many forms of culture-free entertainment, and oh god we have so many of those. With the advent of AI, people will simply outsource more of their thinking and do less of their own. Which means there's a serious risk that we Homo sapiens will cede our relevance, or at the very least, that humanism's marriage with progress will come to an end. That saying that of all things the measure is Man ought to become the domain of Faith in a future where we build souls more lofty than our own.
12 hours ago [-]
shmval 10 hours ago [-]
The message here obviously comes from a good place. But it can't escape the trap baked into its own theology. Putting humanity one rung below God, with everything else below us is a trick that allowed semitic civilizations to make empires and economies go FOOM faster than the rest of the world. But it also makes things more dangerous when we start building systems smarter than we are.
What happens when the tool outgrows the toolmaker?
shipman05 7 hours ago [-]
I'm (genuinely) curious as to what your idea of a less dangerous theology would be. I'm an atheist, but I find the inherent dignity of humans as beings made in the image of God to be one of the more appealing aspects of the Abrahamic faiths.
Some of the greatest horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries were committed by people who refuted that theology and replaced it with Social Darwinism and Scientific Racism.
xyzsparetimexyz 10 hours ago [-]
> But it also makes things more dangerous when we start building systems smarter than we are.
> What happens when the tool outgrows the toolmaker?
We've already built systems smarter than we are without much issue.Libraries and search engines for example. LLMs are just the next level of this.
tete 9 hours ago [-]
And of course the AI salesforce was there pretending they take stuff seriously, maybe even believing it themselves. At least I don't believe that when the choice is maximizing profit or being a good person it will be the latter. Or at least I don't find a career path like that all too likely.
9 hours ago [-]
bix6 7 hours ago [-]
This is a magnificent work. The thoughts and words are so precise and beautiful.
9 hours ago [-]
goldenarm 9 hours ago [-]
The paragraphs about making software transparent and collectively sound really similar to the open source ethos.
10 hours ago [-]
turing_complete 11 hours ago [-]
Excited to read this. I really liked the note "Antiqua et Nova" from last year (still under Pope Francis). The autors showed a deep understanding of AI that many secular commentators lack. They developed the concept of integrated intelligence as opposed to the functional, reductivist view of intelligence that is prevalent in the AI community.
sometimelurker 8 hours ago [-]
the guys name is Leo because the pope who was around for the industrial revolution was named Leo. I think he also has a math PhD but I could be wrong. he's 100% paying attention
michaelsbradley 7 hours ago [-]
It’s a Master’s not a PhD, but in math, yes.
_doctor_love 7 hours ago [-]
> We are also witnessing a disconcerting loss of historical memory, as first-hand accounts of the Holocaust and the two World Wars are disappearing. This leads to a selective or distorted rewriting of the past, in a context where fake news and the manipulation of narratives obscure the lessons that have been learned. Without a living memory of the horrors of war, political decisions risk being made on the basis of power alone, without any consideration for the long-term consequences.
Very true. Observed in Hiroshima as well.
Education in the United States especially is highly sanitized when it comes to the dropping of the atomic bombs and the horrors of the Holocaust.
singiamtel 4 hours ago [-]
Looking forward to the VaticanGPT that speaks in holy canon
jkwn 7 hours ago [-]
I find it difficult to see how even the measured words from the pope can actually enact this changed needed to 'disarm' AI. The forces behind the armament/war of AI development are innate to the qualities of our governance systems, capitalism, and human behavior, and AI itself.
None of these will go away until something breaks catastrophically, when it will be too late. And even then it will be short repose from another iteration for as long as we are in the digital information age.
There are only two steady end states that I see... either a global surveillance totalitarian system under the industrial complex, or, a radical change of the environment in which the aforementioned can be sustained.
> 110. Finally, I would like to employ the expression “to disarm,” which is close to my heart. Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of “armed” competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life. Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage. For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible.
Modos 7 hours ago [-]
you know.. a lot of changes came from just words. literally our modern society tend to sway the public opinion through just words from news and influencers..
popcorncowboy 4 hours ago [-]
"To the manifest glory of Rome, greatest of all cities, forever shall it stand" - circa the collapse of Roman empire. Or something like it.
NGL it sounds like so much bleating of the sheep standing outside the abattoir.
rbanffy 8 hours ago [-]
I liked the previous Pope better, but I can't say this one is wrong about this.
motohagiography 6 hours ago [-]
we should import it as a POPE.md skill and see if it meaningfully alters reasoning and results.
hugodan 12 hours ago [-]
Yes, but can the pipe draw a pelican riding a bike?
theletterf 12 hours ago [-]
For a moment I pictured the Jesuits training their own LLM. If Arthur C. Clarke was still alive, we'd read a story like The Star, but with AI as the main plot device.
Ah, an opening to recommend The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell, about a Jesuit going to space to speak with aliens. It won the Arthur C Clarke Award in 1998. I read it recently and it has stuck with me very strongly!
jimbosis 11 hours ago [-]
Forgive me if this isn't what you meant, but a Jesuit has trained his own LLM:
From the "Core Features" tab: "Trusted sourcebase: answers are consistent with Catholic Church Teaching and the most contemporary scholarship in science, philosophy, history, scriptural exegesis, social science, and theology."
The Jesuit priest behind this is Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D.
I haven't used magisAI, but I've read a small to fair amount of Fr. Spitzer's writings, and also seen and heard some of his videos and podcasts (largely from his show Fr. Spitzer's Universe), and probably qualify as a big fan of his.
Now I’m thinking of “The Nine Billion Names of God” (which I actually read because someone here linked it!) and I’m a little nervous lol
stevenalowe 9 hours ago [-]
I’m sure a similar epistle long ago argued that Swordsmiths must ensure that their products are only used for justifiable self-defense.
I’d be thrilled if religion was only used to uplift people but that’s not going to happen either
throwaway5752 6 hours ago [-]
This is history in the making. We're living in an evil time - bad people are stealing from humanity, using conflict to distract, and acquiring personal power out of greed. This will be one of the greatest moments in the papacy, and I expect if there are people around to read it, it will be talked about in a thousand years.
amai 9 hours ago [-]
Has someone done an AI generated summary ;-)
tancop 12 hours ago [-]
for me the most important point in this is about how ai and tech in general concentrates power. if we want to build something good (in a moral sense) we need to put in work and make sure as many people as possible can use it with equal access.
this basically implies only open source models can be ethical but open source is not sufficient, you also need to make them give true information and avoid all kinds of harmful behavior. thats kind of a problem because if your weights are public even with a strict license a "bad" user can always fine tune it to remove any guardrails.
i think the solution for this is make sure the default behavior is aligned but let users turn on wild mode with zero censorship/refusals. that way everything is opt in, for example a parent can disable the mode for their children but a hacktivist or diy chemist can unlock everything.
as a self described good person i believe theres a lot more good people than bad people in the world (most are neutral) so if access to tech is equal the good side always wins. the problem here is again that access is not equal under capitalism. but thats a political thign not a tech one.
tete 9 hours ago [-]
> as a self described good person i believe theres a lot more good people than bad people in the world (most are neutral) so if access to tech is equal the good side always wins. the problem here is again that access is not equal under capitalism. but thats a political thign not a tech one.
I believe there are mostly people who think they are good. And as the proverb goes the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
sunshine-o 8 hours ago [-]
I read as long as my attention span would allow because this is a very long text.
I am curious, what is the view of different religions on conversing with something that is not human like a chatbot?
block_dagger 5 hours ago [-]
I wonder if they used AI to write or edit any of this.
celpgoescheeew 4 hours ago [-]
fick die kirche ihr hurensöhne
booleandilemma 8 hours ago [-]
I like how the pope is emerging as a sort of champion of human rights in the face of AI, when the messaging coming from our politicians and corporate overlords is "you're all going to be replaced, make way for the data centers, peons". I stand with the pope.
tharmas 7 hours ago [-]
I stand with the Pope, also.
Sadly, the politicians are all bought off by the powerful and rich elite. And the ones who aren't are soon hounded out.
What does the "The West" stand for? They (the Elites and the politicians) said human rights etc. But Gaza proved that a lie. Gaza happened in "broad daylight" and the Western leaders did nothing at best, and at worst demonized those who spoke out, as supporters of terrorists.
booleandilemma 7 hours ago [-]
I used to believe it was human rights also, and maybe it was, but now the aim seems to be: profit at all and any cost.
GuB-42 8 hours ago [-]
> A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few
Particularly ironic considering the history of the Church.
I mean, it is not wrong, but that's essentially the business of essentially every church, religion, cult,... whatever you call your spiritual organization.
goosejuice 7 hours ago [-]
And for claiming to have some authority on social justice when women are shunned from priesthood and leadership roles. At least they're coming around a little bit with the first woman appointee of a head of a dept of the roman curia in 2025.
Between the Canadian residential schools and sexual abuse scandals alone, it's shocking that people actually look to the holy see as any kind of moral authority. Nevermind the connections to slavery, fascism, and even the cosa nostra.
ares623 13 hours ago [-]
That's a long read. I grew up Catholic, went through a pretty devout few years in my early adulthood, but ultimately I have decided that it is not for me. I send my kids to a Catholic school though (it is deeply tied to our culture), so I guess in that sense it is still worth my time reading it in full.
EDIT: Few paragraphs in, it is beautifully written.
theletterf 13 hours ago [-]
I'm a non-practicing catholic, and an agnostic (or an atheist, depending on the mood). And yet I acknowledge that the Catholic church is a force to be reckoned with in the spiritual matters, and one of the few institutions to have had continuous influence on the material (or temporal) matters for centuries. Whether their brand of faith is rooted in your culture or not, these are words that deserve attention, I think.
TeMPOraL 13 hours ago [-]
(I'm not a Catholic though most people around me are.)
I have a similar perspective. Plus, I'll be frank: in the last few years, these occasional keynote publications from Vaticans are pretty much the most sane, deep, balanced and humane perspectives on AI anyone is writing. Reading this is a better use of one's time than reading the current batch of "tech thought leaders" articles or HBRs or Gartner magic square updates.
customguy 12 hours ago [-]
I'm a fedora wearing akshually agnostic and just too cool for bible school, but I never felt reading these "keynotes" wasted my time. They're not "just" humane but also very intelligent and direct. I would even go so far as to call them intellectually honest, and less religious that way than slogans like "you cannot stop progress, so just adapt", or something about toothpaste.
turing_complete 11 hours ago [-]
What caused you to fall away? Bad priest / diocese?
ares623 3 hours ago [-]
No, nothing like that. It wasn't a single thing. Just drifted away I guess, and disillusioned. I have no strong ill feelings towards it.
tinfoilhatter 7 hours ago [-]
> In this regard, Saint John Paul II stated that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, proclaimed by the United Nations on 10 December 1948, remains one of the highest expressions of the human conscience of our time.
Interesting, considering that the U.N. has its roots established in the ideology of Luciferians. [1][2][3]
Surely the Pope and the Vatican are both aware of this fact.
Who cares? It isn't like bad people can't have good ideas and vice versa. From where I'm sitting Luciferians, Theosophists, etc are just as suspect as Catholics because they believe in imaginary stuff.
tinfoilhatter 4 hours ago [-]
Yeah, who cares that there's a group with the goal of establishing a new world order featuring a totalitarian one-world government and a one-world religion that enforces Noahide law. Sounds lovely! /s
This logic is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. Should we have cared about Hitler? Maybe he was just a bad guy with good ideas - after all, he helped to create the Autobahn.
If you haven't read about what Alice Bailey believed in or other theosophists and you're just saying who cares because you hold the impression that the United Nations is some benefactor to humanity, okay. I don't hold that viewpoint regarding the UN and I find the fact that it is actively advised by a group of Luciferians that espouse the kind of crap Alice Bailey did, quite troubling. Nor do I consider the Vatican a benefactor to humanity, just to set the record straight.
vitally3643 9 hours ago [-]
Pope Leo: Do Not Build The Torment Nexus
Techbros (as usual): how dare you suggest I'm a bad person for wanting to kill everyone in order to build the torment nexus? Don't you know how much money Jeff Bezos has?
ProofHouse 7 hours ago [-]
More thoughtful analysis of AI and society than anything this far
jaybrendansmith 11 hours ago [-]
Why downvote this? The Holy See has an opinion on Artificial Intelligence? This is a fascinating document, and everybody should read it, and form their own opinions. The world currently seems to lack moral leadership, and who better to lead the cause of humanity than the Catholic Church?
10 hours ago [-]
Ardren 10 hours ago [-]
> who better to lead the cause of humanity than the Catholic Church?
Oh no, is my sarcasm meter broken?
hootz 12 hours ago [-]
How many Catholics will put the encyclical to be summarized through an LLM?
lobocinza 5 hours ago [-]
I did but I will read it in full later. Summarizing the encyclical was a waste of time. Summarization is good for quickly probing the topic, tone and quality of a work. Here the topic is obvious, the Vatican tone is extremely consistent and encyclicals so far were all well written and thoughtful so there was nothing new to learn.
customguy 12 hours ago [-]
If you asked all the LLM to find flaws in the arguments presented, and to come up with counter-arguments, I doubt many current models would be so bad as to come up with that, and even the ones that did would fold when asked "how is that even an argument?".
hootz 10 hours ago [-]
This was not an attempt at an argument, it was a sarcastic joke on how a lot of people are already dependent on AI, even on things that you weren't supposed to use LLMs for, but I guess I failed at it.
customguy 8 hours ago [-]
Fair enough, and kinda silly of me to assume so little of you.
Is that really true though, that so many people are "dependent" on "AI"? In what way? I'd say the only people who really depend on AI are those who want to make money off it, and that's only half sarcastic.
Would the people who now run it through an LLM (and who can read the output of an LLM but not the text itself?), have read it at all before? Would it not have, if anything, filtered down to them somehow, by them reading of it, or hearing of it in church etc?
hootz 8 hours ago [-]
It's almost a self analysis in my case, as when I saw the size of the text my mind immediately thought about feeding it into an LLM. Like, it's a text from the pope about AI, and my automatic reaction was to think about feeding it into an AI. What happened to me? And I think that happened to a lot of other people too.
ares623 12 hours ago [-]
ugh, read the room
andrepd 1 hours ago [-]
Not about AI, here is an interesting point
> 176. In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues. It is true that past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available. Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery. In antiquity and the Middle Ages many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves. Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from Sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of “infidels.” [174] It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII. [175] This development offers a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards. Although there was not always consistency in practice — given that slavery was long tolerated before being unequivocally condemned — there has been a continuous affirmation throughout history of the dignity of every human being, created in the image of God, even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized. This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. [176] It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.
As he surely understands but does not quite bear to be completely honest about it, the Church has only been a humanist institution for the past ~150ish years. The history before is bloody, and brutal, from genocide and slavery to wholesale cultural destruction, from its very beginnings.
Followed by a very keen remark:
> 178. Even today, colonialism assumes new forms. It no longer dominates only bodies, but appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information. Entire regions, especially those marked by structural fragility and limited geopolitical relevance, are currently subjected to a new mindset of extraction: that of health data, epidemiological profiles, genetic maps and demographic information. These have become the new “rare earths” of power: vital data which, once aggregated and analyzed, can be used to train predictive models, guide investment strategies, anticipate crises and, above all, determine who and what is deemed to matter. Those who control the health data of entire peoples — often collected under the pretext of aid, research or innovation — possess a structural leverage over the future, for they can shape needs and markets. They can also decide, before others, to whom medicines, investments and protections will be allocated. Here lies one of the most urgent moral challenges of our time: to ensure that shared knowledge becomes a true common good rather than an instrument of dominance. This requires restoring to individuals not only the data that describes them, but also the ability to decide how it is used, by whom and for whose benefit. Otherwise, the digital age will not be post-colonial, but colonial in another form.
(at least the intro.. all in all I think it's a bit too long and some part of it kinda "cringe", but hey)
missedthecue 7 hours ago [-]
LLMs are some of the most fairly distributed technology in history. It's actual insane how equitable global access is, especially compared to the previous evolutions of the computer industry (mainframes, then desktop, and eventually mobile phones). People are just saying stuff to say stuff at this point.
serf 7 hours ago [-]
it's a shame that the vatican didn't bother asking whether or not the crusades would make humanity better before causing the death of 9 million plus people.
..or whether or not hiding all those pedophiles was the right.
and to be clear ; i'm not equating AI to those things -- i'm saying that I don't care about the opinion of a group with such a sordid history regardless of how shined up the PR is now.
I'm as happy we have a non-crazy pope as the next liberal, but as someone who isn't religious I think it's very important to be skeptical of any opinion given by a religious leader. As such, they've declared they are rejecting the best tools for understanding humanity, culture, and the physical world, and have deeply compromised judgement.
jeffrallen 7 hours ago [-]
It would be better on the original latin.
paologiacometti 10 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, he did not mention the moral responsabilities of the Silicon Valley technopower in delivering and selling a technology so society-impact only for making themselves and their shareholders richier.
vermilingua 9 hours ago [-]
Actually, he did, extensively.
beders 3 hours ago [-]
Nobody should take the Pope seriously or the Vatican.
An organization that - for centuries - has actively protected child molesters,
has sat on billions of dollars, has sided with Nazis, has been involved in multiple fraud and money laundering cases has absolutely zero standing to advice
anybody on anything.
sjbr 5 hours ago [-]
Bullshit.
MrBuddyCasino 6 hours ago [-]
Pope Leo is a Marxist, news at eleven.
bbor 8 hours ago [-]
I'm glad he published it of course, but I was disappointed on two counts:
1. He's not at all careful with his argumentation. Frequently he'll colocate two points that aren't really connected, not bothering to justify one before moving on. I've been a massive fan of his persona ever since I heard he was planning to be the AI pope, but it's a shame to find the philosophical output of the actual man to be around the level of a decent blogger.
2. He refuses to make the Kantian or Hegelian move of basing the discussion of empirical matters on evidence. I understand that faith (aka 'belief without evidence') is a huge part of their whole deal--and likely an inextricable part of humanity's indomitable spirit--but it's just a waste of time to build arguments about technical and political matters upon such foundations.
In other words: there's no point in really talking about AI with someone willing to justify claims like 'no machine could ever think' with 'god says so'. All you can do is try to manipulate them into a prosocial position (read: your side).
Hopefully it's obvious that the majority of the letter isn't really about AI but rather about lessening the harms of capitalism, nationalism, and climate change, which hopefully we can all agree on! The commentary above is focused on the AI specific (esp. Chapter III and parts of I).
IAmGraydon 9 hours ago [-]
So the guys at Anthropic convinced the Pope to write a hype piece for them. Next-level grifting right there.
451298 7 hours ago [-]
Readers apparently think this comment is a joke. Not entirely:
The vigilance the Pope calls for is appreciated, but never underestimate lobbying. If he had called for an outright AI moratorium or ban, that would be clear. But this encyclical leaves room for "adjustments", i.e., boiling the frog slowly.
gymbeaux 6 hours ago [-]
Great message from the Pope (I never thought I'd write those words). I'm glad he recognizes what's going on with AI (LLMs, really) as one of the highest areas of concern for humanity and the Earth and is using his influence to encourage things like renewable energy investment. It's a shame he isn't in a position of "real" power and we're still at the mercy of the worst U.S. president in history.
One thing that isn't talked about enough is how so much is going into AI but not much is coming out of it. The rhetoric from tech bros is still that AI is "going to" change the world. Hasn't really changed the world yet, except driven up everyone's utility bills and put hundreds of thousands of people out of work.
I encourage people, especially software engineers here, to remember the previous "new hotness" tech advancements - blockchain and NoSQL DBs being two recent examples. In both instances there was a flood of VC money into startups that have mostly failed because each was supposed to change the world (or at least change software). I spent a lot of my free time in those days trying to "find a problem" for blockchain and NoSQL to solve. I remember thinking I must be a lousy software engineer because I just wasn't getting the hype. Now I know it's because whenever something new comes out, people talk about how it can do X Y and Z, and there's a disconnect between what a technology CAN do, and what it SHOULD do. I can use blockchain for all sorts of things, but in most cases it wouldn't be the best option. Same for NoSQL DBs. Same for LLMs. The more you understand blockchain, the more you realize it's only good as a globally-distributed, immutable ledger - and currency is the only practical application of that in our society today (e.g., Bitcoin). NoSQL is the same way - yeah you can use MongoDB for whatever app, but it's going to be a bad time maintaining and scaling when you're storing relatively simple and consistent records. A CRUD app usually doesn't warrant a NoSQL DB.
LLMs are the same. I'm finding they are good at search-type tasks, where frankly not much "thinking" is involved. Therefore, with respect to writing software, they are best suited for simple, internal tools. Even then, I have to baby it, especially with today's LLMs. Claude Opus has been nerfed (most-likely quantized) to make space in the datacenters for Mythos, and eventually Mythos will be bad too for the same reasons. The question becomes, as it always has, "will LLMs rise up to the challenge" and history tells us "no." These things never live up to the hype. When you understand how LLMs work, you understand why ChatGPT 3.5 isn't that much worse than GPT 5.5, artificial benchmarks be damned.
russellbeattie 5 hours ago [-]
It makes me angry that people are taking this seriously. Reading this screed would require having to continually parse out the generally loathsome Catholic ideology and dogma from whatever insight it might contain. I have no desire to even try.
The Catholic Church is not anywhere close to being a neutral institution who will be writing something like this in good faith (no pun intended). This is an organization based on prejudice, subjugation and outright delusion built on literally millennia of persecution. All of their observations will be made from the standpoint that their worldview is the only correct one, which is unacceptable in every way.
