Pope Leo XIV speaks during the presentation of 'Magnifica humanitas,' his first encyclical, focused on the rise of artificial intelligence, at the Vatican's Aula Nuova del Sinodo on Monday.Yara Nardi/Reuters
Pope Leo XIV sounded the alarm against AI this week. It’s a good thing he did because from our government you don’t get a sense of any alarm.
In a 42,300-word encyclical, the pontiff said the risk is that with the AI tidal wave humans will be reduced “to mere cogs.”
His pontifications made a compelling case for major government regulation and global constraints to prevent digital servitude.
“Artificial intelligence,” he proclaimed in his presentation of the encyclical, “now demands to be ‘disarmed,’ freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death.″
There was no initial reaction to the encyclical from AI Minister Evan Solomon, no show of support. Ottawa is soon to release a national AI strategy, but indications from Mr. Solomon are that no sweeping regulation is in the works.
Opinion: Pope Leo has delivered a bold and clarion call on AI
Canada is an AI research leader and more emphasis is being put on exploiting AI’s potential to address our chronic low productivity problem than concern over humans being turned into a subspecies.
Mr. Solomon told an AI conference last week that a lot of job layoffs blamed on AI are not about AI at all.
The American Pope’s manifesto conjured up a new ruling class comprised of Big Tech billionaires and digital machines and runaway AI systems that could bring on mass unemployment, mass inequality, mass misinformation, a diminishing of human creativity and weapons systems operated independently. “The growing ease with which autonomous weapons systems can be deployed makes war more ‘feasible’ and less subject to human control,” the Pope said.
Canadian computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, an AI pioneer, strongly welcomed the encyclical, saying public awareness had to be raised and society mobilized to address the AI challenge.
Some said the treatise could have gone further to say that AI was an existential threat. Others said the Pope was fearmongering. One wag cracked that he was doing his utmost to discredit AI because he feared it would prove that there is no God.
Pope Leo denounces ‘culture of power’ driving AI race, calls for regulation
But the upshot is that the anti-AI movement, which has lacked a leader, a dominant voice, now has one – a most powerful one in the form of the spiritual leader of 1.4 billion Catholics.
Paolo Carozza, a Notre Dame Law School professor and co-chair of the Meta Oversight Board, said of the encyclical that “I am convinced that this will prove to be a defining document for our era.” It charts a course “in which technology will serve humans rather than degrade them.”
If not that, the manifesto should prompt more to ask fundamental questions about AI. Such as: Why are humans so intent on ceding more and more power to non-human forces? Why are we outsourcing many of our exceptional capacities to digital and robotic forces that we may not be able to control?
AI spreads over so many domains. In how many of them do we wish to have technology outperform us? In many cases that the Pope didn’t wish to dwell on, such as medical advances, AI could markedly improve the human condition. But the message of the Pope was that we’re taking all these risks more for profit than for the common good. GDP is god.
In a surprising twist at the release of the Pope’s encyclical, Christopher Olah, the 33-year-old Canadian co-founder of Anthropic, which is valued at about US$900-billion, was present. Mr. Olah, an atheist, wants to partner with the Catholic Church and the tech industry to develop safeguards for AI development. He can afford them.
The American economy is being propped up by trillions of dollars in AI-related capital expenditures from the big tech behemoths. The Trump administration is green-lighting unchecked AI deployment like it is red-lighting climate-change programs. The American example, going full steam ahead, will only make it more difficult for Canada to put on the brakes.
There are signs of a backlash brewing. On the left – and to some extent, on the right as well – there is increased bitterness over job losses and AI being of benefit to billionaires and large corporations. College graduates are booing commencement speakers who evoke AI. A Molotov cocktail was heaved at the house of OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Hundreds in Vancouver protested against Telus’s plan to build AI data centres there.
But it’s doubtful the forces of opposition have the strength to bring on significant regulation. The Pope’s sweeping manifesto will give the movement some momentum, but as evidenced by the lack of notice it received in Ottawa, there is faint hope of turning back the tidal wave.