From: julianlzb87@gmail.com   
      
   The Vatican’s first American pontiff has pointed out the threat of AI   
   companies ‘rewriting human history’ — a warning that has been met with   
   derision   
      
   The first American pope has emerged as one of the most lucid critics of   
   Silicon Valley in the artificial intelligence era.   
      
   Pope Leo XIV has warned of “the extremely rich people who are investing   
   in artificial intelligence, totally ignoring the value of human beings   
   and of humanity”.   
      
   He has repeatedly called for AI development to prioritise serving humans   
   rather than replacing or diminishing human dignity.   
      
   In a social media post on X last year, he wrote: “Technological   
   innovation can be a form of participation in the divine act of creation.   
   It carries an ethical and spiritual weight, for every design choice   
   expresses a vision of humanity.   
      
   “The Church therefore calls all builders of #AI to cultivate moral   
   discernment as a fundamental part of their work — to develop systems   
   that reflect justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life.”   
      
   The response to the head of the Catholic Church (which has about 1.4   
   billion religious followers) from some powerful corners of Silicon   
   Valley has been mockery. Marc Andreessen, the billionaire venture   
   capitalist (X followers: 2 million) who argued in The Techno-Optimist   
   Manifesto that “any deceleration of AI will cost lives”, responded to   
   the pontiff’s statement on social media with a viral meme depicting a GQ   
   interviewer raising her eyebrows as she asks the actress Sydney Sweeney   
   about her controversial American Eagle jeans advertisement.   
      
   The investor, whose firm has backed AI companies including OpenAI and   
   Mistral AI, later deleted the post following a public backlash.   
      
   Peter Thiel, another billionaire venture capitalist, who is a   
   self-described Christian and has warned of the perils of slowing down   
   technological advancement, also appears to be rattled by the pope.   
      
   Speaking at an invitation-only lecture at the University of Cambridge   
   last month, he speculated about candidates for the antichrist, warning   
   of the danger of the pope becoming aligned with a “woke” or   
   anti-progress US president such as the left-wing congresswoman   
   Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, according to The Spectator, which attended the   
   event.   
      
   Theologians are worried about grandiose visions emanating from Silicon   
   Valley that suggest AI will solve all of our problems.   
      
   The importance of recognising AI’s limitations, such as its inability to   
   replicate human relationships, was a theme of discussion at a panel I   
   was invited to speak on last week at Reuben College, Oxford, on the   
   topic of “God and Silicon Valley: The Place of Religion in the   
   Development of Artificial Intelligence”.   
      
      
   Louisa Clarence-Smith   
      
      
   Questions posed by academics during the event included: “Should we   
   anthropomorphise the machine? Will faith in tech replace faith in God?”   
      
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   The panel had been inspired by a column I wrote last year on the rise of   
   Christianity in Silicon Valley, as advances in artificial intelligence   
   raise questions for tech workers, such as: “What does it mean to be   
   human, if we can be gods? Should we be gods?”   
      
   Those concerns do not appear to be front of mind for the leaders of AI   
   companies, who are embracing the Trump administration’s green light to   
   develop superhuman AI without guardrails, in a policy environment framed   
   by the technological arms race between the US and China.   
      
   Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI, has compared the need to   
   build AI data centres to having to choose between curing cancer and   
   improving public education. In a blog post last year, he said: “If we   
   are limited by compute, we’ll have to choose which one [curing cancer or   
   improving public education] to prioritise; no one wants to make that   
   choice, so let’s go build.”   
      
   However, there is still plenty of uncertainty about how long it will   
   take to develop human-like intelligence, and whether the technology will   
   be prioritised for improving healthcare and public education over   
   commercial interests.   
      
   AI already poses immediate dangers. In January, the pope warned that AI   
   tools could lead humans to renounce their ability to think, while   
   substituting relationships with others for AI systems risks damaging the   
   social, cultural and political fabric of society.   
      
   Meanwhile, he noted that only a handful of companies are leading this   
   “enormous invisible force” that affects us all.   
      
   “This gives rise to significant concerns about the oligopolistic control   
   of algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence, which are capable of   
   subtly influencing behaviour and even rewriting human history —   
   including the history of the Church — often without us really realising   
   it,” he said.   
      
   Such warnings from the Vatican have so far failed to have any impact on   
   the activities of tech leaders in America. It will take more than the   
   holy father to bring the gods of Silicon Valley back down to earth.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)