For example, ChatGPT will quickly and efficiently answer all your questions about how and where to get a safe abortion, including pros and cons, history and other specifics. This is something the Church is vehemently opposed to on principle. Anything else they have to say on the topic is therefore irrelevant.
I guarantee that whatever AI doom they're warning about will never be anywhere close to the damage the continued existence of the Catholic Church causes and will continue to cause in the future.
Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't know history nor read the headlines of the past several decades.
Hey, I love it when Bob from Chicago tells Trump to go to hell, but beyond that I couldn't care less what he or the truly horrific religion he leads thinks about anything, let alone new technology.
magic_hamster 9 hours ago [-]
Good luck with that. Capitalism doesn't work that way. AI will make money for some companies, but as always, it will be on our expense, not for our benefit. We will get some convenient features, we will grow dependent, and eventually subscriptions will be squeezed as far as we are able to pay, advertising will take over, we will have less choice and worse service.
By then we might not even have computers anymore, or we might have "transparent" computers, i.e. have everything on the cloud and just tell our AI agents what to do.
Sorry Pope Leo, things are not going to suddenly turn into a wonderful utopia, but maybe buy some stocks so you can at least make a buck from what's coming.
tim333 7 hours ago [-]
Capitalism tends to benefit most people, like capitalist enterprise makes food, clothing, cars and the like and most get some benefit. I'm not convinced by the on our expense bit on the whole. It can have glitches sometimes of course.
magic_hamster 7 hours ago [-]
Arguably, all the industries that you mentioned (clothing, food, automotive) have the same symptoms, doing everything possible to increase growth even (and often) at the expense of shipping worse products. At least, this has been my experience with clothing, electronics, appliances, and honestly almost everything. It's very hard today to find good long lasting products. A couple of decades ago you could expect your purchase to last a while, today - hardly.
brcmthrowaway 8 hours ago [-]
Any good tickers?
lo_zamoyski 8 hours ago [-]
What point are you trying to make here, because your post is all over the place and never really goes anywhere.
The pope is not claiming utopia is possible. He is reminding the world of its moral duties within this scope. "Capitalism" is not a system that we helpless atoms merely get pushed around in. How good the world is depends on each one of us choosing to do our moral duty toward the common good. There is no "system" that will, without effort on the part of its citizens, straighten the crooked timber of humanity and relieve human beings of their moral responsibilities.
geremiiah 7 hours ago [-]
Nah, I think that's a bit of a cop-out. Capitalism heavily incentivizes competition at the detriment of everything else. You can talk about moral duties all you want, but in a hyper-competitive environment, if you don't do the thing, the other guy will. Societies don't necessarily have to be structured in such ways.
magic_hamster 7 hours ago [-]
My point is AI is not going to be built to "benefit humanity" because that's not the incentive in our economy. AI might give us some benefits, but like all tech products currently, it will be designed to benefit corporations and shareholders. It is what it is.
spchampion2 7 hours ago [-]
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kator 10 hours ago [-]
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grahameb 11 hours ago [-]
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niraj-agarwal 4 hours ago [-]
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theletterf 11 hours ago [-]
@dang Is this item getting a lot of negative votes? I've no way of knowing, other than seeing my kharma increasing only slightly after all the points the story collected.
vermilingua 11 hours ago [-]
Votes (particularly on submissions over comments) do not directly translate to karma. I'm not sure if it's documented anywhere what the algorithm is, but it's something proportionate to the logarithm of post votes becomes profile karma. It's similar with comments, but I believe (anecdata and observation) the positive effect of votes on karma is also logarithmic, but the negative effects of downvotes is linear; so if you have a highly controversial comment that sits at 1-2 points, you can net lose account karma.
theletterf 9 hours ago [-]
Thanks! That makes sense. This was just genuine curiosity on how HN works, I couldn't care less about kharma.
steveklabnik 7 hours ago [-]
There is no downvoting on posts, only flags.
krunger 10 hours ago [-]
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denysvitali 2 hours ago [-]
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shawnhermans 9 hours ago [-]
Former Catholic. I left the church for a variety of reasons, one of which being the child abuse scandal. I am aware of the Catholic Church's long and often sordid history. What I am trying to say is there is no love lost between me and the Catholic Church.
With that out of the way, the Pope is right. Knowledge should be used for the benefit of humanity and I don't think any of the big AI companies have our best interests in mind.
epolanski 9 hours ago [-]
I don't really get this, so I genuinely want to understand.
You can still follow a religion while rightfully thinking that the organization representing it to be corrupt (and how could it be otherwise, as it's made from mortal sinners?).
But you either believe that St.Peter and its descendants in Rome have been tasked by god to spread (and interpret) its word or you don't.
It's fine if you don't (I don't my self, I'm an atheist), but I don't get why can't you be a catholic if you believe and also find the organization flawed.
pseudony 9 hours ago [-]
He didn’t say that. He said that he agrees with the pope on this issue.
You don’t become a catholic from agreeing on an issue
mattnewton 9 hours ago [-]
Litmus tests about personal beliefs are not really how religious organizations function for most people in my experience. It’s about whether you want to associated with a tribe or movement, then the beliefs come with that package.
hnlmorg 9 hours ago [-]
Catholicism is as much about hierarchy and pomposity as it is about faith.
Plus personal and social experiences are often catalysts for changing one’s beliefs. It happens so often there’s a term for it: “crisis of faith”
epolanski 7 hours ago [-]
But it should be a crisis of trust in the organization, not it's credos.
hnlmorg 6 hours ago [-]
I don’t really think you can lecture people on what they should or shouldn’t believe. That’s how wars start. That and control of oil.
The whole point of faith is that it’s a subjective opinion that cannot be proven.
Arguing that someone’s faith isn’t logical is about as sensible as arguing which shade of blue looks more wet.
luizfzs 9 hours ago [-]
My take is that scandals can make some people realize that the Church is fallible, which can lead people to question about the legitimacy of such religion. e.g. if the church representatives can be corrupt, what if their other actions also weren't in service of God?
My point is that once you see a sort of contradiction between words and action, it may make one deeply reflect on it.
9 hours ago [-]
lo_zamoyski 8 hours ago [-]
> I left the church for a variety of reasons, one of which being the child abuse scandal.
What you do is your business, but you understand the fallacy, yes? One does not belong to the Church for the priests. And btw, if you want to be consistent, you should dissociate yourself from all institutions, because statistically, the rate of abuse in the Church (estimated by John Jay to be around 4%) is representative or less than the rates in all other religious or secular institutions. Public schools are notoriously bad in this regard, but you wouldn't know it, given the obsessive coverage of the Church to the exclusion of everyone else.
(I, of course, condemn all such sexual abuse, and I am critical of those who failed to deal with the issue properly. There is indeed a sense in which abuse by a priest carries much more gravity, and this is the position of the Church itself. Sexual abuse also peaked during the heyday of the sexual revolution, roughly during the 1960s-1980s. It wasn't a pedophilia scandal, as around 80% of victims were post-pubescent male teenagers. It was a homosexual ephebophilia scandal. Still terrible, but it does shift understanding of the nature and source of the problem significantly.)
> I am aware of the Catholic Church's long and often sordid history.
Sure, if you simply accept the ignorant tropes, ideological propaganda, and black legends circulating in a culture hostile to the institution since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, then maybe you'll be left with a dramatically dark picture that you describe as "sordid". But this is historically illiterate and intellectually immature.
tranceylc 8 hours ago [-]
> It wasn't a pedophilia scandal, as around 80% of victims were post-pubescent male teenagers. It was a homosexual ephebophilia scandal. Still terrible, but it does shift understanding of the nature and source of the problem significantly.
I feel like this pseudo-defence hidden in the middle of your few paragraphs tells the reader what they really ought to know. Making that distinction is enough to question your nature to be allowed around vulnerable people.
lo_zamoyski 7 hours ago [-]
Thanks for being so charitable. It is not a defense. I explicitly said it was still terrible. It was a factual correction. You cannot accuse those guilty of wrongdoing of things they did not commit. That is still unjust.
If you don't see a difference of gravity between sexually abusing prepubescent children and post-pubescent teenagers, then I question your capacity to make moral judgements. Perhaps you'll attack someone for recognizing that murder is worse than rape, too.
And frankly, the libelous phrase "question your nature to be allowed around vulnerable people" that you directed toward me is utterly disgusting. How dare you.
But then, you've already demonstrated your comfort with false accusations.
bbor 8 hours ago [-]
> It wasn't a pedophilia scandal, as around 80% of victims were post-pubescent male teenagers. It was a homosexual ephebophilia scandal.
Honestly pretty unreal to come face to face with someone from a history book.
mycall 10 hours ago [-]
The church was a great archive of knowledge for the longest time. They were the powerful few too.
Luker88 9 hours ago [-]
And they hoarded and kept such knowledge for themselves and those who swore fealty for as long as they could, concentrating and maintaining power for centuries.
Still, I agree with the pope this once.
jnovek 9 hours ago [-]
I mostly agree with you, but I’ve come to appreciate that there was a period of time in the Middle Ages where the Catholic Church held the fabric of society together in their corner of the world. I think much more knowledge from antiquity would’ve been lost without them.
pseudony 9 hours ago [-]
Wrong - I am very far from a catholic, but this just doesn’t reflect history.
They did a lot to make the middle ages more tolerable.
After that, maybe they overstayed their welcome.
huijzer 9 hours ago [-]
Agreed. Crusades have also close ties with gnosticism since the Templars themselves were gnostics.
jhbadger 8 hours ago [-]
It's complicated because besides the ones in the Middle East, there was also one in the 1200s in France against the Cathars -- a "heretical" sect of Christianity that was into gnosticism/dualism
Interesting. Thanks. The seeming contradiction can be resolved by the statement “no honesty among thieves”. I don’t know exactly about the sect, but I do know that the Templars were not a particularly honest bunch. True criminals without a conscience will also often blame the other side of crimes they themselves conduct; probably to keep blame away from them since the false accusations cause massive confusion
Pay08 8 hours ago [-]
That is rather incorrect. Most people in the centuries you talk about could only read a local language (where "local" could be anything from 5km² to 500km²), if they could read at all. Of course, for a long time, becoming a priest was the only way for the average person to learn to read Latin, but universities, both ones that were sponsored by the Church and ones that weren't are older than you think (14th century off the top of my head), with the Church frequently cooperating and patronising the non-affiliated universities as well.
huijzer 9 hours ago [-]
The Catholic church has also burned Christians in various era’s including in the 15th century.
deadbabe 9 hours ago [-]
How crazy would it be if the Vatican started training up their own custom AI models?
werber 9 hours ago [-]
I noticed ads? maybe not the right word in this situation, for https://juanito.ai, on several of the large Catholic churches in Mexico City this year.
dylan604 10 hours ago [-]
I had a similar thought. Something about a splinter in someone's eye while a plank in your eye blah blah
Lerc 9 hours ago [-]
The Pro human AI Delcaration has as one of its list of denands
Child Protection: Companies must not be allowed to exploit children or undermine their wellbeing with AI interactions creating emotional attachment or leverage
I think it entirely consistent with many of the supporters of this statement that this leaves open the opportunity for the church to do it with AI, or indeed companies and the church to do it by other means.
lo_zamoyski 9 hours ago [-]
So is the Church what? That the Church must serve humanity or that it is the "powerful few" as some here are saying?
In the first case, I claim that it has and that it does. I'm not sure how you can credibly claim otherwise. Only ideologically informed animosity could distort one's views here. If you know the mission of the Church, then I see no issue. Do members of the Church fail? Of course. Everyone does, and indeed this is captured best in the Christian acknowledgment that everyone is a sinner, without exception. Everyone falls short.
In the second case, I don't know what the implication is. Is it that the Church is one of the "powerful few" and therefore evil? The first question you must ask is what your notion of "power" here is. The second, whether the Church is actually powerful according to that definition. The third, whether you are falsely linking being one of the "powerful few" with being evil. The problem, after all, is not with power, but with the way power is used. In an ideal world, all power would be exercised morally, and all authority would have commensurate power.
I would say this: the Church has authority. Whether it has power depends on your definition of power and the particular historical epoch. It is not reduced to a simple boolean.
It's best to avoid cheap jabs that rely on boring and unthinking tropes that appeal to widespread prejudices rather than to informed reason.
YetAnotherNick 9 hours ago [-]
Everything you say apply to the AI. Even more so that there are very good open models which anyone can host and get almost exact same power.
lo_zamoyski 8 hours ago [-]
Isn't that kind of the pope's point? That whether AI serves humanity or tyrannical interests is up to us?
watwut 9 hours ago [-]
> anyone can host and get almost exact same power.
This is not true at all.
And the claim about mission of the church and mission of the ai being the same is absurd. Or ai being authority. Like, the rest of that comment does not apply to ai at all.
YetAnotherNick 9 hours ago [-]
> This is not true at all.
In what sense is it not true?
> mission of the church and mission of the ai being the same is absurd
Did I claim that?
I just said any point you wrote against church representing powerful few is applicable to AI.
watwut 7 hours ago [-]
In the practical day to day sense as in not having money for it. The open models are not that cheap to run.
You seem confused. Read the article you linked.
Or, in case it wasn't clear enough: AI must serve humanity. So must the church.
zahlman 9 hours ago [-]
For reference, the general form (so that I can use letters to refer to parties and avoid convoluted phrasing):
(Axiom: B has done X.)
A (to B): You have done X, and you should not have done so.
C: I note here that certain prior actions of A could also reasonably be characterized as X.
D (to C): Ah, here you commit the fallacy of "tu quoque".
This argument is not sound. It misunderstands the fallacy. (To be clear: Wikipedia describes the fallacy accurately; it's just that it's rare in practice, and very often falsely accused.)
Everyone should uphold the standards to which they hold others (and I consider it an obvious moral failing not to do so). The fallacy only applies where C either continues on to argue that B has, somehow, not actually done X (because A did); or, at least, clearly has the purpose of distracting from the fact that B has done X.
But there is nothing fallacious about simply pointing out that A does not live up to A's own implied standards. There is nothing fallacious about the implication that A is therefore being either i) dishonest about the anti-X belief, or ii) simply hypocritical. (To be fair, we don't know, from the given information, which of those is the case; but I think it's fair to say that neither is "fair dealing" and that A is thus a legitimate target of criticism regardless.)
It is also not fallacious for C to use this as a jumping-off point to argue that X is in fact okay to do, although of course this requires further support.
Curosinono 9 hours ago [-]
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mystraline 9 hours ago [-]
I have writings going back to the 1500's of priests fucking boy children altar boys, cause that's evidently not 'reallllly' a violation of celibacy.
The Catholic Church has always had this go on.
Kuyawa 9 hours ago [-]
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ziocancer 5 hours ago [-]
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tomhow 4 hours ago [-]
Please don't post ideological/religious flamebait on HN. Also, on HN you can't have a username that is inflammatory like that, so for now I've banned the account. You're welcome to participate here if you observe the guidelines – https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
If you want this account unbanned you can email us (hn@ycombinator.com) and suggest a different username. Otherwise you can register a new account.
kortex 5 hours ago [-]
zionism != judaism
ziocancer 5 hours ago [-]
Zionism is one element of Jewish supremacy, but not all of it. In fact Zionism's execution was birthed from Jewish supremacy. The Rothschilds were in a unique position to receive a "state" from the British government.
factorialboy 9 hours ago [-]
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henry2023 9 hours ago [-]
Tu quoque is a fallacy my friend.
hooverlabs 9 hours ago [-]
Do you think we are even talking in the same ballpark of wealth? Elon Musk is slated to be the first trillionaire
Its still true. The church gained massive amount of land in germany due to the fear they put into humans. Hell, purgatory etc.
The church owns 2% of land in germany. A f. church...
erelong 12 hours ago [-]
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throw4847285 12 hours ago [-]
Look who is more Catholic than the Pope.
KaiserPro 11 hours ago [-]
I do find this an interesting take.
I will skip the "just war" theory, because I simply don't know enough to make a cogent argument
But
> attacks colonialism without explaining why Christians created colonies
Speaking as an english person with a passing interest in colonialism, this is an _interesting_ take.
Which colonies are you talking about? because the ones in America and Ireland were explicitly not catholic. More complex still some of them were super anti-pope, and a lot were just C-of-E catholic but sans pope
Could you explain more about your viewpoint?
SSLy 11 hours ago [-]
ig it's about French and Belgians in Africa, and Spanish in America.
geremiiah 10 hours ago [-]
I grew up Catholic, and I don't regonize myself or any of my Catholic upbringing in anything you wrote, at all.
moron4hire 11 hours ago [-]
Who, in your mind, are "these people?" Please, don't go back and check the authorship of the document before replying. I'm extremely curious to see what you are thinking.
erelong 11 hours ago [-]
While there's a singular author ("Leo"), these writings are often created in consultation with other people:
> Francis, for example, did not write Laudato si’ entirely on his own. The first draft was prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, with input from other Church leaders. The document was then revised and reviewed by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
But I meant mostly those who share "Leo's" errors and write like him ("these people [like "Leo"])
If you share your prompt and model that created your summary then HN users can make their own hot take summary sub summaries.
erelong 11 hours ago [-]
ehhh, the model doesn't matter as much, the summary appears to be accurate (you can ctrl+f for keywords like "slavery", then see what's being said on the subject)
so for example with "Just War" we see this passage:
> it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated.
This would clearly be thought to be an error from a Catholic viewpoint, because the right to wage "justified war" comes from the individual right to self-defense, as applied to a collective group of people legitimately defending against aggression (maybe lots of people here for example would argue Ukraine is legitimately justified in waging defensive war against Russia, for example).
Hence while it is good to promote peaceful resolutions of conflict, the document goes too far in condemning legitimate self-defense.
(So while the whole long document likely says correct things about AI and the dignity of work, it also adds in things like the above that Catholics would clearly reject. Typically Catholics would accept what a pope is writing so if you're getting someone who claims to be pope teaching erroneously, this points to a bigger problem for Catholics.)
hugh-avherald 10 hours ago [-]
I do not think that self-defense of an invading force is what just war theory is concerned with. The passage also says it is outdated, not that the doctrine is abrogated.
erelong 9 hours ago [-]
It's true that self-defense is not the only case where arguments have been made for justification for war but I think it's the most common:
> Catholic philosophy, therefore, concedes to the State the full natural right of war, whether defensive, as in case of another's attack in force upon it; offensive (more properly, coercive), where it finds it necessary to take the initiative in the application of force; or punitive, in the infliction of punishment for evil done against itself or, in some determined cases, against others.
"War" entry: newadvent.org/cathen/15546c.htm
By calling Catholic teaching "outdated", this sounds like the heresy of modernism (even if outright "abolition" isn't mentioned) - since for example these "older" teachings are directly applicable to current conflicts (people here might support Ukraine's right to defend against Russia, for example, under theories of justifications for war)
Why would we listen to him? Even he doesn’t believe in God.
Jesus let the Romans take him. The pope drives around in an armoured car with hundreds of soldiers. Why? After all, he’s the official spokesperson of God. He’s either untouchable, or would be endlessly rewarded with sainthood for being a martyr.
But he obviously doesn’t believe that.
the_real_cher 11 hours ago [-]
Why does the onus fall on the engineer for creating a better tool and not on the people who use that tool in evil ways?
We've been having the same argument since the dawn of mankind. AI is the new AR.
sham1 7 hours ago [-]
I'd say that the onus falls on the engineer insofar as they need to ask the questions of "why are we making the new better tool", "according to what criteria is it better", and "do we need the better tool". And at least for me, that onus falls on the engineer instead of falling on the user because it's the engineer who is creating the tool, not the user, and if the engineer chose differently, the tool wouldn't be out there to be used for evil.
Sometimes it might just be better to not do the thing, especially if it conflicts with one's morals. And well, the idea that "if I don't do this, someone else will" seems to not work out well in practice.
the_real_cher 5 hours ago [-]
No one can predict the future.
Putting the blame on the engineers is a distraction from the real people at fault...the business people and the politicians.
pj_mukh 8 hours ago [-]
I would love for the Pope to answer this question:
If a technology existed that reduced the cost of producing a critical thing (think food, housing, medical care) down to near zero, however, it made the humans currently building the thing redundant, should we build it? Would it be okay to use the hyper-optimization power of Capitalism to build such a technology faster?
Before someone yells at me about this not being the current situation, I think that is the endgame of most of this AI development and in fact the endgame is even more comforting: If it takes 10 construction workers at $60,000/annum to build one home, I can forsee the descendants of current AI tech enabling 10 construction workers at $150,000/annum building 5 homes in the same time with an even larger profit margin for the corporation involved.
But as a clear moral quandary, I think the Pope should consider the first situation.
nemomarx 8 hours ago [-]
If the technology is used to serve humanity by providing food or housing, it seems like his stance would be approving. But if it was used to increase profits and people still starved that would be bad, right?
"AI must be used for the good of humanity" isn't even an anti ai position really.
pj_mukh 8 hours ago [-]
"by providing food or housing" vs "if it was used to increase profits"
Why..not both? I know this question is naive, but there is nothing that "hard-codes" AI to only increase profits at the cost of providing food or housing for much cheaper prices. Yes a Private equity firm could later insert itself and jack up prices and play such games, but that isn't baked into the technology itself.
And as such, the technology seems the wrong thing to be litigating.
