Pope Leo XIV as the AI Pope
Bio
By Zach Schlosser & Xavier Snelgrove:
"Pope Leo XIV is the AI Pope:
He named himself because of AI. In his first address to the College of Cardinals: "Pope Leo XIII in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution. In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour."
Chris Olah is speaking alongside Pope Leo XIV during the release of his first encyclical, which is dedicated to AI.
He has technical bona fides: BSc in Math and created his Order's web page in the 90s.
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Leo has identified an intervention: create an alliance of well-intentioned internet platform companies, AI model developers, national legislators, supranational regulators, media and communication companies, as well as artists, journalists, and educators to introduce dignity-preserving media, information, and AI literacy into education systems at all levels.
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A particular influence on Leo XIV is Father Philip Larrey, Ph.D., formerly Dean of the Philosophy Department at Pontifical Lateran University in the Vatican (aka "the Pope's University"), now at Boston College. Author of Artificial Humanity and Connected World."
(https://thedivinityschool.endemic.org/record/dispatches/vatican-ai-leadership)
Discussion
By Zach Schlosser & Xavier Snelgrove:
"Humans are Relational and Integrally Intelligent, AI is Not:
The Vatican's view of intelligence is an explicitly anti-functionalist combination of ratio (reason), the discursive, analytical process that leads to judgment and intellectus (intellect), the intuitive grasp of the truth. Intellectus is an embodied, relational, intentional, non-computational, phenomenal faculty. AI does not have these characteristics. It is not relational, cannot "grasp reality," take responsibility, or integrate truth into people's moral and spiritual lives, and is not a moral agent. AI threatens both the integral, character-developing teacher-student relationship."
(https://thedivinityschool.endemic.org/record/dispatches/vatican-ai-leadership)
More information
- Deeply thoughtful thinkers in and around the Church:
D.C. Schindler, Ph.D., Professor of Metaphysics and Anthropology at Pontifical John Paul II Institute, Washington, D.C., who has the most serious critique of AI.
Paul Scherz, Ph.D., Our Lady of Guadalupe Professor of Theology at University of Notre Dame, who is very involved in Vatican work on AI and has a middle of the road view.
Giulio Maspero, Ph.D., Ph.D., Dean of Philosophy at the Opus Dei university in Rome, physicist by training, Board Member of Relational Ontology Research.
Silvia Guidi: A journalist (the first female journalist) at L'Osservatore Romano, the daily newspaper of Vatican City. She's serious, not dedicated to Tech."