‘An Eclipse of the Sense of What It Means To Be Human’: World Awaits Pope Leo’s Argument on Artificial Intelligence

The release on Monday of Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical on artificial intelligence is being anticipated by everyone from Augustinian monks and Franciscan friars to the titans of Silicon Valley. “Magnifica Humanitas” or “Magnificent Humanity,” will be the first major document released by the 267th Bishop of Rome. The Pope on Friday previewed the encyclical’s release by declaring that “we are truly experiencing an eclipse of the sense of what it means to be human. It is imperative to recover an understanding of the true meaning and grandeur of humanity as intended by God.”The leader of the world’s more than one billion Catholics has timed his statement on AI to the 135th anniversary of an encyclical by his namesake, Pope Leo XIII. “Rerum Novarum,” whose title means “Of New Things,” addressed the “spirit of revolutionary change” that was brought on by the Industrial Revolution. It is now widely reckoned as the cornerstone of Catholic social teaching.While most papal encyclicals are known only to the faithful and Vatican archivists, some have endured in the public imagination. In “Pascendi Dominici Gregis” from 1907 Pope Pius X denounced the new century’s modernism, and Pope Paul VI’s “Humanae Vitae” of 1968 took a firm stand against contraception. Pope Francis’s “Laudato Si’” outlined the Church’s environmentalism. In 1938, Pope Pius XI commissioned an encyclical against antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews, but he died in 1939, and his successor, Pius XII, shelved the project as the Nazi shadow spread across Europe. While the document condemned racial persecution, it still castigated the Jews on religious and theological grounds. It was not released until 1995, and is sometimes called the “Hidden Encyclical.” The pope who now wears the Ring of the Fisherman calls AI “another industrial revolution” and in February warned priests against using AI in the composition of their homilies, venturing that the technology “will never be able to share the faith.” He contends “that the challenge we currently face is not technological, but anthropological” and has warned that the use of AI in warfare could lead to a “spiral of annihilation.” While the modern genre of the papal encyclical dates back to Pope Benedict XIV’s “Ubi primum” in 1740, Pope Leo is breaking with tradition by planning a gala rollout for his “Magnifica Humanitas.” The Chicago-born pontiff will be joined on Monday in a public release at the Vatican by some of the most powerful cardinals — sometimes called “princes of the Church” — as well as by a co-founder of the AI firm Anthropic, Christopher Olah.Anthropic, the Financial Times, reports, is in talks with investors to raise between $30 billion and $50 billion in new funding. That would value the company at $950 billion, ahead of its rival OpenAI. Anthropic was valued at $380 million just two months ago. In the first three months of the year AI companies raised a total of $297 billion. Last month Anthropic announced a powerful new model, codenamed “Mythos,” that is still shrouded in secrecy.Mythos is so powerful that the company judges that it could engender a cybersecurity “reckoning” and that it “is capable of identifying and then exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities in every major operating system and every major web browser when directed by a user to do so. The vulnerabilities it finds are often subtle or difficult to detect.” A preview version of the technology detected “high-severity vulnerabilities in every major operating system and web browser.” The company has clashed with the Trump Administration, which has designated the company a “supply chain risk,” a move that Anthropic is challenging in federal court. In January Anthropic published a “Constitution” to help its technology be “helpful, harmless, and honest.”The Vicar of Christ has, like the Dario Amodei-founded Anthropic, clashed with President Trump. The 47th president has called Pope Leo “wrong on the issues” and “WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy.” He told CBS News that “I don’t think he should be getting into politics.” That criticism was prompted by the pope’s objections to America’s deportation policies as well as the war against Iran. The pontiff has called some of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric against Tehran “truly unacceptable” and declared that “as a shepherd, I cannot be in favor of war.” He nonetheless has insisted that he has “no intention of getting into a debate” with the president. The successor to St. Peter, though, has held firm in his stance that true Christians are “never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs.” America’s highest ranking Catholic, Vice President Vance, has declared that Pope Leo needs “to be careful” when wading into politics. The pontiff, though, insists that he “has no fear” of criticism from Washington. He insists that “God does not bless any conflict.” America’s Secretary of War, Peter Hegseth, has taken a different theological position. During a briefing at the Pentagon he quoted the Psalmist: “Blessed be the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war and my fingers for battle.”

‘An Eclipse of the Sense of What It Means To Be Human’: World Awaits Pope Leo’s Argument on Artificial Intelligence

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