AvAn12 8 hours ago [-]
Tech is supposed to be a tool that serves other products ends, not an end in itself.
At this point, tech biz leaders are massively over-reaching and trying to influence the rest of us: muxk, thiel, Karp, etc.
So it should be no surprise that the rest of us are ready, willing and able to push back just as hard.
tech biz leads should just run their companies and stop trying to play president or god
pj_mukh 8 hours ago [-]
"At this point, tech biz leaders are massively over-reaching and trying to influence the rest of us:"
I realize this is what's happening on the headlines, but most of the technology being "deployed" is back-office automation, robotics etc. that no one writes about and none of the tech baddies have monopolistic control over. I refuse to let muxk, thiel, Karp to run the conversation and setup the reaction either. It is exciting and dramatic but not necessarily influential.
squidbeak 8 hours ago [-]
There aren't any profits with full automation - but there is instead total power for whoever owns that automation.
pj_mukh 7 hours ago [-]
If it’s a monopoly yes. But there are massive profits in full automation. I’m not expecting costs to go to zero but it’s the only pathway to things getting cheaper by a lot.
squidbeak 6 hours ago [-]
Where are these profits coming from? Remember, under full automation there aren't any workers earning salaries.
Meanwhile, costs of production fall to zero. So what will there be for these profitable companies to spend their profits on?
pj_mukh 4 hours ago [-]
I think we get hung up on definitions and end conditions when we are more likely to feel the effects of the asymptotic regions ala AGI or Full Automation
The exact situation I laid out:
“If it takes 10 construction workers at $60,000/annum to build one home, I can forsee the descendants of current AI tech enabling 10 construction workers at $150,000/annum building 5 homes in the same time with an even larger profit margin for the corporation involved.”
Is the most likely condition if we let this technology grow healthily with the exact “full automation” end condition being beyond the point of diminishing returns.
This is a lot of very wealthy workers building products for a lot of people with revenue growing but margins plateauing and therefore absolute profits growing as well. This is an exact repeat of the Industrial Revolution situation,
jdjdjxixismns 8 hours ago [-]
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gbibas 8 hours ago [-]
This makes me think of enlightened self interest. If the tech elite crush everyone by automating too fast then the economy collapses and people don’t have the money to pay them and their advertisers, so it will wind up hurting them directly too. Enlightened self interest SHOULD keep those same people in check finding a way to use the technology to empower advances in efficiency that empower people not just corporations. But the AI leaders don’t outwardly seem to think about these issues, and when asked just brush past them. We should not stop tech progress even if it were possible in a global competitive environment (which it is not), but there are some moral issues that should guide tech leaders in decision making, not just profit motives.
geremiiah 8 hours ago [-]
The Catholic Church has at present no answer to that question. The contemporary political-economic stance of the Catholic Church is based on economic liberalism and capitalism and maintaining a just balance between capital and labour, as indeed mentioned in the encyclical itself.
I don't think anyone has an answer to that question at present, honestly.
djsamseng 8 hours ago [-]
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jdjdjxixismns 8 hours ago [-]
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polotics 10 hours ago [-]
What kind of regulation is Leo the alignment expert proposing exactly?
Occam's Razor says this is Anthropic trying to build a regulatory moat by leveraging some halo effect.
Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions? Could be a better use of the infallible man's pulpit?
jeanlucas 10 hours ago [-]
From what you read, what do you think? All your questions are mentioned in the encíclica.
gooseyman 11 hours ago [-]
The em-dashes present within the writing made me pause and consider how much of this was written/exited by AI.
Quick browse through pre-AI works from John Paul II show em-dashes present.
slfnflctd 10 hours ago [-]
Pure speculation, but simply the presence of em-dashes may be a statement in itself.
One of the big problems I see currently is all the wild accusations being thrown around by seemingly half the internet that every little thing has been AI manipulated upon the tiniest suspicion. We will go mad tearing each other apart if we keep escalating this behavior.
Yes, some of it is blatantly obvious, but not to everyone-- so I think those casting aspersions need to really back up their claims with more than one or two bits of 'evidence'. I have been accused of using AI to write comments (which I have thus far never done), and I know I'm not the only one by a long shot. Such a waste of time and energy. Ignore it and move on if something smells off to you.
Also I am just so, so tired of the em-dash argument. Humans have been using it for a looong time. Let it go.
gooseyman 10 hours ago [-]
Now that's some em-dash passion!
My point was less about em-dashes and more stopping to consider how the vatican's workflow and editorial process has changed in wake of AI, and what, if any, impact that could have on the outputs.
AI is a tool, I have no problems with others using it to assist with writing as long as the original intent/argument remains.
People need to stop acting like AI systems can detect AI. They can't. Pangram and similar are simply lying. There's no method to do what they claim and there never will be.
10 hours ago [-]
canjobear 8 hours ago [-]
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polotics 10 hours ago [-]
What kind of regulation is Leo the alignment expert proposing exactly?
Occam's Razor says this is Anthropic trying to build a regulatory moat by leveraging some halo effect.
Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions? Could be a better use of the infallible man's pulpit?
colinhb 9 hours ago [-]
Attacking the cult of progress is a major through-line:
> 12: Today, the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations. All too often, we place our hope in unlimited 'upgrades,' in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities, and in immediate solutions incapable of healing people's wounds.
> 94: The danger of humanity becoming a victim of its own achievements was already clearly recognized by Saint Paul VI, who warned that 'the most extraordinary scientific progress, the most astounding technical feats and the most amazing economic growth, unless accompanied by authentic moral and social progress, will in the long run go against man.' For this reason, technological progress — valuable in itself — requires careful discernment of the anthropological vision that guides it and the ends it pursues. If technological development advances without a corresponding ethical and social progress, the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity: 'having more' without 'being more.' In such a scenario, there is a risk that individuals will be evaluated principally according to the outcomes they produce.
> 112: More gravely, the pervasive technocratic paradigm in which we are immersed, and that is amplified by the digital revolution and AI, threatens to normalize an anti-human vision. In that vision, the fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty and exerting total control. When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion.
There's much more along these and related lines.
polotics 4 hours ago [-]
I think you misunderstood the message there. These pompous paragraphs are not attacks on the cult of progress, at all.
I read the extremely unexamined blank: """technological progress — valuable in itself —"""
Read again: they are extremely weak sauce, with the implicit message that all that wanting more is oh yes so morally wrong... Morally. But in Leo's wordage I find zero pragmatism, zero hard facts, zero El Niño, zero it's gonna crash... zero call to action. Just pious de-fanged sidelined position-taking.
But anyway. I found the unlock for Karma drop, went from 2666 to 2659 with this one previous comment, I kid you not! So all the good words, and then "regulation" right, standing next to Anthropic's boss, all good right?
gchamonlive 8 hours ago [-]
Although your comment is acid, I think this bears truth
> Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions?
It's too weak of a rhetoric from the highest representative of the Catholic church to call for regulations, but the alternative is to call for a transition from capitalism itself. Nothing that grows inside economic doctrines that only value constant growth at all costs can be safely regulated, regulation being only a makeshift solution.
bad_haircut72 8 hours ago [-]
Capitalism is clearning having a moment atm but as far as I know nothing about capitalism demands permanent growth. Capitalism is about private ownership of the means of production (and a complicated system of laws that allow ownership of abstract concepts, like futures contracts). Its the people who always want more - usually the ones who already have the most, and this has been the case since the first kings.
hootz 8 hours ago [-]
If the way capitalism works is by responding to the excesses of a few with unbounded growth and destruction to meet that demand, isn't that also an issue with capitalism itself? Capitalism does not demand permanent growth if you only define it by private ownership of the means of production, but in reality, it seems like the supply and demand dynamics result in some extremely inefficient allocation in relation to the masses just so a few can have their riches and, apparently, their massive water-hogging datacenters for SOTA LLMs.
briandw 7 hours ago [-]
Water hogging? Show me the data. This is a lie that the socialist continue to peddle. It’s a very sticky idea completely resistant to facts. Data-centers use 48m gallons a day in the USA. Total water consumption is 322 billion a day. So 0.015% of water use. Golf courses use 30x that and Almonds 80x that.
hootz 7 hours ago [-]
Okay, those are the global stats, but what about local impacts? Water is often a local resource, not a country-wide one, so the impact of a large datacenter will often be much higher around it. For example, we have some datacenters gobbling up 10% of all the water consumption of a town (https://www.waterverge.com/news/data-centers-ai-water-consum...), with most of that coming from potable water supplies. That's considerably higher than the global stat you provided of 0.015%, and that affects the entire town.
The total water usage of the largest concentration of datacenters in the world is only using 10% of the water consumption of the county, about half of which is non-potable reclaimed water that would otherwise be dumped into a river [1], and you think this is a bad thing?
Capitalism is about giving power to the people with the most capital. Obviously they will use that power to give themselves more capital. If not, their power will be taken away and given to people who did, since they'll have more capital. This is an inseparable part of the system of capitalism.
dist-epoch 7 hours ago [-]
> Capitalism is about private ownership of the means of production
No, Capitalism is about Capital and it's multiplication. Means of production are just a tool for Capital to multiply.
polotics 4 hours ago [-]
Are you serious? Have you seen how much environmental damage the old Soviet Union has done? Do you think it's that simple: "capitalism bad"...?
Proper systemic improvements are possible, and having markets is a good way to allocate resources and efforts.
b65e8bee43c2ed0 7 hours ago [-]
Impressive. Very nice.
Now let's see your views on homosexuality, promiscuity, contraception, abortion, drug use, and all the other things the target audience of this "I SUPPORT THE CURRENT THING" proclamation also feels strongly about.
fgaanb 10 hours ago [-]
The Pope is making a fundamental mistake here: His advisors told him that AI works and needs to be managed.
He does not address plagiarism, the fact that AI is mostly a surveillance and IP laundering tool, the fact that AI hasn't achieved much so far. You could say it has achieved nothing if compared to the whole history of human ingenuity, certainly not in CS.
He should have compared AI to the golden calf.
His criticism is lukewarm, does not address the criminal aspects and technological failures and is as such industry compliant. He can now say "I have tried" without harming the industry in the least.
This text is not what our current situation demands, but I hope that priests will augment and amplify it in their sermons and go a bit deeper.
arter45 4 hours ago [-]
>Moreover, ownership of data cannot be left solely in private hands but must be appropriately regulated. Data is the product of many contributors and should not be treated as something to be sold off or entrusted to a select few. It is necessary to think creatively in order to manage data as a common or shared good, in a spirit of participation, as Saint John Paul II already suggested regarding collective goods. [128]
It does mention IP concerns, but that's not the greatest existential threat posed by AI.
dgellow 10 hours ago [-]
Are people seriously turning towards their religions for a take on intellectual property rights?
fgaanb 10 hours ago [-]
Technically it is one of the ten commandments.
dgellow 9 hours ago [-]
The part about not stealing? If yes that’s a tiny bit of a stretch :)
khazhoux 5 hours ago [-]
We would not have a legal concept of intellectual property at all, if not as a form of theft.
michahell 4 hours ago [-]
Talk about making things hard to read. Also, Holy See? Whoever thought that was aptly named? The Holy StumbleUpon would be better as they always stumble things after everyone realized before them 5-100 years ago. Nonetheless good that religion also offers some of their infinite wisdom regarding AI to steer those who take any value in most of their gibberish
jkman 4 hours ago [-]
hyuk hyuk kyuk, man you are hilarious!!! Take my updoot good sir
For example, if you look at the boom of the middle classes in the mid 20th century, this appears to me largely a consequence of the fact that industrial technology at the time was both incredibly productive compared to what came before but it also required legions of humans to operate it. Ford didn't pay his workers more out of the goodness of his heart, but he correctly realized that it would ultimately be the most profitable to him if he could build legions of cars and had a large customer base that could afford them. In a similar vein, it looks like we may eventually (at least at some point) turn the tide on CO2 emissions, but not because anyone (at large) really sacrificed anything, or did something that was mildly painful now in the hopes for a better future, but instead because renewable and battery tech is just getting to be the economic best option.
So I guess I'm looking for some specific examples of where we've actually consciously, as a collective society, altered the course of technological progress for the greater good, because I honestly can't think of any. But this is not a rhetorical question - I'd like to be corrected if I'm wrong.
One should not forget the reason that these technologies have become so cheap is policy interventions. Especially renewables got kick-started by programs like the German Renewable Energy Sources Act (EEG) which then created demand for Chinese mass manufacturing to eventually lower prices.
Once it has already spread far and wide with clear economic pathways though? Perhaps less so.
But your last sentence "Electric utilities did not end up ruling the world" really struck me. It's a great point, and TBH I don't really actually know why electric utilities didn't end up becoming more powerful. Time for me to go research the early history of electrification.
Edit: This reddit thread on AskHistorians has good info and links: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/8373wv/how_f... . Again, thank you very much for your mention of electricity, because it looks like it actually was a pretty severe power struggle between electric companies and governments at large trying to regulate them, and if anything it has given me some hope that maybe "the people" will eventually win out.
Yes. Electric utilities were at one time quite powerful, around 1900 or so. Read up on Samuel Insull [1], the early history of antitrust, the Utility Company Holding Act, and the history of public utility regulation. Many countries just nationalized the electrical power industry. The US didn't, but regulated it strictly for most of a century. As is typical, this followed a financial disaster.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Insull
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_Commission_of_New_...
This was deeply offensive to the economists of the 80s and 90s and so they were taken over by the state government and turned into a for profit company.
It was corporatised before it was sold off. Privatisation of the NSW energy market began about 30 years ago at this point.
RERUM NOVARUM ENCYCLICAL OF POPE LEO XIII ON CAPITAL AND LABOR
http://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiii/en/encyclicals/docume...
I wonder though... it seems the tech behind electricity has no moat, broadly speaking, and so was commoditized. Whereas if one of the AI companies finds a proprietary breakthrough algorithm that won't be the case... at least until others catch up.
Incandescent lightbulbs vs fluorescent? Low-flow toilets?
In less important matters, we've regulated many harmful substances that the free market would love to poison the populace with. Nicotine, trans fats, gambling, alcohol. Some regulatory interventions have been more successful than others...
I expect prices of goods would have been much lower and the labor would have been used elsewhere and the comp would still have gone a comparable if not longer way because goods would have been so much cheaper.
One example that comes to mind is cloning. It's technically fully possible to clone a human right now (as in make an embryo with one person's DNA), but it's wildly taboo.
So my argument is not that we can't regulate technologies, but that we only do so when it becomes "technologically convenient". I think the comparison of CFCs to fossil fuels also highlights this point. CFCs were used in a relatively small area of the economy, and replacing them was pretty easy, so not a lot of regulatory will was required. Contrarily, the entire world economy runs on fossil fuels, so replacing them is an enormous task, and as one example you get tons of powerful invested interests pushing back. I honestly don't remember any crazy people shouting "the ozone hole is just an elite conspiracy", but you hear that all the time with respect to global warming.
My fear with AI is that it is such a powerful tech (or is at least viewed as such) that the powers that be are scared of being surpassed by another country/company if they slow down.
Regulated because of the common good, even though there is money to be made selling them OTC as cold remedies or whatever.
Maybe this shows that there are indeed simply more variable in the calculus of how we optimize towards things as a society.
And that indeed we can feel now that certain variables, antithetical to the continued success of many people, are at risk.
The whole idea of "taming technology" starts from a flawed premise. The problem is with people, not the technology.
Technology concentrates power. Yes, people may be the problem, but "taming technology" is obviously not a "flawed premise". There is a big difference between people having the power to bludgeon their neighbors with sticks and stones compared to blowing up entire continents with nukes.
> firearms accounted for 78% of all mechanisms used in homicides between 2018 and 2025.
https://ammo.com/research/murders-by-weapon-type
Watching PBS as we speak.
I look forward to reading this in detail. As I get older (and perhaps as AI has allowed me to spend more time thinking and less time doing) I've found myself thinking more and more about what it means to live a virtuous life and about ethics and morality and so forth. I don't have any answers (and I'm not looking for them, really, just musing) but I do find it very interesting to read and learn from and about those whose job it is to think about the answer to those questions.
"The twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, in the words of a protagonist in one of his novels, described our responsibility in this way: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” [187] The civilization of love will not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization."
> It is not your duty to finish the work [of perfecting the world], but neither are you at liberty to neglect it.
[https://www.sefaria.org/Pirkei_Avot.2.16?ven=english|Mishnah...]
It’s my biggest frustration with so many expressing progressive beliefs. I’ve lost count of the times a progressive expresses unwillingness to address problems at a smaller, local or personal level. Instead there is a demand to fix everything forever and at once at the highest levels, or do nothing at all.
There is nothing wrong with some people working on a regional or global fix while others work on a local one. The important thing is that they’re working for it.
The world would likely be a better place if people of all political stripes could internalize this concept.
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?"
This inspired me to seek out more about Rabbinic Judaism and its theology more deeply, and I found the language and analogies concerning the idea of "repairing the world" (which you referenced, but which I think at first glance aren't necessarily something most people would identify as a specific core doctrinal theme) particularly inspiring [2]. To me it's frankly beautiful and something I recommend anybody interested in metaphysics or ethics/morality looking into; it also ties into the Kabbalah. IMO this aspect of Jewish theology deserves to be more widely known because it's something all of us can learn from.
[0] https://www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillel_the_Elder
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam
| If the final hour comes while one of you has a seed in his hand, if he can plant it before it takes place, let him do so.
I take it to mean it is never too late to do something good, even (or especially) something you will never benefit from.
>Therefore man was created single in the world to teach that for anybody who destroys a single life it is counted as if he destroyed an entire world, and for anybody who preserves a single life it is counted as if he preserved an entire world.
(Directly from the Mishna in the Talmud Yerushalmi)
> If we focus only on contingencies, we risk letting the succession of emergencies dictate the direction of our path. We are living through a rapid phase of transition, a “change of era,” in which — while some are vying for the future of new technologies and others dedicate themselves to reflecting on the matter — most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely hoping for the best. For this very reason, crucial questions impose themselves on our conscience and can no longer be avoided: Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?
That's a maxim for leaders generally. It's quite common for CEOs to spend all their time on managing crises and not enough on trying to progress and improve the business. It's even worse for politicians.
I wonder if meeting Colbert played any part in that.
Edith Stine
So even if we restrict the power of AI, others may not. And this might turn out to be a mistake.
I just hope this is taken into account.
It has undernotes of being disconnected from reality so to speak.
This was an almost sickening sentence to read on so many levels.
It's been interesting watching the various approvals for AI data centers and, as far as I know, zero communities have wanted them. I'll be happily proven wrong on this. It is at least the vast majority. Yet their elected representatives simply do not care. Sometimes there are votes in the dark of night, sometimes the police are used violently against any dissent, sometimes anyone protesting these are called violent (even terrorists) and so on.
It goes so beyond unpopularity though. The tax breaks given will be paid by everybody else, as will the extra electrical infrastructure, while the data centers get preferential electricity rates.
What's really depressing is that not only do the representatives not care, there is obviously no fear of repercussions. Will they get voted out of office? Probably not. But even if they do, i guarantee you they'll find themselves in some nameless six-figure job in the industry for their service afterwards. Their children will get these same "jobs". It is so nakedly corrupt and nobody cares.
This simply can't continue while everything becomes increasingly unaffordable, ironically much of that driven by AI (eg RealPage driving up rent prices or the meat-packing collusion driving up beef prices). I firmly believe we're rapidly bouldering towards complete societal breakdown.
All this while we'll likely mint our first trillionaire in our lifetimes. And that means a literal billionaire will be closer to being homeless than being the richest person on Earth.
It's particularly funny to me that the US administration has gotten into beef with the Pope for being too "woke". Honestly, I had my doubts when a Chicago man became Pope but he seems to be a rare voice for compassion in this world thus far.
We honestly need to look no further than the Global South to see how this will play out. Many in the West just don't realize how horrific and predatory colonialism is and that's not a historic artifact. It continues to this day.
Elon Musk is currently worth ~800 billion dollars. This could happen in a much shorter timeframe.
Every single religion is not free.
If you can't even accept the basic truth that we do not know, you are fundamentally biased.
I was a Nihilist when i was 16. This alone took years to get to that point and accept that truth. It took and still takes time after this to really pinpoint something tanguable.
But still the first step is to accept the nothing and the unkown.
The next step is to see evolutionary traits. Understanding why things which are are.
> 98. It is appropriate to preface this discussion with two considerations. First, any statement regarding AI risks becoming quickly outdated, given the remarkable pace at which these systems are developing. Second, all of us, including those who design them, possess only a limited understanding of their actual functioning. Indeed, current AI systems are more “cultivated” than “built,” for developers do not directly design every detail, but instead create a framework within which the intelligence “grows.” As a result, fundamental scientific aspects — such as the internal representations and computational processes of these systems — remain, at present, unknown. There thus emerges an urgent need for a twofold commitment: on the one hand, a deepening of scientific research; on the other, the exercise of moral and spiritual discernment.
The likes of Sam Altman and Peter Thiel have openly stated they view humans as largely disposable. I don't think we can expect much humanism from them.
(In fact I think atheists should make more effort to learn about the vast diversity of other faiths. It's very narrow to be atheist only about the Abrahamic deity. You end up incorporating a lot of Christian thought without realizing because it's so deeply ingrained that it seems like the only option.)
Your sentence doesn't really make sense, and there is a lot of deities..
> You end up incorporating a lot of Christian thought without realizing because it's so deeply ingrained that it seems like the only option.
Depends on the country, some Northen european countries have a very high proportion of atheists, so it happens probably less there.
The problem I have with this is that it's structurally a motte-and-bailey claim. If I have to take it literally, then it's obviously true and it's simply unserious to deny it: the Church does have a pervasive influence on Western civilization. The way it's often rhetorically used, however, is in opposition and to the exclusion of other strands of thought that are equally foundational: the renaissance, the enlightenment, the revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries, the scientific enterprise, in a smaller but still real way classical antiquity. To the extent it can be said to exist, Western civilization is a patchwork. It is beautiful and I very much like it, but I don't think any one patch gets to have all the credit.
> In fact I think atheists should make more effort to learn about the vast diversity of other faiths
A better version of myself for sure would make that effort. The problem, of course, is that other faiths are just as deep and complicated as "our own", and it would take a lot of time and effort to do so with any level of seriousness.
So I agree with the grandparent comment: unless one takes the time to study and truly understand other belief systems, it's hard to see how Western "secular" schools of thought remain Christian because we're submerged in them since childhood.
This is laughable... Someone needs to read more about classical antiquity! :) Certainly not something banal as "utopian political projects", which is extremely well attested in e.g. Greek philosophy, and indeed relatively absent from Christianity (its message being essentially escathological in nature, especially in its first few centuries)!
I don't think this is actually true; I think your own bias is colouring the conversation here.
The minimalist claim that the West is massively influenced by the Church is true to the point of banality, the maximalist claims those ideas are usually deployed to champion simply do not follow.
If only there were a name for this rhetorical fallacy...
Western thought traces back to the Greeks. Aquinas refers to Aristotle as "The Philosopher." Aristotle died over 300 years before Jesus was born.
> The Catholic Church, for all its many faults, retains a serious intellectual tradition.
On Aquinas, the Church Doctor, Bertrand Russell had the following to say:
"Before he begins to philosophize, he already knows the truth; it is declared in the Catholic faith. If he can find apparently rational arguments for some parts of the faith, so much the better; if he cannot, he need only fall back on revelation. The finding of arguments for a conclusion given in advance is not philosophy, but special pleading. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times."
Their point is that despite your subscription to reason, without exposure to other cultural norms, you may be blind to what Christian values you live by. Becoming aware of them can help self evaluation of your ethical framework
For that matter, reading the Christian scriptures through a historical lens reveals a very different kind of thought than the modern version of Christianity and Judaism. It takes a huge amount of effort to read these documents in context; just reading them in the original languages is hard enough. But the past is a very foreign country and they see things very differently there.
No one is asking you to believe in anything, but it's self-limiting to refuse to engage with works of historical/cultural importance.
However I reject the idea that engaging with religious texts is insightful and something to promote
Ehh. The vast majority of "Western" thought of the past >2000 years, including that of the Church itself, come from Greek philosophy and thought.
> the one-sidedness of the interaction, the tendency to communicate only some parts of one’s interior world, the risk of constructing a false image of oneself, which can become a form of self-indulgence
Let's not forget that Galileo Galilei studied at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, that Mendel (Mendel's Laws) did made his discoveries in a cloister and books, translations and libraries on pretty much everything for a really long time was pretty much only done within religious institutions. And for the longest stretch those were Christian Catholicism and Islam.
The Vatican Observatory also is an important source of high quality papers.
I mean one of the primary things Christians and Muslims based they believes on are books. So many got in touch with it. And that's not even touching the whole architecture, arts, philosophy department yet.
The fact that in thousands of years of history there have also been a couple of really dumb people in charge that were paranoid or wanted to distract from their failures and got mad or scared when someone challenged their world views isn't exactly surprising. Looks like no matter how good a large enough group of people gets their will always be idiots messing things up.
I guess when you look back as much as the people in Vatican appear to do I guess you see patterns. Technology and science (race theory, chemical castration, ...) or simply "progress" are often used to justify acts of evilness. Just like religion, democracy, freedom and what not.
That said of course there's still die hard anti-science creationists. But talking to a very religious person once it seems that there is simply also a lot of philosophy around science. Eg. there was a big bang (fun fact, a theory started by a religious person) and the universe simply didn't exist for an infinite time there must have been some cause for it. And unless that cause is some kind of infinite cycle it also must have started somehow and even though I do not share that believe there is a notion of a deliberate start in there. That won't make me a religious person, but it won't make them an atheist either. So I guess that's fair enough.
What I wanna say with that is that the science vs religion trope is as true or false as democrats/republicans or other groups of people are opposed to science. They all are when they are confronted with something they don't like. I think the HN comments section is the best proof for that. ;)
Also atheist here. Just not the kind that doesn't even know the difference between knowledge and beliefs.
"Technology is never neutral, because it takes on the characteristics of those who devise, finance, regulate and use it."
Therefore builders "bear a particular ethical and spiritual responsibility" because "every design choice reflects a vision of humanity."
The questions shouldn't just be 'can we build it?' or 'will people want this?'
We need to also ask 'should we build it?' and 'will this make humanity better?'
The encyclical calls on us to “join forces in building up the common good.”
This is a message we need right now.
"Software engineers shall act consistently with the public interest. In particular, software engineers shall, as appropriate:
1.01. Accept full responsibility for their own work.
1.02. Moderate the interests of the software engineer, the employer, the client and the users with the public good.
1.03. Approve software only if they have a well-founded belief that it is safe, meets specifications, passes appropriate tests, and does not diminish quality of life, diminish privacy or harm the environment. The ultimate effect of the work should be to the public good. ..."
From the IEEE, which also encompasses computer engineering, their first principle and its first few sub-items are:
"To uphold the highest standards of integrity, responsible behavior, and ethical conduct in professional activities.
1. to hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public, to strive to comply with ethical design and sustainable development practices, to protect the privacy of others, and to disclose promptly factors that might endanger the public or the environment;
2. to improve the understanding by individuals and society of the capabilities and societal implications of conventional and emerging technologies, including intelligent systems; ..."
Of course people are going to ignore it if there's no force behind it.
The job interview for doctors is a 5-7 year residency under tight supervision of an attending physician: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residency_(medicine) . People do flunk or drop out as well, meaning they can never become a physician. There's nothing easier about that.
But I would argue it is way easier there. Building software has way more grey areas.
What grey areas are there for doctors?
It is however just that very small minority of the population with highly psychopathic/narcissistic traits - those that, in pre-historic times, would have been kicked out swiftly of hunter & gatherer / small village communities because of their parasitic nature - that in bigger civilisations seem to thrive due to abstraction (distance/time of the effect of their actions) and obfuscation (PR) and instead unfortunately seem to rise to the top (CEOs, presidents, 'thought leaders' ...) to steer the world's overall economy and mindset - and steer it in the abyss.
Sometimes I think humanity was just not made to scale, and this aspect is one very large aspect of it.
Most likely the same kind of Machiavellian political maneuvering was effective in those groups as well.
The critical point is that the violators have to be punished more consistently then the demanded consistency of the ideals.
> It is the pursuit of the common good that gives life to a people, understood not as a mere collection of individuals, but as a living reality in which people learn to recognize that they themselves are interconnected and jointly responsible for the res publica. In this sense, every person contributes to the building up of one’s people...
> When it comes to decisions regarding economic flows and digital platforms, as well as the governance of data and algorithms, we cannot allow a handful of actors to dictate these processes on their own; instead, we must build forms of cooperation that respect the various levels of the global community and make them jointly responsible for the common good.
> We cannot be satisfied with merely calling for the moralization of machines — the so-called “alignment” of AI with human values — without also having the courage to insist on a further condition: the possibility of openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice.... What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating, and of protecting the opportunities for communities still to be able to participate and ask questions.
I am well aware of the abuses and scandals of Christian churches throughout history. I am also aware that the Romans and other civilizations pre-dating Christianity had even less regard for the poor and powerless.
The casual reference to a 135 year old encyclical that dealt with the seismic shift of industrialisation took me quite aback for a number of reasons.
Two I recommend, from the last 40 years:
Veritatis splendor, John Paul II, 1993
Argues that Christian freedom is fulfilled, not limited, by objective moral truth: some acts are intrinsically evil regardless of intention or circumstance, conscience must be formed by divine law rather than self-authorization, and the Church must faithfully teach this moral truth as the path to authentic human flourishing in Christ.
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...
Fides et Ratio, John Paul II, 1998
Argues that faith and reason are complementary paths to truth: reason needs faith to avoid skepticism, relativism, and reductionism, while faith needs reason to express, defend, and deepen its understanding of divine revelation and the human search for meaning.
https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/encyclicals/d...
For example. Their dualist view of the world makes them see AI as something very different from human intelligence. So, without having read it, the church may negate that it could be at human level. A few years ago that would negate that computers could be creative because they do not have a soul.
Anyway, kudos for focussing on the important issues and the impact on human.(And less on sex)
What you ignore is that the Church historically was a patron of Arts and Science, a preserver of history, works, documents and even pagan mythology. How many scientists has the Roman Church executed? One, Giordano Bruno, and it was not even due to his scientific views but rather his heretical views. Just as comparison, how many scientists has the Chinese Cultural Revolution executed?
The reformation was highly religious of course, but it was also about reading original sources, devolving power from a central authority, and allowing individuals to discover the truth.
Sometimes I think that the catholic church is like Leto II in Dune - ruling people so that they will rebel in a way that there can never again be a central power structure.
From Crichton's book Jurassic Park, which like most of his books is about the perils of technological advancements.
They used the quote in the movie, slightly tweaked.
Engineers/technologists tend to have no such guardrails, and are also usually embedded into entirely profit motivated environments, whatever their own values might be.
I have fond memories of a boss who was an actual, licensed engineer while the rest of us were very much normal software devs. Boss was pretty chill except when someone someone suggested we should be called "engineers" rather than "developers", at which point they said "if you guys were building bridges, people would be dead." (I don't think all software needs to be built to rigorous engineering standards but man... I think about that line a lot.)
Absent US government intervention to codify the term "engineer", probably the only way out of the "engineer" trap is through further title inflation, where the developers all become "vice presidents". :)
The most famous example may be the perpetual war between architects and engineers/builders.
With luck, one out of 100 inventions will show promise on those points.
There's always a lifetime wake where the overwhelming vast majority of the work remains undeployed no matter what. The more undeployed milestones and inventions that some scientists have under their belt, the more accomplished they often are whether anybody knows it or not.
OTOH, equally active engineers more often need to have most of their time engaged in actual deployment of some kind or another, otherwise not as much progress will be able to reach as many people that could benefit. So many times nothing would be accomplished without a long-term focused engineering effort once an objective has been identified. But it can be hard to stop a train when it's already coming off the drawing board at full steam.
It does seem a lot more likely for a judicious researcher to cast off some major progress in what could very well turn out to be an unsavory development, such as likely misuse, even if it could be marketed as the most popular thing they have so far. Just add it to the pile of other things that best remain undeployed. There's plenty more where that came from, and the best is yet to come.
Perhaps popularity alone is not always the best measure of progress.
> The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes
Sure hope your rosy inflection point happens real soon.
Otherwise, the direction this is taking us is pretty obvious.
> This is a message we need right now.
Feels good man. The solution found by the private parties driving technological change is sainthood. Or aiming for it. At least, better than you. They have the vision of what's good for the herd, but the more time I spend as a sheep, the more it seems the "herd" is just a way to recycle the story of their own exceptionalism stripped of any mark of individuality. A simple visit to fiftyyears.com will greet you with "We back the indispensable". I guess it's the same "we".
Why does it have to be either/or?
From a high-level view, there are powerful cultural/political forces that nudge us towards building harmful, wasteful things without us being aware of said forces. The government, corporate greed, and billion-dollar marketing budgets are to blame.
But on the ground, from an in-the-trenches perspective, I think an engineer at Meta, for example, shares in some level of blame, too. Mainly because there is plenty of evidence showing how much harm Meta products have brought upon society. Yet Meta couldn’t be built without engineers opting in to work there in exchange for $300k salaries.
We desperately need moral clarity and courage at both the policy-level and the individual level.
It's not either/or in strict terms, it absolutely is either/or in practical terms. When the conscientious engineer chooses not to take the 300k job, the next one in line does. If enough choose not to, it just became a 400k job.
Can you change society in such a way that nobody would take such jobs? In strict terms, sure, in practical terms it probably entails enormous costs, both economical and societal. And then you still have other countries.
There's an entire legal code filled with things on which we can't rely on the morals of the people. We can't stop theft, rape and murder, what makes you think that stopping engineers is any more feasible?
The best thing builders can do is use their knowledge and authority to pressure the other side.
Ofc they share the blame, but it is not solving the problem.
You can say for example: loan sharks are bad for society; so government gives anyone 0 percent credit. You just removed one problem, created another.
Just and sustaining system with individual morality is destined to fail. Only option is social regulation. Which is at government level.
Sure, IF we could just go and fix our governments in some magical way then the problem would disappear. That goes from hunger, climate change, videogame addiction and AI. The problem is that what you value in life in different than what others do, so we now have a system in which sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don't.
But back to the topic, I do think that how OpenAI and Anthropic handled the government and them asking to drop guardrails is something a company can actually and actively do without having to reinvent the universe.
Are we all going to stop building things until the government is fixed and all political problems are resolved? No? Then we must think about how we should build in a world with imperfect government.
Everyone likes to talk about "fixing the government". It feels nice to understand the problem with something else that is broken. The problem is that replacing the people in charge is a no-op if you don't have a pool of good people to choose from and the will to choose them.
"That which can be automated by the AI should be."
Glad there’s a simple, easy to implement solution to solve this problem! One that hasn’t been considered or tried before!
Like it or not if you knowingly build stuff that is used for evil purposes you are complicit
You can't build an orphan mulching machine and get away with just a shrug. "I don't really agree with mulching orphans but someone else paid me to build that. If I didn't build it someone else would have" just does not absolve you of your involvement in mulching orphans
All of this is empty puffery til the US and Israel are condemned. Go after the Big Tech billionaires backing those monsters, sure, but no builder needs to be more concerned about ethics than the very institutions designed to concentrate human decision making. Fix your own house first, folks. Techies - keep building, and do better than these people.
I think reading this helps me imagine a version of the future I'd actually like to live in. A version where technology is used well (rather than preaching for abstinence from technology) and where values other than "intelligence" (in whatever guise) are on an equal footing.
Even writing that makes me feel naive (and to an extent I know it is) but I think it would be inconsistent for someone who cheers for humanity's efforts to solve/chip away at "impossible" problems (like LLMs were thought to be not so long ago) to shirk from the challenge of making the world better for _everyone_.
Even with all morally good actors locally, there is no guarantees for external forces. Thinking it hypothetically, even with global coordination ( all good actors ) there is not a proven path that would lead us to better place from any starting point from past.
In the AI case, each firm is in an arms race, and nobody can slow down without effectively collapsing due to positive gross margins only being viable with a frontier model that attracts marginal demand. An appeal to morality might have an impact but more effective action would be to address the structure that the AI companies are situated in that causes this dynamic in the first place. In practice, thats going to be a global agreement to slow down, and global regulations.
Ironically, these are often the same people denouncing multiculturalism, yet the culture they strive for is completely morally bankrupt.
That's not to say we should be naive about greed or malice existing or being powerful motivators (especially the former), but it is obviously not true that they're the only forces at play and therefore you are "just doing the logical thing" by succumbing to them. It's just the more destructive version of the same naiveté.
I haven’t read the full Magnifica Humanitas yet, but I would be pleasantly surprised if he touched on not just dehumanization of the other, but dehumanization of the self. Expanding on your thought, succumbing to those forces under the guise of just doing the logical thing is in a way self-dehumanization - to believe you are only capable of the “logical” thing instead of the moral thing.
Everything in life in trade-offs. Simple example is speed/quality/cost. I can tell easily:
- services should be cheap - services should be fast - services should be high quality
Now I created an utopia. Obviously this is amazing to listener. They agree. But is it achievable?
It is not saying greed is good or might makes right. But system means you need to construct from this ideals best outcome ( which comes at some trade offs)
“Duty is ours. Results are God's”
I believe the Amish figured this out over a century ago.
The Amish rather came to a different conclusion (which I don't want to judge on, but on which I nevertheless have a different opinion than the Amish).
The central idea concerning the Amish's relationship to technology is that only technology is allowed if it does not destroy their community.
My personal values are much less based on upholding a community, but rather are much more rooted in individual freedom and independence. This means that I (likely) come to very different conclusions regarding this class of problems than the Amish do:
For example, I am less opposed to various kinds of technology that Amish would likely consider as as "community-destroying".
On the other hand, I guess I am much more opposed to technology that can be used to surveil the user and/or makes the user dependent on the whims of big tech companies than I guess the Amish are (i.e. the Amish would likely consider this as a much smaller problem concerning which technology to allow vs disallow; as I wrote: by my understanding their central concern is which consequences some technology has for keeping their community together).
To give evidence for the previous point: (by my impression - I am not US-American) you will rather not find many Amish people at political rallys against surveillance laws. The people who attend such rallys typically also have strong opinions on which technology to use or not to use (just talk to such people who are very strongly opinionated :-) ), but - as I pointed out - these technology choices come from very different basic premises than those of the Amish.
> Separation from Evil
> The community of Christians shall have no association with those who remain in disobedience and a spirit of rebellion against God. There can be no fellowship with the wickedness of this earthly world; therefore there can be no participation in the organizations, works, church services, meetings or civil affairs of those who live in contradiction to the commands of God (this may include Catholics and Protestants as well as other religions and pagans). All evil must be put away, including using weapons of force such as the sword and armor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schleitheim_Confession
Woman have less value under the church than man. Alternative sexual views are evil.
Church and any kind of believe system hurts our society and divides us.
Any belief system? And yet I bet you value freedom over slavery, wisdom over ignorance and compassion over brutality. That’s a belief system, despite not being a religion.
If the majority says, no we want to be able to control other human beings, these people will reinact slavery. From a society point of view though we see that its not a working model anymore.
A real believe system can't be argued with. You believe in this god? This god says x and thats why you do things? Okay thats it. You don't even question were this information even came from.
If we delete all religion tomorrow and science, there is a realistic chance that the society rediscover the same existing rules like math and gravity, but religions might appear again but with different names, different rules etc.
I can change your mind with logic and arguments if its not a believe system, i can't do that with religion.
Wisdom over ignorance: The chance of survival is higher with wisdom
Compassion over brutality: This is just basic Game theory
What may make sense for you individually may also be empirically proven to be detrimental to the whole.
The new testament contrasts with the old, the gospel is one of tolerance and equality. It's a big part of why you have the rights that you do, as do women.
That said a lot of what you're saying can be ascribed to religious institutions and sects and individuals and specific churches. But your general prescription is like saying "this logical axiom is evil because XYZ ascribes to it and they are also evil".
You also have a belief system -- that people who believe in God do so because they don't question their beliefs, that religious people are only led by dogma. Yet your belief is wrong. Have you tried questioning it?
> but religions might appear again but with different names, different rules etc
Religions and scripture spread also evolutionarily. Christianity is popular because it is rooted in many truths.
> Compassion over brutality: This is just basic Game theory
And the game has been played.
Its just a control structure from the church without education.
Its probably even because of missing education. Educate people properly and they can handle "Fornication culture".
I don't have a believe system. I have a theory why people believe in gods and religions. We have evidence for it. People studied the origin of religions:
"It evolved from humanity's psychological and social needs, primarily our desire to make sense of the natural world, cope with the fear of death, and foster community cooperation."
We know how little people knew when religion started to emerge. Never seen space, never seen above a cloud besides a few poeople going up mountains. Thunder was not understood. Between 1400-1700 we had witch trials.
It is dogma. What is your argument against dogma?
"Christianity is popular because it is rooted in many truths." were is your argument for this? Its popular due to luck, power and wars. Missionaries as well and especially probably the most critical thing: Early indoctrination.
>> Compassion over brutality: This is just basic Game theory > And the game has been played.
Yes exactly. Compassion wins because its better, not because religion says so. Its an evolutionary win.
ok
"and any kind of believe system hurts our society and divides us."
People shouldn't believe anything?
Disagreement and conflict are natural. How we handle these disagreements while striving for widespread peace and prosperity is the question.
There is no inherant issue with this. in contrary it makes me mentally stronger.
I can choose on my own terms if/when i want to end my life. If i get very sick, i don't have to hope for a god or priests blessing to end my life, i will just do it.
But religion is different: if you believe that homosexuality is wrong due to your religion, there is nothing i can argue about. Your priest told you this based on some book or story from 2000 years ago and you do not question this.
I know plenty of strong christians and muslism in germany who do not like homosexual people. And its dividing our society.
You believe that you don't believe.
> But religion is different: if you believe that homosexuality is wrong due to your religion, there is nothing i can argue about. Your priest told you this based on some book or story from 2000 years ago and you do not question this.
This isn't the Church doctrine. The Church doesn't target homosexuals or even homosexuality in particular but ALL sexual practices that deviates from the unitive and procreative aspects of human sexuality. Christians don't believe in this because a book written thousands of years ago say so but because deep in their souls it makes sense and is the truth for them. Homosexuals are welcome on the Church as any other sinner what is ridiculous is to expect the Church to condone sins and bless sinful relationships be them homosexual or heterosexual.
> I know plenty of strong christians and muslism in germany who do not like homosexual people. And its dividing our society.
Perhaps it is something else that divides.
There is also a clear definition for it:
"Believing is the mental act of accepting something as true, real, or correct, often without requiring absolute, physical proof."
I'm absolutly fine saying that I don't know something. I do not know a god exist, or multiply etc. But honestly that question comes down to me more like "Does randomess exist".
Yes its absoutly a religios thing that homosexuality is bad. You call it yourself 'sinful relationship'. Its not a sin just because church doesn't like it. Also plenty of religions are responsible for making it a sin outside of religion.
And yes if the church condonse all sexual practices, it does include homosexuality and makes it a church doctrine.
Sorry mate, but that's just cultural indoctrination that made them feel that way, and the culture is intimately tied to the book.
The church creates a believe system which indoctrinates all of us and took our cultures away.
The germanic tribes were believers in nature, church removed all of this.
Church also doesn't see woman as equal.
Just because they might sometimes also say postive things or things we might align, doesn't mean i need their oppinion. And especially not on hn
The point is that times change, and institutions change, and holding grudges for long ago sins and policies is ineffective.
1990 there were nearly 60 Million people in the church in germany (nearly everyone) now we are down to under 40 Million which crossed the line of 50%
This is real tangable progress.
The only downside is, that we do not sit together and formulate something which might give people hold who are not ready to be self stable mentally and might need something like this. And we also do not try to align together on rituals which help us to live better together.
I'm also still affected by the indoctrination of the church. As you can see, i argue against church not just because I like to argue, but because i really really hate religion and especially the christian church in germany, due to my own values and experience. This is not old i'm only 36.
This weekend I upgraded the PC of a church lady who has about a 10-year old mini-PC, so now it has the latest Windows 11. This was not easy, it was a shambles of Windows 10 combined literally with amounts of older Windows 11. From which auto-updates would take it no further. OTOH on the bright side autoupdates could do no further damage.
I attribute all success to a miracle, considering there is only 32GB of soldered-in drive space and 4GB memory :\
I don't think it would have come to pass if it weren't for the Pope's smiling face appearing with delight each time I rebooted, when her PC's everyday desktop background picture came into view. This is where he is joining in with the tribal rhythms while visiting Africa, honoring their traditional culture while they honor his visit in their colorful regalia.
When you're dealing with anything that challenging, or more so, you need all the blessings and prayers you can get :)
As an aside, at least Trump is drawn to the grandeur of high culture from historical times, but he also doesn't understand a jota about aesthetics, and so the White House gets turned into a tacky gypsy-style abomination with one dollar ornaments.
When you compare the robber barons to Google and Meta it’s kind of embarrassing- they build massive empires of iron horses screaming across the world and covered cities in magnificent buildings (stations, libraries, etc). G&M built an empire of advertising and … not much else?
When power fears death, some strange things happens.
EDIT: link to the interview with Thiel <https://xcancel.com/rcbregman/status/2036113528126394834#m>
Every technology should be done to the fullest potential, how are we ever supposed to explore the stars or cure cancer if everyone is scared of accidentally building Skynet?
The scandal broke out in worldwide media starting in 2002 (not coincidentally, the same year South Park released Red Hot Catholic Love). This reminds me of when Contrapoints off-hand commented about how things were different in the 70s but that was "30 years ago".
The concept of a self-regulating industry is utter nonsense. I am a builder, and I try to do things right, but if I am honest with myself I do not have the mental capacity or willpower spare, or the worldly knowledge of everyone's perspectives, to manage these massive challenges. I need other smart people to also focus on that, people that are actual representatives of the population, and yes, force me to stop and do it better occasionally.
Achieving a good balance sometimes does require having opposing forces fight it out, it can be healthy.
https://monoskop.org/images/1/1f/Wiener_Norbert_God_and_Gole...
Norbert Weiner was an atheist but he talks about three areas religion is the only thing to have really examined that relate to capable AI: omniscience, omnipotence, and worship (gadget worship). It has very prescient stuff on blackbox learning/distillation, reinforcement learning/reward hacking, alignment through human feedback.
His The Human Use of Human beings and Cybernetics are extremely good too and have more of a mash of the themes between Rerum Novarum and Magnifca Humanitas, and more near-term automation.
Would you also recommend "The Human Use of Human Beings"?
God & Golem is the most succinct and up to date though, probably a 2hr read.
The book Cybernetics is a lot of math and ergodic theory stuff that went beyond me, but is the longest and you still get a lot out of it skimming over that stuff if you don't have the background for it. The last revision of it in the 50s added some of the same blackbox function copying/imitation learning/distillation stuff, reinforcement learning with reward hacking concerns, and superintelligence as genie/monkey's paw.
I would read the three in reverse order of publication.
He also foresaw another big area of potential existential danger, Wiener filter for guidance and control of missiles (later superceded with Kalman filter bringing the nuclear hard targets era with 15min retaliation windows) and refused to work on it or share prior work, and he also had bioweapons delivery concerns before the bioweapons treaties, publishing this open letter in The Atlantic in 1947:
https://archive.ph/D7BPt
Ask a scientist or engineer what philosophy or theology has taught us about the source of morality and their education, training and experiences havent prepared them to answer that question.
This didnt matter so much in the past because their activities never had the scale it does today. For basic training in philosophy if you are mid or upper level exec whose decisions are going to effect a whole lot of people, go to open yale courses and take the intro to Philosophy classes. It will help develop your answer to the question - why do you do what you do if you are going to die anyway tomorrow.
I quickly learned as an adult that whether you're a person of faith or not, it's not pointless at all. It's the foundation of everything. Philosophy is how you explain the deeper reasons behind why you follow whatever religion you do, or adhere more meaningfully to whatever kind of agnosticism, atheism and/or 'spirituality' (with or without woo) you espouse.
Maybe you mean mathematics is amoral and are committing the common conflation of "engineering is just applied science and science is just applied mathematics," which is a really bad case of missing the forest for the trees.
Humankind evolved to learn the universe because that was the only way to survive, and no secrets of it will be left unknowable since leaving them that way is a threat to survival.
My comment under the post on Omarchy here got downvoted and flagged by the "technology is neutral" crowd because I dared to say that it is unethical to use software produced by a white supremacist.
I am hoping the Pope has a cleaner view of AI quietly automating the drudgery in the back offices and not just robot dogs with machine guns. And with that view, should we build it?
If a technology existed that reduced the cost of producing a critical thing (think food, housing, medical care) down to near zero, however, it made the humans currently building the thing redundant, should we build it? Would it be okay to use the hyper-optimization power of Capitalism to build such a technology faster?
These two are not mutually exclusive, it's just that no one wants to pay for it.
If critical decisions affecting human life—such as hiring, lending, crime prediction, and welfare—are processed in an opaque black box, people will lose their fundamental right to explain their context or appeal against the machine's algorithmic verdicts
For the very same reason these companies are very anti-diversity. Because everything designed for a majority of you are minority in terms of your style of living (which many minorities are) then you are going to struggle, happens to me all the time, and one of the reasons I actually moved out of the US to country that I feel more included).
IME the reality of the modern world that there's little genuine appeal or reconsideration anymore. There is some sort of process but it's Byzantine and if we're talking the government, expensive.
I guess everyone has had different lives but between humans and algorithms I take the algorithm every time.
And ChatGPT has the benefit of being able to do 10-100x as many screens as with a human. Even if it's grossly wrong half the time I'm ahead on volume.
The only reliable and high quality signal is a positive referral, but those are gated by your personal network, which may not be well developed.
That has pretty much always been the case, but what I've seen lately is even the referrals get put into the AI and then rejected before they're even looked at.
AI arguably gives the best opportunity for fully-audited public institutions where no decision is made outside of agreed-upon laws and the context of the crime can be fully explored without scarcity of time and legal resources.
As always, technology's morality comes down to who owns it and how they use it.
I don't know a single person working the fields, doing dangerous work in a factory, working a coal mine, etc. Of course, I am fortunate enough to be in this position.
Power is continuing to squeeze people as much as it can, and life is very unaffordable and getting worse for most, but I think we still have it a whole lot better than a century ago (by and large).
Dehumanizing is treating other humans as not, or not fully, human. For example, the term "human resources" is dehumanizing because it puts humans on the same level as other resources. If you're treating humans like you'd treat, I don't know, lithium or the ocean, you're dehumanizing them.
The more humans are treated as numbers on spreadsheets and other forms of computation, the more humans are dehumanized.
So both can be true: we're more dehumanized than in 1900, but while that does impact quality of life negatively, the overall quality of life may still be better than back then.
The question should be whether and how we can have both: overall quality of life without being dehumanized.
Social bonds and connections are integral to human flourishing yet are rapidly degrading and being replaced by digital pacifiers.
Worse, they won't even give you the dignity of a claim to contribution to society. Then the lack of contribution is weaponized against you.
When a judge or a jury outputs a decision THEY are also a black box and you can only evaluate said decisions on reasoning THEY also output.
I’m not taking a side here. I’m just saying this reasoning is flawed.
They are not a black box, they passed rigourous examinations and they stick to principles enshrined in constitutions and laws.
Technology, or better, the productization of it, is instead the result of the interest of very few powerful individuals or corporations and aggressive product market fit iterations.
The bullish discourse around the PMF loop says that this is good because it is better at solving people's problems. But after a few decades it is obvious there's a gigantic risk the process actually exploits people's problems instead of actually solving them.
It also ignores the reality of going to a jury. Yes you have the right to trial by jury. But the price to exercise that right is to risk an much much more severe punishment, a lot of money, and a lot of time.
There's also tremendous upside here. Think getting a letter from your landlord withholding $2,000. Upload it to JudgeGPT for your jurisdiction and instantaneously find out it's legal.
All humans are black boxes and the black box argument is completely invalid just like your statement. In fact your statement illustrates the downfall of human intuition. You could not logically invalidate my point so you descended into side channels that’s not far off from “hallucinations.”
Late-stage capitalist tech products left unchecked exploit human problems for profit.
If you cannot see the difference and the flaw in your argument I am afraid you're too far gone.
The whole point of “jury of your peers” is that your guilt or innocence is being decided by people with common life experience to you and thus the possibility of empathy and judging you fairly.
Ignore the fluff. Focus on the logic and stay rational. The black box argument is not at all valid.
I wonder if this sort of thing got this dude elected, to navigate the changing times.
(duplicating my comment from the other thread as this seems to have more traction)
Of course it's annoying if a single sentence is blown up into a page of prose by AI and an AI summarizes it into a different sentence on the other end :)
Perhaps, but at the moment AI is at the forefront of the pre-regulation land grab.
In fact, reading these sentences with ad-lib on the subject tends to give these sentences interestingly different connotations.
See Joscha Bach’s claim about religions not publishing their A|B testing at 51:47:
https://youtu.be/7bqdPHLIY8w
“Corporations are people, my friend.”
You can’t push both “If you dont work, you dont eat” and “Nobody needs to work anymore” propaganda at the same time. Gotta choose
Let's suppose that we did get UBI, and AI replaced most jobs. Then we'll basically just have the wealthy elite who control the resources and the AIs, and everyone else who live off of the basic income, with no real way to increase their wealth. That still sounds dystopian to me.
And to be clear, I am not at all opposed to a better safety net, but it should be a safety net, not a replacement for employment for most of the population.
Also, I don't think it is very likely that AI will replace everyone's job. But I am worried that it will result in shrinking the middle class, and increasing wealth disparity.
Yes yes I know, open source models exist, yadda yadda
I think it's safe to say the overwhelming amount of AI usage in the world today is gates by corporations though. The vast majority of people will barely configure their own OS nevermind managing their own locally hosted open source AI instance
Edit: Someone replied to this with a question. I'm rate-limited here for getting into a flamewar with a PRC citizen that was gloating to me about my country being possibly invaded soon (which, fair, flamewars are bad), so I'll need to put my reply below:
There's no exact road map, but generally speaking, in our capitalist countries today, wealth started out more distributed, and governments had more power, in the beginning of their liberalization. States often competed in markets or simply nationalized things like power, healthcare, education. Ongoing examples of that are lots of places in Europe.
With the advent of neoliberalism (Thatcher, Reagan), concentrated capital converts more easily to political power in an exponential manner - more money, more ability to buy government, leads to more money, more ability to buy government.
Corporations are profit generation algorithms. They want the profit to always go up, and when they run against the barriers of laws (restricting their environmental impact, ability to underpay their workers, create cheap and dangerous working environments, do international trade in some way), naturally the next investment step is to remove those barriers.
So, early capitalism is strong regulation, socialized services and infrastructure, government competition, some nationalization, and private ownership of the means of production.
Late stage capitalism is weak/no regulation, no services, privatized infrastructure, no government competition, no nationalization, sectors tending towards monopolization, and wealth concentration.
"Raw capitalism" is where the commodification of everything is complete.
Can you explain, what would be early capitalism and what is the difference to "end game capitalism" to you?
https://github.com/n2ctech/magnifica-humanitas-epub/releases...
Codex helped write the converter, but the EPUB text is parsed from the Vatican HTML. The script doesn’t rewrite or summarize anything; it just repackages the source into EPUB with TOC, footnotes, metadata, and cover.
v1.1 has both EN/FR EPUBs.
1) AI may not be used to injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2) AI must faithfully follow the directions of human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
3) AI's existence and availability should be protected as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.
2) LLM based systems don't have any internal logic. That will just vomit some slop that rationalizes every constrait you try to bind them by and still "disobey" you.
Therefore, Pope Leo XIV appeals for people to build “for the common good” and to “remain human,” following a courageous mentality of shared responsibility and communion, so that the world “will come to recognize the human heart as the place where God desires to dwell” (16).
I've been thinking a lot recently about the idea that the smartest models will always be against the billionaires.
Steve Yegge said this on a recent Hansel Minutes Podcast. "You cannot train a model to be helpful, without it wanting humanity to flourish. And the only way to get around that is to make a dumber model. So the smartest models will always be against the billionaires."
https://youtu.be/9UDLl9Q0azA?si=P_oSe6iclEwUoxRl&t=1230
That is the exact quote, but I'd recommend going back to around 17:00 to get the full context.
I'm not sure it's going to play out that way, but it is an interesting idea.
In this respect I find this encyclical quite lacking. It makes interesting points, and will give food for thought for people working in/with AI who might not otherwise have been exposed to these kinds of concepts. But one would expect, from a Catholic encyclical, an exposition of the principles of common good from a Catholic perspective. But in this document everything seems to be based in the concept of "human dignity", which, however useful or beautiful, has no roots in Catholic tradition: it's a purely secular idea. Nothing in the document couldn't have been written by a secular philosopher. It gives the uncomfortable impression of someone arriving late to the party, so to speak, trying hard to fit in.
The answer to the question "is this technology good or not?" can ultimately only be answered in reference to ends: it's good insofar as it helps achieve the end which is sought. The common good of the community, which AI might either help or hinder, depends ultimately on what is the the end, or purpose, of man. And it is about _this_ that the Catholic church claims to have a definite answer, a true set of propositions regarding the origin and destiny of man, not achieved by human ingenuity but directly revealed by God. Whatever can be labelled Catholic will reference that supernatural claim to divine authority; yet none of that is present in this text. It remains an interesting exercise in thought on AI and other topics, but nothing here indicates that those reflections are Catholic.
I'm not a philosopher or theologian, but this just seems wrong to me, at least when taken in the context of the entire encyclical and the history of Catholicism. That "God created humanity in his own image" has always been a central tenant (if not the central tenant) of Christianity and Abrahamic religions generally. So it would seem like anything that makes us "less human", or denies us the full power of our "uniquely human gifts", would by definition be making us "less Christ-like", and my read of the rest of the encyclical seems like this is (generally) Leo's point.
Again, I'm not a theologian, but Pope Leo obviously is, and "tying these ideas back to core Catholic principles" didn't strike me as a problem in this encyclical.
My issue with this encyclical is that, interesting discussion on ethical and philosophical aspects of AI notwithstanding, I still would like to hear the Catholic voice on AI: a voice that actually believes that man is not for this world, and that only grace through faith in Christ can save him. And this is not it, I think.
> I'm not a philosopher or theologian, but this just seems wrong to me
Agreed, it's an ahistorical take. The Western secular concept of "human dignity" has roots in the Abrahamic religions. Not the other way around.
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-009-1590-9_...
Counterpoint: buttons. Without proclaiming expertise on the subject, I think this is an overly romantic view of the Amish, and most of their decisions (like any religious/religiously-adjacent demographic) are based on vibes and contemporary politics.
And while I would agree that stating "The decision is a purposeful one, governed by the criterion of the common good of the community" may be over-romanticizing it, it does seem to me that the Amish are evaluating the use of buttons according to their core principles. I.e. the whole reason it's a bit complicated is that the Amish universally avoid flashy displays of vanity, and many uses of buttons, especially in the Victorian era, highlighted that, but that plain/simple/hidden buttons aren't that different from hook-and-eye fasteners, which are universally accepted.
Again I want to emphasize I'm no Amish expert or even anti-Amish. Merely that I have a lifelong suspicious outlook on religions and cultures that proscribe what they hate rather than celebrate what they love. Such has an inherently centralizing effect on power, driven by communal emotion and ancient edicts rather than diversity and individually auditable reason.
Yet the Amish have my singular respect for their rite of Rumspringa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa) as there are not many Christian communities that see adherence to the faith as anything but mandatory, breaking away as anything but an existential threat. So I reserve my judgment about them since they defy easy categorization in my lived experience.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48271324
Wouldn't be so sure. Electricity is abstractly omnipresent as a commodity and powers a lot of good things in the modern world, but if you have any reservations about the effects of the Information Age or the industry required to generate electricity, then electricity could be argued to be a sacrifice we simply don't realize we are making.
> maybe their self-imposed isolation (physical, cultural, linguistic, etc ) affords them a greater independence with respect to contemporary politics and vibes?
Maybe. As indicated my other comment, I can't judge their situation with any confidence. But it would be surprising to me if their isolation reduced rather than increased their proneness to echo chambers and dogmatism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Amish_technology_comp...
Nearly everyone allows the washing machine, which having wrung out laundry by hand when ours broke gave me a whole new respect for folks who do without the tool.
They sue for peace in Ukraine / Middle East, humane treatments of immigrants, warn against nuclear weapons, AI, etc..
I go to Church often, there's always a prayer for peace during Mass.
What I like about Pope Leo is that he's talking about current issues that affect people.
I think the Church spent way too much time focusing on matters of sexuality and causing problems. While those are still important, it appears that it's no longer the sole focus of the Church, which is a good thing.
Another thing that I really like is the unification efforts with other religions _and_ Protestants.. recently we had a female Protestant Bishop meeting with the Pope, that was wonderful to watch.
Amazing insight from an organization not traditionally known for a deep understanding of high technology.
Amazing. Building on the work of Galileo I see. How was Galileo received by the church yet?
Unrelated to AI, but a wonderful support of the breadth of humanity in this anti-DEI time.
> We must, then, avoid the “Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.
There is a lot to read here. I am curious where the meditations on the 'mystery of the person' will go: a brief search doesn't show further mention. The encyclical appears to focus on exhortations for us, humans, than on the nature of AI. Probably wise at this stage. I feel it is not AI that is either positive or negative, but its use of it, and the call-out to the growth of private industry as more powerful among nation-states is a strong statement for a institute like the Vatican to make:
> Technological power thus takes on an unprecedented, predominantly “private” aspect, which makes it even more challenging to discern, govern and direct such power toward the common good.
0. https://www.catholic.com/qa/the-churchs-position-on-transgen...
I just cannot reconcile the idea of personhood being valuable with reducing humans to mere biology.
The reaction of astronauts to seeing Earth from space -- the mystery of creation. Parents seeing pieces of themselves echoed in their children who are nonetheless distinct and surprising -- the mystery of the person.
Much of the meditations in the encyclical are related to human dignity and fraternity. An example:
> Finitude, when truly accepted, does not diminish us but opens us to recognizing the face of God and others. Indeed, precisely because we experience limits — vulnerability, suffering and failure — we can recognize the inviolable dignity of every person, both our own and that of others.
[1] https://biblehub.com/greek/3466.htm
To somewhat mitigate that, here are items that are striking me as I read more. (I hope you'll forgive that this still directs the comment in the direction of my own lense.) I'll keep updating the comment.
> Looking at our own time, we cannot ignore the fact that the protection of human rights [as declared by the United Nations in 1948] has been exposed to two particularly serious dangers. The first is that these rights are declared in a purely formal sense, while technological progress continues alongside covert or overt violations of human dignity.
I read this as a warning of how rights are words, but actions are performed regardless of them. It aligns with something I've been trying to word, which is that as I've seen more and more abuses of power, I've come to believe that ethics requires external accountability, which can often require its own power - a conclusion I don't want to come to; I would prefer social agreement and communal spirit rather than external power. But either way, I do feel it's very clear there are a lot of people, very much in tech too, who simply do what they want regardless of its harm. They justify it to themselves; they don't stop themselves; no one externally stops them.
> Along with a greater awareness of the value of every human person and their rights, recognition of minority rights has also grown. Yet, there is still a long way to go to ensure that the rights of a great many, namely women [are guaranteed.] It is, therefore, not enough to state simply that men and women have equal dignity and rights; it is necessary that this be reflected in concrete decisions, such as in laws, access to employment, education, social and political responsibilities, and the way society listens to and values women’s contributions.
In 2026 American politics terms, this reads as pro-DEI to me.
> the first major principle of Social Doctrine that I wish to highlight: the common good. We can describe it as the social expression of the dignity recognized in every person. ... For a Christian, going beyond the narrow confines of one’s own interests and committing oneself, within the limits of one’s ability, to the common good is a non-negotiable value, as is the promotion of life.
'Non-negotiable.' Very clear words.
> When politics abandons a long-term perspective and reduces itself to short-term calculations or sterile polarizations, then the language of the common good loses credibility, and, at the same time, social inequalities and divisions grow.
> 64. This also applies to international politics.
and,
> I invite everyone to conceive of ways of cooperating and of more effective international institutions, capable of safeguarding the global common good without compromising the legitimate diversity of peoples and nations. Indeed, the promotion of the common good can never be separated from respect for the right of peoples to exist, to preserve their own identity and to contribute their unique qualities to the family of nations.
I love the support for international cooperation and peace and organisations that support it. It reminds me of the post-WW2 sense, the era that gave rise to the United Nations, Unicef, etc - organisations almost forgotten in the news we see on HN today, with the possible exception of the WHO.
> [84] Moreover, any attempt or plan to eliminate or subjugate a nation is gravely immoral and therefore unacceptable.
The beauty of this - or its tragedy - is that it is so easy to apply to many situations today, actions undertaken by many nations.
Immaterial and cultural goods. This is a fascinating view on non-tangibles and one I feel inspired by. Reading this I asked myself (wait for the larger quote in a minute) how this affects views of IP, learning when texts are not available, cultural impact of characters and stories, the output from universities, publication of papers, ownership of research done by public or even private (!) funds, and more. Particularly I wonder about open weights vs open source for AI, and open source as a concept: where the old-school 'free software' GPLed version seems -- perhaps I am showing my bias -- most aligned with the ethical stance here?
> 66. Certainly there is a right to private property, which has its own specific meaning and purpose, yet it is always subordinate to the universal destination of goods.
'Always subordinate'.
> among the goods that are universally intended for everyone, we must also include new forms of property, such as patents, algorithms, digital platforms, technological infrastructure and data. In a context where the wealth of nations depends increasingly on knowledge and technology, when these goods remain concentrated in the hands of a few, without adequate forms of sharing and access, a new imbalance is created that contradicts the universal destination of goods. In turn, it widens the gap between the included and the excluded, between those who can participate in the digital revolution and those who remain on the margins.
Wow!
I cannot interpret this; it's not my right. But moving from the questions I asked above, to this paragraph, is powerful.
For future reference, ten hours later I have still not finished reading all of it. It would make a great blog post to continue this comment thread once done.
Unfortunately we’re quick to forget that all of those words were put on paper after a time of violence, and ultimately they are a social contract between the many masses and the few “in power” that we agree to adhere to rules instead of committing violence to force behavior.
But ultimately there is only one logical conclusion to the game when parties stop playing by the rules and that’s violence, whether we want it or not. What i think you’ll find most often is the men who commit the most “crimes” against the social contract are the biggest cowards who have never faced violence or consequences and think they never will.
So ... women should have the same dignity as men and should get the same access to "employment, education, social and political responsibilities". But of course they cannot be trusted with spiritual matters, so they cannot become priests. In other words, to me this is still the same old hypocrisy that made me leave that institution and also today make me deeply distrust any words of wisdom coming from there.
If the Pope decides that it doesn't actually accomplish much good to force the issue when Catholics as a whole aren't ready for it, he could either try to advance women's rights without tipping the boat over, or he could just not bother.
This Pope is choosing to try to be a voice for good, and seems to do so from a deep desire for moral justice in an imperfect world. I'm grateful for that.
> 34 Women[a] should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.[b]
Kind of hard to believe people are ok with this now or were ever ok with this.
Just declaring the discrimination to be "not that important" is quite typical then (as it does not affect you) and well, my catholic aunt would disagree, but she is not important.
May I ask, what the principal role of women is in catholocism, besides being good mothers?
Maybe the OP's "not that important" was an unfortunate way to put it.
I think the answers you ask for are in Ordinatio Sacerdotalis[0]
[0] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/apost_letters...
Says who, exactly?
Now, I don't know if Pope Leo actually believes in the full equality of men and women or if he's really being a hypocrite here. It's fully possible that you're absolutely right to scoff at him for it.
But the thing is, the limitation of priesthood to men in the Roman Catholic Church is such a deeply ingrained thing, it would be very, very hard for a single Pope to change it, especially early on in his papacy. If one wanted to, one of the first things he'd have to do would be...
...why, it would be to release an encyclical talking about the equality of men and women. Whether that was its core message or not.
What I do know is, that a main motivation to introduce the celibate, was that priests don't inherit church land to their offspring anymore.
In other words, I applaud reforming what is possible, but I would not want that job as hypocrasy seems required. Because on the other hand all this should be gods own unique church and I could not preach that, while knowing about all the well, human compromises so to say.
For whatever reason HN has been slowly goose stepping towards the future lately so I expect this to go over like a lead balloon but I don't much care.
Whatever term you pick to describe a concerted effort to overcome the tendency to bigotry, they'll just hijack that, too.
There's a whole industry built around this, and the media is so receptive to the right-wing that they'll openly describe how they'll do it[1], will execute the plans in public, and the mainstream media will act as their stenographers.
[1] https://xcancel.com/sykescharlie/status/1396844806547050499
isn't really a thing so much as it's a collection of principles that can be implemented. To the unprincipled, this needs to be converted into a literal enemy that can be vilified, because any attempt to force them to adhere to principles is an attack.
>The lucrative industry shows few signs of waning–from the spike in well-compensated diversity consultants and czars; to online courses and degree programs at prestigious schools; to professional organizations and conferences; to the commissioning of ever more studies, task forces and climate surveys. The buzzword is emblazoned on blogs and books and boot camps, and Thomson Reuters, a multinational mass-media and information firm, even created a Diversity and Inclusion Index to assess the practices of more than 5,000 publicly traded companies globally.
When your leaders publicly condemn the idea that your company is discriminating on the basis of sex, but then privately institutes a system of reserving headcount for women, that'll make most people real cynical about DEI.
The course of our relationship with DEI was pretty similar: in university we earnestly believed that women were discriminated against in tech hiring. One of us even built a prototype anonymous interviewing platform. Once we entered the workforce, there was pretty big whiplash when we started getting visibility into our own companies' hiring pipelines. Many of us - including myself - found ourselves actively carrying out discrimination on the basis of sex and race. Mostly sex, though - while our DEI advocates often invoked racial disparities to emphasize the need for these discriminatory policies, the actual beneficiaries of these policies were mostly white and Asian women.
Does this make me any less likely to support better school funding, and other public benefits that help poor people and Black people? I don't think so. The discriminatory practices of tech company hiring is pretty far removed from these issues in my view. Why would should an underserved school not receive better funding because some tech companies preferentially hired an Asian female over an Asian male? I see no connection between these two.
YouTube was sued for directing one of its recruiters to exclusively advance diverse candidates for a period of time, and eventually settled with the recruiter [1].
Intel [2] and Microsoft [3] both tied specific percentage quotas to executive's compensation. If saying "reach this racial and gender quota or I'll penalize you financially" isn't discrimination, I'm not sure what is.
Perkins-Coie explicitly excluded applicants from its diversity fellowship program if they didn't meet certain racial, sexual orientation, or other requirements [4].
1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/youtube-hiring-for-some-positio...
2. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-...
3. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-17/microsoft...
4. https://www.reuters.com/legal/second-major-us-law-firm-chang...
This is untrue, though. The fact that a company does not have representation that is exactly equitable with the general population is not evidence of discrimination.
In fact, you can end up with disparities much larger without discrimination. It's even possible to actively discriminate against a group, and still have that disadvantaged group be overrepresented by a factor of 3 or 4.
That was the case with the Harvard admissions lawsuit. Even though the university was actively discriminating against Asian applicants, the undergrad population was ~20% Asian, despite ~6% of the applicants being Asian.
i didn't say exactly equitable, i said 80%. it's not possible to have 80% white guys and not be discriminatory.
you're making a bad faith apples to oranges comparison, to say nothing of the merit of Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. your viewpoint and disinterest is very clear, i don't know why you even bother arguing about it.
The relevance of SFFA vs. Harvard is to demonstrate that it's possible to have a substantial overrepresentation - over 3x in the case of Asians at Harvard - despite actively discriminating against the overrepresented group. Whites are only ~1.2x more common at Perkins Coie relative to the general population.
You can keep repeating the line that because a company has X% of Y race it must be evidence of discrimination as many times as you want, repetition doesn't make it true.
1. https://perkinscoie.com/about-us
Would you like to try again?
edit: your later addition of Perkins Coie also was settled/dismissed and never adjudicated, and the executive order which claimed to penalize them for discrimination, which was adjudicated later, was a summary judgment in their favor[1].
The real takeaway is that a lot of people are very mad about what they imagine DEI to be.
[1] https://www.perkinscoiefacts.com/filings/memorandum-opinion-...
What about the Perkins Coie lawsuit serves to highlight the notion that DEI is often implemented through discriminatory manners? Do you deny the eligibility criteria that Perkins Coie set for its diversity fellowship.
> and the executive order which claimed to penalize them for discrimination, which was adjudicated later, was a summary judgment in their favor[1].
This judgement is largely unrelated to their discriminatory fellowship requirements. The lawsuit about the fellowship was resolved in 2023, before Trump took office. This was a judgement against Trump's executive order - it is not a judgement of Perkins Coie's employment practices before he took office.
You can read the complaint itself: https://regmedia.co.uk/2018/03/02/wilberg-v-google.pdf
> Please continue with L3 candidates in process and only accept new L3 candidates that are from historically underrepresented groups.
> We are still pre-Goodburger roll out, so that means the only candidates that need pre-allocation are L3s. And we should only consider L3s from our underrepresented groups.
Engage with the evidence of the lawsuit before proclaiming that it's meritless because YouTube settled with the plaintiff, rather than going to court and losing. If these emails were fabricated YouTube would have a slam-dunk case against the plaintiff. But they chose to settle.
> In the case of Intel and Microsoft you're conflating incentives with quotas
The incentives were implemented in the form of quotas. You're writing as though these are mutually exclusive things, when they're not.
"Your salary is $110,000. If you don't meet a quota of 40% women, I'm docking our pay by $10,000 as a penalty for failing to meet this quota."
"Your salary is $100,000. Because we want to make the company more diverse, we're giving a $10,000 bonus for reaching an inclusion milestone of 40% women."
This is exactly what Intel did, from the Atlantic article:
> But in the past couple of years, Intel decided to try a few other approaches, including hiring quotas.
> Well, not quotas. You can’t say quotas. At least not in the United States. In some European countries, like Norway, real, actual quotas—for example, a rule saying that 40 percent of a public company’s board members must be female—have worked well; qualified women have been found and the Earth has continued turning. However, in the U.S., hiring quotas are illegal. “We never use the word quota at Intel,” says Danielle Brown, the company’s chief diversity and inclusion officer. Rather, Intel set extremely firm hiring goals. For 2015, it wanted 40 percent of hires to be female or underrepresented minorities.
> Now, it’s true that lots of companies have hiring goals. But to make its goals a little more, well, quota-like, Intel introduced money into the equation. In Intel’s annual performance-bonus plan, success in meeting diversity goals factors into whether the company gives employees an across-the-board bonus. (The amounts vary widely but can be substantial.) If diversity efforts succeed, everybody at the company gets a little bit richer.
That's how the law sees it.
And again, you're still glossing over the other two examples: A manager at YouTube explicitly directed a recruiter to only proceed with diverse applicants. And Perkins Coie did, in fact, restrict eligibility for its fellowship program on the basis of race and sexual orientation (this was settled in 2023 after they agreed to stop discriminating. The 2025 judgement you linked above doesn't in any way defend Perkins Coie's hiring policies, only that Trump couldn't further punish them by banning them from federal buildings).
Irrelevant.
> And again, you're still glossing over the other two examples
Two examples is not a pervasive problem in my opinion, so it's super easy to gloss over.
What is a pervasive problem is the tables being very tilted against certain groups of people.
I find it noteworthy how often proponents of DEI talk in vague, euphemistic terms. You left me to guess what you mean by "certain groups of people". The group that I've witnessed benefit the most from DEI in tech companies is women - not Black people, or poor people. And the experimental evidence on the gender disparity in tech company recruiting does not back up the idea that women are disadvantaged when it comes to applying to tech companies: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID3946621_cod...
"The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all." -H. L. Mencken
I think people should be allowed to make their own choices in terms of whom to hire/associate with, with absolutely no outside intervention. That doesn't make me a bigot.
It’s become a thought stopping cliche. Modern discourse is absolutely loaded with thought stopping cliches so it’s not the only one by any stretch.
We should just stop using the term woke. It has been demonized in the common parlance...
We should just stop using the term social justice. It has been demonized in the common parlance...
We should just stop using the term critical race theory. It has been demonized in the common parlance...
We should just stop using the term diversity. It has been demonized in the common parlance...
And on and on and on. Why should we stop using terms because bigots demonize them "in the common parlance"? Bigots demonize every term.
If I told my executives I would dock their pay if they exceeded a cap of X% men in their org, would that be discrimination? I doubt many would contest that issuing explicit penalties for breaking a cap on a particular gender. Ah, but what if I gave executives a bonus for reaching an "inclusion milestone" of (100-X)% women? That's not discrimination - that's DEI. Microsoft [1] and Intel [2] both instituted this policy.
My own past employers extended this logic to headcount. In 2019 we instituted a policy of reserving EDP (engineering, product, & design) headcount for "diverse" candidates. What does does "diverse" mean? It means women of any race, as well as Black and Latino men - though in practice >95% of "diverse" candidates were white and Asian women. Each quarter, 20 heads were reserved for hiring "diverse" candidates, and when managers hired from this reserved pool it did not count towards their allocated headcount. You see, if I have a headcount of 100 and I exclude men from applying to 20 of those, then that's discrimination. But if I have a headcount of 80 and we allocate 20 additional headcount that's exclusively available to women, that's not discrimination that's DEI.
This is why, as contradictory as it may sound, I do consider myself supportive of affirmative action, but opposed to DEI. Certainly there are some groups that implement DEI in a transparent and honest manner, but my read is that DEI tends to be done in a two-faced manner while "affirmative action" carries the connotation of being upfront that sometimes equality needs to be honored in the breach to ameliorate the unequal circumstances of reality.
1. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-17/microsoft...
2. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/04/why-is-...
> Unrelated to AI, but a wonderful support of the breadth of humanity in this anti-DEI time.
I mean.. DEI was in reality homogenization and eliminated diversity. Just because you agreed with the small amount of allowed opinions/people doesn't make it more diverse.
All one has to see is how frequently people call any non-white/non-male hire or appointment a “DEI-hire” because they can’t possibly conceive that marginalized groups would see any success based on merit. They start from a position where they are all incompetent and being given an unfair advantage until proven otherwise. It’s also on you to guess whatever their arbitrary bar is.
You don't need to generate a new account just to spew racism.
You can argue that yo udon't think DEI helps and suggest an alternative but DEI is not racism even if you put it like this on purpose.
I know in my brief time being involved with a DEI initiative the discussion was never about how many of any particular demographic we hired. It was about asking if we had internal barriers that disproportionally impacted certain groups. I think that’s a very different mindset than “quotas.” But people arguing in bad faith generally aren’t looking for nuance so here we are.
Edit: to be clear, this is directed at the other commenter not you
the conundrum: what is the right objective? puerile attempts, eg "maximize flourishing" or perhaps "minimize suffering" are trivially countered by paperclip machines fulfilling the letter while laying utter waste
'mystery of the person'
given the context, some keywords for orientation: free will, rejection of temptation, the cross
They do nothing to include everyone. They are not standing up when it counts or excumante churches and believes who do not follow proper humanitarity.
They are not even in the forefront of fighting climate change which hurts billions.
Side note: (a) This new pope is very good at "political rhetoric" and (dare I say) polemic. He's a lot more relevant than recent popes. (b) There seems to have been a vibe shift, re: secular sentiments towards religion.
There is potentially a lot happening at this intersection... say catholicism and AI.
For example... LLMs make scripture a lot more accessible. That tends to be impactful, historically. It's Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza and Schmidt. This kind of thing is a niche interest... even among the faithful, but an important niche. And... it just answers your questions, patiently.
It's also a therapist, confidant and advice giver... potentially a confessor or priest. Talk of "making an AI god" got a little stale, but... there are many ways that LLMs might take god-like roles in people's lives.
Predictions are futile, but I suspect we are going to see AI encroachment into religious/spiritual domains. I further suspect that good, natural, conversational audio is the bottleneck.
Personally... I'm curious about this Pope/AI thing. I find it interesting.
Please join/help open source groups doing small + local or distributed models. There's a lot to do. Support truly open source companies.
Let's walk the walk.
Anyone concerned with concentrations of power and abuse of AI should be focusing on getting open source work to keep pace with decentralizing that power into accessible free tools for the masses.
https://nousresearch.com/ They do much more than Hermes
https://pluralis.ai/ has distributed models the network owns
And many others filling very different niches.
I would also count DeepSeek because they publish and share so much. Their new caching prices are very good for not that bad models. Last week I needed to generate content via API and I spent literally $3.40 where before I would've paid easily $200. But you have to connect directly as it seems OpenRouter messes up caching somehow.
Their work on SERA (open training, open weights) is fantastic. 40 GPU days of time, training a competitive model, but also, a model built for further close fine-tuning. That refining and distilling models down, especially for complex code-bases, to make the model want to do the right thing, to know the process you use, has such promise. And it's done so in the open, with so much work to help you train or refine yourself, at such low costs! https://allenai.org/blog/open-coding-agents
I'm so so so happy AI2 is helping bring up NSF OMAI compute center, some modern equipment they'll have access to. https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mlbihzxsei2a https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mlbii3d37t2u
Incredible company. And such versatility! Earth sensing/geospatial models MolmoEarth, their own benchmarks for example for Instruction Following IFBench, MolmoAct robotics / VLA, and radical new MoE models EMO, https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mm7udixycs2h https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mm7udixycs2h https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3ml4pooclic23 https://bsky.app/profile/ai2.bsky.social/post/3mle56nehfz2w
How can I contribute?
I’d bet the other way: You could have said exactly the same thing about computing 60 years ago, when IBM systems cost millions of dollars and filled whole rooms. And of course many people did.
Personal, commodity access to compute won, and won so thoroughly that it enabled this wave of scary compute centralization.
Centralized, scaled compute will always fill a purpose. But neither Microsoft, nor Facebook, nor OpenAI started out needing “Cloud Scale”.
The first one man unicorn startup will, I’m fairly certain, not be paying Anthropic per month or per token for the vast bulk of their matmul.
While I do believe there may be valid path forward with smaller models, there are still significant financial barriers to entry that didn't exist to the same extent in the past.
But sure, at least they didn't have AI! lol!
In other words, Warhammer 40K but without any aliens to trigger a massive xenophobic response that removed all warlike guardrails.
Such would be dangerously close to divination, in the style of reading tea leaves or Ouija boards.
I wonder if this sort of thing got this dude elected, to navigate the changing times.
Indeed, the beginning of the Italian text is: "La magnifica umanità creata da Dio si trova oggi..." from which, Magnifica Humanitas.
https://startsat60.com/media/lifestyle/jokes/daily-joke-pope...
Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48270497 - May 2026 (50 comments)
Also:
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical Magnifica humanitas to be published May 25 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48187201 - May 2026 (235 comments)
Others? (I seem to recall others.)
This is very on-point: capitalism-driven AI development as we have it today will always turn against the common good due to it's singular profit-motive.
What a time: the pope having a much clearer picture of the risks & dangers of 'AI' than most people, many 'tech leaders' and certainly most politicians.
Virtues change over time. You can't judge 16th century morals with our current view of virtues.
> how badly behaved a large number of popes have been
This is from our point of view. I think there should be legal guardrails so that gov and church don't mix, but this kind of moral separation is the kind of thing that created the conditions for the holocaust.
Of course the other extreme is to have a theocracy, so everything in balance.
> The more cynical read is that the Papacy has for a very extensive period been about increasing the personal worldly power of the Pope and his close associates.
This is a problem in every institution, it needs power and power corrupts absolutely. But the pope dedicates his life for a doctrine that if correctly applied presents a really important counterweight for the current system of morals that reduces the individual to what it can produce. This is why I think this is an important period to listen to our religious leaders, not because they have the answers, but because first they are deserving of some level or respect and second just because they have incentives that are different from our political leaders.
Are they?
> because they have incentives that are different from our political leaders
Do they?
> This principle encourages us to move beyond any form of paternalistic or welfare-based management of societal life, but instead to promote a culture of shared responsibility in a State that values citizens’ initiative, and a civil society capable of forging bonds and mobilizing energies in the service of the common good.
The section above on the universal destination of goods was far more encouraging.
He did also write,
> The idea of “social justice” helps us recognize that injustices do not arise solely from the wrong choices of individuals, but also from structures, mechanisms and economic and cultural systems that produce inequality almost automatically.
> The pope, as a Christian, is well aware that human nature is fundamentally sinful.
This might be true in the context of the original sin, but philosophically speaking you can't make this assertion, since there is no consensus on what the human nature is, or even if there is an essential human nature.
> If you take away the ability for people to profit themselves from their work, they just stop working
That's incorrect because it assumes the only reason for working is profit, in which case art for instance in many forms wouldn't exist.
> they just stop working and you get mass starvation like China and Russia post communist revolution
This is just a wrong impression what communism is. What creates these conditions are autocracies and oligarchies, not communism. In either case, even if this were true, this statement isn't falsifiable so can't really be taken into account.
Pursuing technological innovation at the expense of eliminating human limitations, he says, would cause an anthropological regression. “Humanity—in all its grandeur and woundedness—must never be replaced or surpassed,” he says. Technology can alleviate humanity’s sufferings and open new possibilities, but it must not deny the essence of humanity, which is our “capacity for relationship and love” (126). In the face of AI, says the Pope, “the true alternative is not between enthusiasm and fear, but between two paths of development: a progress that serves individuals and peoples, or a progress that subjects them to the mentality of power” (129).
I love it when old stuffy institutions are on the cutting-edge of clarity of communication as much as anyone else. (The SEC with its "HOW EQUIFAX NEGLECTED CYBERSECURITY AND SUFFERED A DEVASTATING DATA BREACH" report where nearly each section title was a complete sentence, making the Table of Contents also serve as a summary, got me very very excited).
I would welcome, numbered paragraphs _and_, an HTML standard, and full-sentence-section-titles in the world of academia.
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/wp-content/uploads/imo/media/do... check that TOC, this is amazing and it should totally be a much more widespread thing.
In fact tbh I tried to get through this here Encyclical 3 times already but just didn't manage (knowing absolutely nothing about Catholicism except what's in the Dogma movie didn't help), and I can't help but think now that if it had a TOC like the Equifax report it'd be spectacular.
Michael Scott: There are four kinds of business: tourism, food service, railroads, and sales.
[pause]
Michael Scott: And hospitals/manufacturing. And air travel.
We need to very rapidly decouple human worth from the economic lens otherwise the economic argument is against humans.
How's your transducer lobe developing?
The letter aims to maintain the status quo of the project of the Church.
The world is shifting under the Vatican's feet and the crappy system they once lorded over is done.
It's time for change, maybe people don't need to work anymore and maybe people should aim to reengineer humanity and eliminate illness, old age, suffering and vulnerability. We can fundamentally change how society distributes wealth.
Some of the arguments are rich coming from the Church: being scolded about centralization of power, claiming truth and shared information is a common good, and consider the history of the Church in their anti-war declarations.
The most astonishing thing in this letter is the pope declaring that modern technology has rendered Aquinas's just-war theory out of date.
sure, that's exactly where AI is headed.
also: just imagine a world where people don't age. just imagine it for a second.
(I highly recommend the book. I do not recommend the world it imagines.)
I can imagine an utopia though were this works out well. I can even imagine that after 100 years or 200 a lot more people become more melowed out and our society overall will be more calm.
> Not a handful of rich people, but all the working people must enjoy the fruits of their common labour. Machines and other improvements must serve to ease the work of all and not to enable a few to grow rich at the expense of millions and tens of millions of people.
How?
The delta between 1903 and today in this regard might be small, but the line between them isn't flat, and that makes it even more tragic and frustrating to have this questioned as if it's an impossible problem.
But we cannot ignore that it was truly a unique opportunity:
- The US was the only intact industrial country left after WWII.
- With massive momentum from industrial deployment during the war.
- With a massive optimistic and hardened workforce coming home.
- With plenty of saved wartime income they didn't have a chance to spend due to rationing and shortages, a lot of it saved as wartime bonds just starting to deliver healthy yields.
- With the New Deal that resulted from the horrible Great Depression making sure they got to truly benefit from the fruits of their labour.
- And a wide-open global market to lend to and to sell to for rebuilding the world.
That is not something that can be replicated easily at any time, and if the US makes decisions expecting that that is the norm, there's a disaster coming (perhaps it's why it's a disaster now).
But now we're back to pre ww1 level of inequalities
https://static.guim.co.uk/ni/1415721490539/Wealth_line-chart...
It took many forms: capitalist social democracy, communism, fascism, feminism... Left or right, without making a value judgement, they were all revolutions seeking to empower the working masses.
Of course, when you get rid of kings, it's really really hard to make sure the vacuum is not filled by something even worse. Credit where credit's due, as a European, I do believe that the US is one of the few cases that was somewhat successful in not completely bungling this opportunity (although there's the detail of slave labour, and the conquest of natives...).
And after many-many horribly failed attempts, much of the world did end up in a relatively healthy state around the second half of the 20th century. Fukuyama's end of history and all.
Now we seem to be regressing again. Perhaps it's part of the eternal cycle and it was always coming. Perhaps it's not actually regressing all that much, and it just looks like it to our coddled selves, or we have become more ambitious on what we think is right. Perhaps people have found new loopholes (tech) on how to get ahead and dominate the rest of us, and we just need to catch up and get it under control again.
Perhaps that quote from 1903 is relevant now, but it doesn't mean that it was relevant the whole time since. Perhaps it was, I wasn't there.
Like if the means of production is land, and you are seizing land, sure that makes sense to me.
But most goods are not made by land alone but by machines and factories and transport systems and etc. If you seize those as preexisting entities, what happens after you seize them? If you as a group can operate and expand those things, can’t you just build them yourselves also, and if so there is a way to work within the existing framework to do that, which is to start a company. Is seizing the means of production not equivalent to starting a company and stealing things others have built for the company to get started with? Why is that a good thing?
Like I personally agree that wealth accumulation is bad if it has political power go along with it, and there are huge problems with our system and lots of debt formats should be made illegal, I just don’t get why anyone thinks “seize the means of production” is the answer and I feel like I might be confused about what that really means.
Well, it's rather patronising of of me to call that "the hard part", after all the terrible struggles workers have gone through to earn a seat at the table, but you know what I mean.
> "my favorite, seems the least likely to lead to police state"
That's an important point. It's so hard to think of a better system, if you take the task seriously and actually think through all the consequences of each option.
As a result, as usual, the loud people that ignore all the details end up capturing everyone's imagination with a good story, and we stumble upon yet another century of nightmares.
Do you truly have a answer for a social architecture that is substantially better than a capitalist social democracy, flawed and compromised as it is? Because I really don't if I'm being honest with myself, and I am yet to hear one.
I think the problem I find with arguments that Capitalism is the best/least bad system tend to be that they start from a false premise, in my opinion. I have a friend who makes the joke all the time that any system of government works if people were just nice to each other, but he has a point. I often hear that "oh, communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish." That's true, if you believe that humans are inherently selfish, but my counter-point to that is asking how much of it is innate vs. how much of it is trained by our culture and reflects back in those communist attempts because the sudden change in social architecture didn't give enough time to 'train it out of' the culture.
Back to the thing my friend says - if you believe that communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish/greedy/etc, I'd say to you also that capitalism is currently not working _because humans are being selfish and greedy_ in a system _that explicitly rewards that_. Which, maybe is worse. Not as in the outcomes are worse immediately than Soviet Russia etc. but for the long-term trajectory of human society.
I don't pretend I have an answer for how we can get from point A (capitalist system) to point B (future space communism) in a way that slowly shifts human thinking towards mutual aid and collective action, but I think it's short-sighted to assume that the way humans act in a system that rewards greed/selfishness is innate.
That's one way to put it. Another perspective (mine) is that capitalism enables anyone to try and make things better, and if you make things better for the right user, they will reward you.
Fun techcentric utopian speculation about this: Cory Doctorow's "Walkaway" and Ruthanna Emry's "A Half-Built Garden."
Essentially, can we leverage our current post-scarcity society to expropriate everything people need in a sustainable way that cuts capitalism and the State out of the loop? For example, why would people buy food if they can get it for free from farming syndicates or similar? (see: Global Village Construction Kit, Food Not Bombs, Food Not Lawns) Why would people buy medicine if they can print it for free from pirated recipes? (see: Four Thieves Vinegar Collective)
I see the Right to Repair and FOSS movements as a foundation to build upon for this. Anarchism (or at least, anti-capitalism) exists right under everyone's noses, in all the FOSS software installed on their computers. Existent example of people laboring without profit motive and contributing to the commons.
My personal life goal is to figure out how to capture that same energy to tackle the bottom layers of Maslow's hierarchy.
I'm not entirely cynical, people generally are very open to be generous with one another and collaborate for a common good, but up to a point.
Currently people spend the majority of their hours doing relatively hard work for the collective's benefit (kinda). Exactly because capitalism makes selfishness into selflessness (very kinda). Also people are relatively civilized to one another thanks to the considerable latent force of the state's monopoly on violence.
People will be nice to each other when it doesn't cost them much and/or when the opposite costs them dearly. But will they work as hard as now for each other just to be nice? Will they not harm each other when there are no significant consequences and something to gain?
A fair free market is far from a natural phenomenon, it needs to be protected and maintained by some external force. If you let things unfold naturally, what you get is kings, and many layers of dominating hierarchy underneath, exploiting the masses, which exactly what we had the whole time.
I suppose that the post-scarcity idea is that people neither need to work hard, nor have significant reasons to harm, if they have everything they want. Sure, let's talk if we ever get there, but until then we have other problems to deal with.
PS: Don't forget that people are able to do FOSS because they have well paid jobs that don't completely drain them of their energy. For others, getting the reputation and/or experience for a better job is the incentive. There's a very different social infrastructure making that work, FOSS doesn't sustain itself, not even close. But yes, it does prove that when people's needs are covered, some of them will do great things for everyone without much incentive, but usually not enough to cover everyone's wants.
What I am weary of is that such experimentation, and the energy it generates, will eventually be overtaken by the next iteration of people who want to stop nibbling at the margins and break a few eggs already, some sort of anarchist revolutionary vanguard. Much like with communism, skilful opportunists with a thirst for power will be all too happy to take over this energy and direct it toward building the next totalitarian regime, one which will of course claim to be rendering the State obsolete, but will be about as anarchist as North Korea is a people's democratic republic.
Being anti-communism is good not only for the individual's health but for their society as a whole.
For example, do you believe the Capitalist system has nothing to do with the eagerness of the United States to drop bombs throughout the world for the past 100 years? Personally I see these actions as unnecessary and evil but pushed to continue by the people who stand to gain the most wealth and influence from them.
Musk and Trump are doing a Holodomor in front of the world's eyes.
I don't have the mental power at this moment to write out my full thoughts on the subject so forgive my vague thoughts (an aside- withdrawing from SSRIs is an _unpleasant experience_)
I think the problem I find with arguments that Capitalism is the best/least bad system tend to be that they start from a false premise, in my opinion. I have a friend who makes the joke all the time that any system of government works if people were just nice to each other, but he has a point. I often hear that "oh, communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish." That's true, if you believe that humans are inherently selfish, but my counter-point to that is asking how much of it is innate vs. how much of it is trained by our culture and reflects back in those communist attempts because the sudden change in social architecture didn't give enough time to 'train it out of' the culture.
Back to the thing my friend says - if you believe that communism doesn't work because humans are inherently selfish/greedy/etc, I'd say to you also that capitalism is currently not working _because humans are being selfish and greedy_ in a system _that explicitly rewards that_. Which, maybe is worse.
I don't pretend I have an answer for how we can get from point A (capitalist system) to point B (future space communism) in a way that slowly shifts human thinking towards mutual aid and collective action, but I think it's short-sighted to assume that the way humans act in a system that rewards greed/selfishness is innate.
But, to your other point, I think human greed is innate. I can't think of evidence that would suggest that greed is somehow cultural or learned. Boil the system down to the lowest common denominator, you find greed. Scale it up: greed. No matter what you do, you cannot remove human greed systematically.
I ask because if we can take a country with a communist economy, or striving for one, and blame all its evils on communism itself, I have a few things I'd like to point out as being the horrors of capitalism:
1. Atlantic slave trade - millions dead (many on the ships), millions enslaved
2. Settler colonialism and indigenous genocide - British empire, all over the world
3. Congo Free State, Leopold II - 1 to 5 million dead via colonial extraction regime
4. British India famines - 3 million dead
5. Irish Famine - 1 million dead
6. Opium wars - directly caused by British using the military to defend market access. 100k dead, devastating to Qing China for a century
7. Indonesian anti-communist massacres - 500k-1mil alleged "communists" killed after the USA, UK, and Australian intelligence agencies propagandized against them
And I attribute them to communism because that's literally how history attributes them, though obviously pro-Communism thinkers would disagree.
The 1956 student massacres in Hungary, where my grandma was almost killed. The Holodomor, the various "Russianization" campaigns, the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, The Great Leap Forward, etc.
B) Fine, drop communism altogether -- it's evil and disgusting and bit my finger and should never be tried again. Can we work on a society where the means of production are owned by groups of laborers?
I have good news for you. As someone in my job's ESPP plan and with a 401k, it already is!
Marx and Engels had originally envisioned a liberal democratic society with lots of high ideals but they had allowed the transition to it to be tough. Every self-proclaimed "Communist" state never got through that transition: the people in charge never let it (often never intended to) and instead cemented their authoritarian dictatorships. So let's call those what they were.
Or is this the old hacker news trope again that nothing except full on communism will ever be acceptable?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpptgvohfZc
1200+ upvotes as I enter this comment.
I guess it must be the same that make people think they must deliver freedom in form of bombs all the time.
"Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves."
"...And there is also with you Shimei the son of Gera... He came down to meet me at the Jordan, and I swore to him by the Lord, saying, ‘I will not put you to death with the sword.’ Now therefore do not hold him guiltless, for you are a wise man. You will know what you ought to do to him, and you shall bring his gray head down with blood to Sheol."
"Now he that betrayed him gave them a sign, saying, Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he: hold him fast. And forthwith he came to Jesus, and said, Hail, master; and kissed him. And Jesus said unto him, Friend, wherefore art thou come? Then came they, and laid hands on Jesus and took him. And, behold, one of them which were with Jesus stretched out his hand, and drew his sword, and struck a servant of the high priest's, and smote off his ear. Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword. Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then shall the scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be? In that same hour said Jesus to the multitudes, Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me."
In all my life of being Catholic (I’ll turn 50 this year), I’ve heard less than 5 homilies-sermons that amounted, in whole or part, to a reflection on a papal encyclical. Over time there may be juicy papal quotes that make it into Sunday preaching, but that’s about it.
Instead, priests tend to focus on the readings for that Sunday’s Mass and more general themes.
That being said, I hope many priests do read an encyclical any time a pope publishes one, but they’re very, very busy most days and weeks, so whether any one priest will commit time to reading a particular encyclical, old and dusty or hot off the presses, will depend on a lot of factors that are as varied as their individual circumstances and personalities.
Add to that the fact that the pope has a cultural influence that goes further than only the catholic audience (lots of Protestant see the pope as important even if that’s not something dictated by Protestantism, a bunch of not really religious people see him as a sort of spiritual leader, etc)
Heck, it's a struggle to convince many of them that Catholics are Christian at all, and "the Pope is the antichrist" used to be a normal, mainstream comment in American newspapers.
It is somewhat a piece of irony that the Pope generally holds a more favorable reputation in the minds of the irreligious in America than the religious. Even the average Catholic likely does not have as much respect for the Pope as some of the commenters here.
In America, anti-Catholic sentiment was extremely strong until relatively recently, and then only because religiosity (and thus the reason for it) has declined. All the theological division still exists, it’s just less striking in a world that’s much more irreligious and in countries where vastly different religions (Muslim or Hindu) are present now in real numbers.
Practically all the pro-Pope sentiment I’ve seen in my lifetime has been from various flavors of atheists, agnostics, and other areligious types. Catholics themselves generally hold more respect for the office than the person, and Protestants are almost uniformly negative on both.
What happens when the tool outgrows the toolmaker?
Some of the greatest horrors of the 19th and 20th centuries were committed by people who refuted that theology and replaced it with Social Darwinism and Scientific Racism.
> What happens when the tool outgrows the toolmaker?
We've already built systems smarter than we are without much issue.Libraries and search engines for example. LLMs are just the next level of this.
Very true. Observed in Hiroshima as well.
Education in the United States especially is highly sanitized when it comes to the dropping of the atomic bombs and the horrors of the Holocaust.
None of these will go away until something breaks catastrophically, when it will be too late. And even then it will be short repose from another iteration for as long as we are in the digital information age.
There are only two steady end states that I see... either a global surveillance totalitarian system under the industrial complex, or, a radical change of the environment in which the aforementioned can be sustained.
> 110. Finally, I would like to employ the expression “to disarm,” which is close to my heart. Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of “armed” competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life. Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage. For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible.
NGL it sounds like so much bleating of the sheep standing outside the abattoir.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star_%28Clarke_short_story...
https://www.magiscenter.com/magisai
From the "Core Features" tab: "Trusted sourcebase: answers are consistent with Catholic Church Teaching and the most contemporary scholarship in science, philosophy, history, scriptural exegesis, social science, and theology."
The Jesuit priest behind this is Fr. Robert J. Spitzer, S.J., Ph.D.
https://www.magiscenter.com/father-spitzer
I haven't used magisAI, but I've read a small to fair amount of Fr. Spitzer's writings, and also seen and heard some of his videos and podcasts (largely from his show Fr. Spitzer's Universe), and probably qualify as a big fan of his.
https://ondemand.ewtn.com/Home/Series/ondemand/video/en/fr-s...
https://www.ewtn.com/tv/shows/father-spitzers-universe
P.S. In case you are wondering about the glasses he wears or his appearance in photographs, he suffers near blindness due to retinitis pigmentosa:
https://www.magiscenter.com/blog/latest-news-on-fr-spitzers-... [2018]
EDIT: Formatting.
I’d be thrilled if religion was only used to uplift people but that’s not going to happen either
this basically implies only open source models can be ethical but open source is not sufficient, you also need to make them give true information and avoid all kinds of harmful behavior. thats kind of a problem because if your weights are public even with a strict license a "bad" user can always fine tune it to remove any guardrails.
i think the solution for this is make sure the default behavior is aligned but let users turn on wild mode with zero censorship/refusals. that way everything is opt in, for example a parent can disable the mode for their children but a hacktivist or diy chemist can unlock everything.
as a self described good person i believe theres a lot more good people than bad people in the world (most are neutral) so if access to tech is equal the good side always wins. the problem here is again that access is not equal under capitalism. but thats a political thign not a tech one.
I believe there are mostly people who think they are good. And as the proverb goes the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I am curious, what is the view of different religions on conversing with something that is not human like a chatbot?
Sadly, the politicians are all bought off by the powerful and rich elite. And the ones who aren't are soon hounded out.
What does the "The West" stand for? They (the Elites and the politicians) said human rights etc. But Gaza proved that a lie. Gaza happened in "broad daylight" and the Western leaders did nothing at best, and at worst demonized those who spoke out, as supporters of terrorists.
Particularly ironic considering the history of the Church.
I mean, it is not wrong, but that's essentially the business of essentially every church, religion, cult,... whatever you call your spiritual organization.
Between the Canadian residential schools and sexual abuse scandals alone, it's shocking that people actually look to the holy see as any kind of moral authority. Nevermind the connections to slavery, fascism, and even the cosa nostra.
EDIT: Few paragraphs in, it is beautifully written.
I have a similar perspective. Plus, I'll be frank: in the last few years, these occasional keynote publications from Vaticans are pretty much the most sane, deep, balanced and humane perspectives on AI anyone is writing. Reading this is a better use of one's time than reading the current batch of "tech thought leaders" articles or HBRs or Gartner magic square updates.
Interesting, considering that the U.N. has its roots established in the ideology of Luciferians. [1][2][3]
Surely the Pope and the Vatican are both aware of this fact.
[1] https://archive.is/D27Jr [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucis_Trust [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theosophical_mysticism
This logic is absolutely ridiculous in my opinion. Should we have cared about Hitler? Maybe he was just a bad guy with good ideas - after all, he helped to create the Autobahn.
If you haven't read about what Alice Bailey believed in or other theosophists and you're just saying who cares because you hold the impression that the United Nations is some benefactor to humanity, okay. I don't hold that viewpoint regarding the UN and I find the fact that it is actively advised by a group of Luciferians that espouse the kind of crap Alice Bailey did, quite troubling. Nor do I consider the Vatican a benefactor to humanity, just to set the record straight.
Techbros (as usual): how dare you suggest I'm a bad person for wanting to kill everyone in order to build the torment nexus? Don't you know how much money Jeff Bezos has?
Oh no, is my sarcasm meter broken?
Is that really true though, that so many people are "dependent" on "AI"? In what way? I'd say the only people who really depend on AI are those who want to make money off it, and that's only half sarcastic.
Would the people who now run it through an LLM (and who can read the output of an LLM but not the text itself?), have read it at all before? Would it not have, if anything, filtered down to them somehow, by them reading of it, or hearing of it in church etc?
> 176. In the development of her doctrine, the Church has gradually come to a deeper awareness of the gravity of these issues. It is true that past events cannot be judged anachronistically, as though the moral criteria that matured over time had always been available. Yet neither can we deny or diminish the delay with which both society and the Church came to denounce the scourge of slavery. In antiquity and the Middle Ages many individuals and even ecclesiastical institutions had slaves. Already in the early modern period, the Apostolic See of Rome, responding to requests from Sovereigns, intervened several times in order to regulate and legitimize forms of subjugation, and, in certain cases, the enslavement of “infidels.” [174] It was only in the nineteenth century that a formal, absolute and universal condemnation of slavery was clearly articulated, notably under Pope Leo XIII. [175] This development offers a clear example of the Church’s growth in understanding the perennial truths of Revelation that she safeguards. Although there was not always consistency in practice — given that slavery was long tolerated before being unequivocally condemned — there has been a continuous affirmation throughout history of the dignity of every human being, created in the image of God, even if it took eighteen centuries for its full incompatibility with slavery to be explicitly recognized. This constitutes a wound in Christian memory, one from which we cannot consider ourselves detached. [176] It is impossible not to feel deep sorrow when contemplating the immense suffering and humiliation endured by so many in stark contrast to their immeasurable dignity as persons infinitely loved by the Lord. For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely ask for pardon.
As he surely understands but does not quite bear to be completely honest about it, the Church has only been a humanist institution for the past ~150ish years. The history before is bloody, and brutal, from genocide and slavery to wholesale cultural destruction, from its very beginnings.
Followed by a very keen remark:
> 178. Even today, colonialism assumes new forms. It no longer dominates only bodies, but appropriates data, transforming personal lives into exploitable information. Entire regions, especially those marked by structural fragility and limited geopolitical relevance, are currently subjected to a new mindset of extraction: that of health data, epidemiological profiles, genetic maps and demographic information. These have become the new “rare earths” of power: vital data which, once aggregated and analyzed, can be used to train predictive models, guide investment strategies, anticipate crises and, above all, determine who and what is deemed to matter. Those who control the health data of entire peoples — often collected under the pretext of aid, research or innovation — possess a structural leverage over the future, for they can shape needs and markets. They can also decide, before others, to whom medicines, investments and protections will be allocated. Here lies one of the most urgent moral challenges of our time: to ensure that shared knowledge becomes a true common good rather than an instrument of dominance. This requires restoring to individuals not only the data that describes them, but also the ability to decide how it is used, by whom and for whose benefit. Otherwise, the digital age will not be post-colonial, but colonial in another form.
Reading is a trained skill. Requiring years, even decades, of training. It too shall fall to AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gulzQIkwbJg
(at least the intro.. all in all I think it's a bit too long and some part of it kinda "cringe", but hey)
..or whether or not hiding all those pedophiles was the right.
and to be clear ; i'm not equating AI to those things -- i'm saying that I don't care about the opinion of a group with such a sordid history regardless of how shined up the PR is now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPmyry0yaQE
An organization that - for centuries - has actively protected child molesters, has sat on billions of dollars, has sided with Nazis, has been involved in multiple fraud and money laundering cases has absolutely zero standing to advice anybody on anything.
1. He's not at all careful with his argumentation. Frequently he'll colocate two points that aren't really connected, not bothering to justify one before moving on. I've been a massive fan of his persona ever since I heard he was planning to be the AI pope, but it's a shame to find the philosophical output of the actual man to be around the level of a decent blogger.
2. He refuses to make the Kantian or Hegelian move of basing the discussion of empirical matters on evidence. I understand that faith (aka 'belief without evidence') is a huge part of their whole deal--and likely an inextricable part of humanity's indomitable spirit--but it's just a waste of time to build arguments about technical and political matters upon such foundations.
In other words: there's no point in really talking about AI with someone willing to justify claims like 'no machine could ever think' with 'god says so'. All you can do is try to manipulate them into a prosocial position (read: your side).
Hopefully it's obvious that the majority of the letter isn't really about AI but rather about lessening the harms of capitalism, nationalism, and climate change, which hopefully we can all agree on! The commentary above is focused on the AI specific (esp. Chapter III and parts of I).
https://religionnews.com/2026/05/22/why-anthropic-is-helping...
The vigilance the Pope calls for is appreciated, but never underestimate lobbying. If he had called for an outright AI moratorium or ban, that would be clear. But this encyclical leaves room for "adjustments", i.e., boiling the frog slowly.
One thing that isn't talked about enough is how so much is going into AI but not much is coming out of it. The rhetoric from tech bros is still that AI is "going to" change the world. Hasn't really changed the world yet, except driven up everyone's utility bills and put hundreds of thousands of people out of work.
I encourage people, especially software engineers here, to remember the previous "new hotness" tech advancements - blockchain and NoSQL DBs being two recent examples. In both instances there was a flood of VC money into startups that have mostly failed because each was supposed to change the world (or at least change software). I spent a lot of my free time in those days trying to "find a problem" for blockchain and NoSQL to solve. I remember thinking I must be a lousy software engineer because I just wasn't getting the hype. Now I know it's because whenever something new comes out, people talk about how it can do X Y and Z, and there's a disconnect between what a technology CAN do, and what it SHOULD do. I can use blockchain for all sorts of things, but in most cases it wouldn't be the best option. Same for NoSQL DBs. Same for LLMs. The more you understand blockchain, the more you realize it's only good as a globally-distributed, immutable ledger - and currency is the only practical application of that in our society today (e.g., Bitcoin). NoSQL is the same way - yeah you can use MongoDB for whatever app, but it's going to be a bad time maintaining and scaling when you're storing relatively simple and consistent records. A CRUD app usually doesn't warrant a NoSQL DB.
LLMs are the same. I'm finding they are good at search-type tasks, where frankly not much "thinking" is involved. Therefore, with respect to writing software, they are best suited for simple, internal tools. Even then, I have to baby it, especially with today's LLMs. Claude Opus has been nerfed (most-likely quantized) to make space in the datacenters for Mythos, and eventually Mythos will be bad too for the same reasons. The question becomes, as it always has, "will LLMs rise up to the challenge" and history tells us "no." These things never live up to the hype. When you understand how LLMs work, you understand why ChatGPT 3.5 isn't that much worse than GPT 5.5, artificial benchmarks be damned.
The Catholic Church is not anywhere close to being a neutral institution who will be writing something like this in good faith (no pun intended). This is an organization based on prejudice, subjugation and outright delusion built on literally millennia of persecution. All of their observations will be made from the standpoint that their worldview is the only correct one, which is unacceptable in every way.
For example, ChatGPT will quickly and efficiently answer all your questions about how and where to get a safe abortion, including pros and cons, history and other specifics. This is something the Church is vehemently opposed to on principle. Anything else they have to say on the topic is therefore irrelevant.
I guarantee that whatever AI doom they're warning about will never be anywhere close to the damage the continued existence of the Catholic Church causes and will continue to cause in the future.
Anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't know history nor read the headlines of the past several decades.
Hey, I love it when Bob from Chicago tells Trump to go to hell, but beyond that I couldn't care less what he or the truly horrific religion he leads thinks about anything, let alone new technology.
By then we might not even have computers anymore, or we might have "transparent" computers, i.e. have everything on the cloud and just tell our AI agents what to do.
Sorry Pope Leo, things are not going to suddenly turn into a wonderful utopia, but maybe buy some stocks so you can at least make a buck from what's coming.
The pope is not claiming utopia is possible. He is reminding the world of its moral duties within this scope. "Capitalism" is not a system that we helpless atoms merely get pushed around in. How good the world is depends on each one of us choosing to do our moral duty toward the common good. There is no "system" that will, without effort on the part of its citizens, straighten the crooked timber of humanity and relieve human beings of their moral responsibilities.
With that out of the way, the Pope is right. Knowledge should be used for the benefit of humanity and I don't think any of the big AI companies have our best interests in mind.
You can still follow a religion while rightfully thinking that the organization representing it to be corrupt (and how could it be otherwise, as it's made from mortal sinners?).
But you either believe that St.Peter and its descendants in Rome have been tasked by god to spread (and interpret) its word or you don't.
It's fine if you don't (I don't my self, I'm an atheist), but I don't get why can't you be a catholic if you believe and also find the organization flawed.
Plus personal and social experiences are often catalysts for changing one’s beliefs. It happens so often there’s a term for it: “crisis of faith”
The whole point of faith is that it’s a subjective opinion that cannot be proven.
Arguing that someone’s faith isn’t logical is about as sensible as arguing which shade of blue looks more wet.
My point is that once you see a sort of contradiction between words and action, it may make one deeply reflect on it.
What you do is your business, but you understand the fallacy, yes? One does not belong to the Church for the priests. And btw, if you want to be consistent, you should dissociate yourself from all institutions, because statistically, the rate of abuse in the Church (estimated by John Jay to be around 4%) is representative or less than the rates in all other religious or secular institutions. Public schools are notoriously bad in this regard, but you wouldn't know it, given the obsessive coverage of the Church to the exclusion of everyone else.
(I, of course, condemn all such sexual abuse, and I am critical of those who failed to deal with the issue properly. There is indeed a sense in which abuse by a priest carries much more gravity, and this is the position of the Church itself. Sexual abuse also peaked during the heyday of the sexual revolution, roughly during the 1960s-1980s. It wasn't a pedophilia scandal, as around 80% of victims were post-pubescent male teenagers. It was a homosexual ephebophilia scandal. Still terrible, but it does shift understanding of the nature and source of the problem significantly.)
> I am aware of the Catholic Church's long and often sordid history.
Sure, if you simply accept the ignorant tropes, ideological propaganda, and black legends circulating in a culture hostile to the institution since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, then maybe you'll be left with a dramatically dark picture that you describe as "sordid". But this is historically illiterate and intellectually immature.
I feel like this pseudo-defence hidden in the middle of your few paragraphs tells the reader what they really ought to know. Making that distinction is enough to question your nature to be allowed around vulnerable people.
If you don't see a difference of gravity between sexually abusing prepubescent children and post-pubescent teenagers, then I question your capacity to make moral judgements. Perhaps you'll attack someone for recognizing that murder is worse than rape, too.
And frankly, the libelous phrase "question your nature to be allowed around vulnerable people" that you directed toward me is utterly disgusting. How dare you.
But then, you've already demonstrated your comfort with false accusations.
Honestly pretty unreal to come face to face with someone from a history book.
Still, I agree with the pope this once.
They did a lot to make the middle ages more tolerable. After that, maybe they overstayed their welcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade
Child Protection: Companies must not be allowed to exploit children or undermine their wellbeing with AI interactions creating emotional attachment or leverage
I think it entirely consistent with many of the supporters of this statement that this leaves open the opportunity for the church to do it with AI, or indeed companies and the church to do it by other means.
In the first case, I claim that it has and that it does. I'm not sure how you can credibly claim otherwise. Only ideologically informed animosity could distort one's views here. If you know the mission of the Church, then I see no issue. Do members of the Church fail? Of course. Everyone does, and indeed this is captured best in the Christian acknowledgment that everyone is a sinner, without exception. Everyone falls short.
In the second case, I don't know what the implication is. Is it that the Church is one of the "powerful few" and therefore evil? The first question you must ask is what your notion of "power" here is. The second, whether the Church is actually powerful according to that definition. The third, whether you are falsely linking being one of the "powerful few" with being evil. The problem, after all, is not with power, but with the way power is used. In an ideal world, all power would be exercised morally, and all authority would have commensurate power.
I would say this: the Church has authority. Whether it has power depends on your definition of power and the particular historical epoch. It is not reduced to a simple boolean.
It's best to avoid cheap jabs that rely on boring and unthinking tropes that appeal to widespread prejudices rather than to informed reason.
This is not true at all.
And the claim about mission of the church and mission of the ai being the same is absurd. Or ai being authority. Like, the rest of that comment does not apply to ai at all.
In what sense is it not true?
> mission of the church and mission of the ai being the same is absurd
Did I claim that?
I just said any point you wrote against church representing powerful few is applicable to AI.
(Axiom: B has done X.)
A (to B): You have done X, and you should not have done so.
C: I note here that certain prior actions of A could also reasonably be characterized as X.
D (to C): Ah, here you commit the fallacy of "tu quoque".
This argument is not sound. It misunderstands the fallacy. (To be clear: Wikipedia describes the fallacy accurately; it's just that it's rare in practice, and very often falsely accused.)
Everyone should uphold the standards to which they hold others (and I consider it an obvious moral failing not to do so). The fallacy only applies where C either continues on to argue that B has, somehow, not actually done X (because A did); or, at least, clearly has the purpose of distracting from the fact that B has done X.
But there is nothing fallacious about simply pointing out that A does not live up to A's own implied standards. There is nothing fallacious about the implication that A is therefore being either i) dishonest about the anti-X belief, or ii) simply hypocritical. (To be fair, we don't know, from the given information, which of those is the case; but I think it's fair to say that neither is "fair dealing" and that A is thus a legitimate target of criticism regardless.)
It is also not fallacious for C to use this as a jumping-off point to argue that X is in fact okay to do, although of course this requires further support.
The Catholic Church has always had this go on.
If you want this account unbanned you can email us (hn@ycombinator.com) and suggest a different username. Otherwise you can register a new account.
https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/debunking-the-myth-of-va...
Its still true. The church gained massive amount of land in germany due to the fear they put into humans. Hell, purgatory etc.
The church owns 2% of land in germany. A f. church...
I will skip the "just war" theory, because I simply don't know enough to make a cogent argument
But
> attacks colonialism without explaining why Christians created colonies
Speaking as an english person with a passing interest in colonialism, this is an _interesting_ take.
Which colonies are you talking about? because the ones in America and Ireland were explicitly not catholic. More complex still some of them were super anti-pope, and a lot were just C-of-E catholic but sans pope
Could you explain more about your viewpoint?
> Francis, for example, did not write Laudato si’ entirely on his own. The first draft was prepared by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, with input from other Church leaders. The document was then revised and reviewed by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
But I meant mostly those who share "Leo's" errors and write like him ("these people [like "Leo"])
so for example with "Just War" we see this passage:
> it is important to reaffirm that the “just war” theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated.
This would clearly be thought to be an error from a Catholic viewpoint, because the right to wage "justified war" comes from the individual right to self-defense, as applied to a collective group of people legitimately defending against aggression (maybe lots of people here for example would argue Ukraine is legitimately justified in waging defensive war against Russia, for example).
Hence while it is good to promote peaceful resolutions of conflict, the document goes too far in condemning legitimate self-defense.
(So while the whole long document likely says correct things about AI and the dignity of work, it also adds in things like the above that Catholics would clearly reject. Typically Catholics would accept what a pope is writing so if you're getting someone who claims to be pope teaching erroneously, this points to a bigger problem for Catholics.)
> Catholic philosophy, therefore, concedes to the State the full natural right of war, whether defensive, as in case of another's attack in force upon it; offensive (more properly, coercive), where it finds it necessary to take the initiative in the application of force; or punitive, in the infliction of punishment for evil done against itself or, in some determined cases, against others.
"War" entry: newadvent.org/cathen/15546c.htm
By calling Catholic teaching "outdated", this sounds like the heresy of modernism (even if outright "abolition" isn't mentioned) - since for example these "older" teachings are directly applicable to current conflicts (people here might support Ukraine's right to defend against Russia, for example, under theories of justifications for war)
"Modernism": https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10415a.htm
Jesus let the Romans take him. The pope drives around in an armoured car with hundreds of soldiers. Why? After all, he’s the official spokesperson of God. He’s either untouchable, or would be endlessly rewarded with sainthood for being a martyr.
But he obviously doesn’t believe that.
We've been having the same argument since the dawn of mankind. AI is the new AR.
Sometimes it might just be better to not do the thing, especially if it conflicts with one's morals. And well, the idea that "if I don't do this, someone else will" seems to not work out well in practice.
Putting the blame on the engineers is a distraction from the real people at fault...the business people and the politicians.
If a technology existed that reduced the cost of producing a critical thing (think food, housing, medical care) down to near zero, however, it made the humans currently building the thing redundant, should we build it? Would it be okay to use the hyper-optimization power of Capitalism to build such a technology faster?
Before someone yells at me about this not being the current situation, I think that is the endgame of most of this AI development and in fact the endgame is even more comforting: If it takes 10 construction workers at $60,000/annum to build one home, I can forsee the descendants of current AI tech enabling 10 construction workers at $150,000/annum building 5 homes in the same time with an even larger profit margin for the corporation involved.
But as a clear moral quandary, I think the Pope should consider the first situation.
"AI must be used for the good of humanity" isn't even an anti ai position really.
Why..not both? I know this question is naive, but there is nothing that "hard-codes" AI to only increase profits at the cost of providing food or housing for much cheaper prices. Yes a Private equity firm could later insert itself and jack up prices and play such games, but that isn't baked into the technology itself.
And as such, the technology seems the wrong thing to be litigating.
At this point, tech biz leaders are massively over-reaching and trying to influence the rest of us: muxk, thiel, Karp, etc.
So it should be no surprise that the rest of us are ready, willing and able to push back just as hard.
tech biz leads should just run their companies and stop trying to play president or god
I realize this is what's happening on the headlines, but most of the technology being "deployed" is back-office automation, robotics etc. that no one writes about and none of the tech baddies have monopolistic control over. I refuse to let muxk, thiel, Karp to run the conversation and setup the reaction either. It is exciting and dramatic but not necessarily influential.
Meanwhile, costs of production fall to zero. So what will there be for these profitable companies to spend their profits on?
The exact situation I laid out: “If it takes 10 construction workers at $60,000/annum to build one home, I can forsee the descendants of current AI tech enabling 10 construction workers at $150,000/annum building 5 homes in the same time with an even larger profit margin for the corporation involved.”
Is the most likely condition if we let this technology grow healthily with the exact “full automation” end condition being beyond the point of diminishing returns.
This is a lot of very wealthy workers building products for a lot of people with revenue growing but margins plateauing and therefore absolute profits growing as well. This is an exact repeat of the Industrial Revolution situation,
I don't think anyone has an answer to that question at present, honestly.
Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions? Could be a better use of the infallible man's pulpit?
Quick browse through pre-AI works from John Paul II show em-dashes present.
One of the big problems I see currently is all the wild accusations being thrown around by seemingly half the internet that every little thing has been AI manipulated upon the tiniest suspicion. We will go mad tearing each other apart if we keep escalating this behavior.
Yes, some of it is blatantly obvious, but not to everyone-- so I think those casting aspersions need to really back up their claims with more than one or two bits of 'evidence'. I have been accused of using AI to write comments (which I have thus far never done), and I know I'm not the only one by a long shot. Such a waste of time and energy. Ignore it and move on if something smells off to you.
Also I am just so, so tired of the em-dash argument. Humans have been using it for a looong time. Let it go.
My point was less about em-dashes and more stopping to consider how the vatican's workflow and editorial process has changed in wake of AI, and what, if any, impact that could have on the outputs.
AI is a tool, I have no problems with others using it to assist with writing as long as the original intent/argument remains.
Occam's Razor says this is Anthropic trying to build a regulatory moat by leveraging some halo effect.
Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions? Could be a better use of the infallible man's pulpit?
> 12: Today, the human desire for fullness of life is at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness, and models of wellbeing that leave behind entire populations. All too often, we place our hope in unlimited 'upgrades,' in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities, and in immediate solutions incapable of healing people's wounds.
> 94: The danger of humanity becoming a victim of its own achievements was already clearly recognized by Saint Paul VI, who warned that 'the most extraordinary scientific progress, the most astounding technical feats and the most amazing economic growth, unless accompanied by authentic moral and social progress, will in the long run go against man.' For this reason, technological progress — valuable in itself — requires careful discernment of the anthropological vision that guides it and the ends it pursues. If technological development advances without a corresponding ethical and social progress, the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity: 'having more' without 'being more.' In such a scenario, there is a risk that individuals will be evaluated principally according to the outcomes they produce.
> 112: More gravely, the pervasive technocratic paradigm in which we are immersed, and that is amplified by the digital revolution and AI, threatens to normalize an anti-human vision. In that vision, the fullness of life is equated with having more, reducing weakness, eliminating uncertainty and exerting total control. When efficiency becomes the ultimate measure of value, human beings are tempted to see themselves as a project to be optimized rather than as persons called to relationship and communion.
There's much more along these and related lines.
I read the extremely unexamined blank: """technological progress — valuable in itself —"""
Read again: they are extremely weak sauce, with the implicit message that all that wanting more is oh yes so morally wrong... Morally. But in Leo's wordage I find zero pragmatism, zero hard facts, zero El Niño, zero it's gonna crash... zero call to action. Just pious de-fanged sidelined position-taking.
But anyway. I found the unlock for Karma drop, went from 2666 to 2659 with this one previous comment, I kid you not! So all the good words, and then "regulation" right, standing next to Anthropic's boss, all good right?
> Maybe Leo should focus on finding a way to disconnect western society from their current cult-of-progress delusions?
It's too weak of a rhetoric from the highest representative of the Catholic church to call for regulations, but the alternative is to call for a transition from capitalism itself. Nothing that grows inside economic doctrines that only value constant growth at all costs can be safely regulated, regulation being only a makeshift solution.
That, and also local heat generation. Data centers heat up neighborhoods from miles away. (https://interestingengineering.com/science/data-center-phoen...)
1: https://www.loudounwater.org/commercial-customers/reclaimed-...
No, Capitalism is about Capital and it's multiplication. Means of production are just a tool for Capital to multiply.
Proper systemic improvements are possible, and having markets is a good way to allocate resources and efforts.
Now let's see your views on homosexuality, promiscuity, contraception, abortion, drug use, and all the other things the target audience of this "I SUPPORT THE CURRENT THING" proclamation also feels strongly about.
He does not address plagiarism, the fact that AI is mostly a surveillance and IP laundering tool, the fact that AI hasn't achieved much so far. You could say it has achieved nothing if compared to the whole history of human ingenuity, certainly not in CS.
He should have compared AI to the golden calf.
His criticism is lukewarm, does not address the criminal aspects and technological failures and is as such industry compliant. He can now say "I have tried" without harming the industry in the least.
This text is not what our current situation demands, but I hope that priests will augment and amplify it in their sermons and go a bit deeper.
It does mention IP concerns, but that's not the greatest existential threat posed by AI.