{"id":940,"date":"2026-05-27T12:01:52","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=940"},"modified":"2026-05-27T12:01:52","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T12:01:52","slug":"pope-ai-encyclical-tech-industry-reactions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silvybrand.com\/?p=940","title":{"rendered":"The Pope isn\u2019t AGI-pilled | The Verge"},"content":{"rendered":"


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On Monday, Pope Leo XIV unveiled an encyclical letter<\/a> addressing the societal implications of artificial intelligence. The letter, titled Magnifica Humanitas, <\/em>warned that the \u201cuse of AI is never a purely technical matter: when it enters processes that affect people\u2019s lives, it touches on rights, opportunities, status and freedom.\u201d Alongside him was Anthropic cofounder and interpretability team lead Christopher Olah, representing a partnership between the Catholic Church and one of the biggest players in AI.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The letter elicited a wide range of reactions from in and around the tech industry. Nearly everyone believed the document would be influential. Some critics questioned whether it went far enough, and others believed it should have discussed artificial general intelligence<\/a> (AGI), which many companies insist is imminent. Still others thought the pope was spot-on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt was a pretty clear subtweet of big tech CEOs who are out here blatantly declaring that they\u2019re eliminating staff to replace \u2018lower-value human capital\u2019 with AI, and who are also buying their way into the political rooms where it happens in order to write the rules in their favor,\u201d said Sacha Haworth, executive director of the Tech Oversight Project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The pope\u2019s encyclical comes amid a backlash to AI\u2019s growing power. Six in 10<\/a> US adults feel they have \u201clittle to no control\u201d of how AI is used in their everyday lives, protests<\/a> against the construction of data centers are increasingly common, and some people have even attempted attacks<\/a> on AI CEOs themselves.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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As Olah\u2019s appearance suggests, the pope\u2019s missive describes AI as a technology that can have positive applications, and its tone earned mixed reactions. \u201cI\u2019m glad it\u2019s critical of the AI companies though I think it should be more so,\u201d Daniel Kokotajlo, an AI researcher and former OpenAI employee who is behind the nonprofit AI Futures Project, told The Verge<\/em>. Conversely, Dr. Guru Sethupathy, GM of AI governance at software company Optro, was encouraged by indications that \u201cPope Leo and the Vatican are not against AI but rather how to pursue a responsible path that is best for humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The decision to partner with the Vatican was a strategic move by Anthropic, a company that\u2019s built its business on a carefully curated reputation of being a more trustworthy alternative than its competitors. Anthropic famously<\/a> spent the last few months embroiled in a battle with the Pentagon over limits to military AI use, and a connection with another powerful institution could help bolster its status \u2014 and let it help shape future Vatican recommendations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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One controversial aspect of the document, in many tech circles, was that it made no mention whatsoever of AGI or superintelligence; it allows that AI systems may \u201coften surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity\u201d but says they \u201clack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom.\u201d Dean W. Ball, a senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation, wrote<\/a> on X that the encyclical \u201cwould be much improved if it were less enamored of the traditional academia\/civil society talking points on AI \u2026 and more engaged with where AI is headed. But instead of doing that, the encyclical dodges in the deepest sense, denying that AI \u2018really thinks\u2019 or \u2018really learns.\u2019\u201d Kokotajlo also said he wished the letter took the possibility of AGI and superintelligence \u201cmore seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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But the document isn\u2019t meant to do everything, several people in tech and in the Catholic world told The Verge<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not about AI. It\u2019s about protecting the human person in the age of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThis is a major Catholic social teaching document,\u201d Sister Susan Francois, assistant congregation leader of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace, said. \u201cIt\u2019s not about AI. It\u2019s about protecting the human person in the age of AI.\u201d Brian Boyd, the US faith liaison for the Future of Life Institute and an instructor of Catholic social teaching at Notre Dame Seminary, called the document \u201cmore of a call to arms than a specific set of marching orders.\u201d The pope called throughout the encyclical to \u201cestablish adequate regulatory tools capable of upholding justice and curbing the distorting effects of technological power,\u201d but he stopped short of endorsing specific proposals.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Tech Oversight Project\u2019s Haworth said she views the encyclical as \u201csetting the compass for the moral direction of the world, or at least of the Western world \u2026 You don\u2019t have to be Catholic to see your own concerns and your own wishes and fears in this document.\u201d She said she expects her elected leaders to take on specific concerns over AGI and do their part to hold powerful tech companies accountable, rather than for the pope\u2019s document to be \u201call things for all people.\u201d She also called it a \u201cwarning shot for leaders, for politicians, because what this document talked about is the creation of a sub-class.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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For some, the encyclical\u2019s lack of attention to AGI wasn\u2019t a problem, since they took it as the pope focusing on the real-world impacts of AI on vulnerable communities as the technology exists today, rather than some of the potential risks ahead for humanity as a whole if and when labs hit the (largely unspecified<\/a>) AGI milestone.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Aaron Fulkerson, CEO of Opaque Systems, a startup that helps customers organize encrypted data, said the pope is \u201cactually looking at the system and highlighting something that a lot of us in tech would recognize as a systemic risk to humanity. And I\u2019m not even talking about AGI. I\u2019m talking about our global economy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Even before the current wave of AI, tech industry centralization could be dangerous. A problem<\/a> at cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike sidelined banks, hospitals, and airlines around the world, and an outage<\/a> at Amazon Web Services took down a large swath of the internet, from Reddit to Venmo. For Fulkerson, the risks to the global economy only grow as power is concentrated in the hands of a couple of AI labs.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe thing that I\u2019ve seen in the news has been this positioning around power dynamics of the pope versus tech bros, but I think everybody\u2019s missing the bigger story here, which is that he\u2019s looking at a system that is intrinsically risky,\u201d Fulkerson said. \u201cWe\u2019re sleepwalking into a world in which one or two labs are the cognitive infrastructure of every industry on earth \u2014 that means humanity is far less resilient, not more capable.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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In the encyclical, the pope compared AI to the Tower of Babel, a structure he describes as \u201csupported by a uniformity that eliminated diversity and that chose homogenization over communion.\u201d. The world must \u201cavoid the \u2018Babel syndrome,\u2019\u201d he wrote: \u201cthe idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language \u2014 even a digital one \u2014 can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.\u201d In his reckoning, AI became not just a new technology, but a Biblical struggle. \u201cThe risk of dehumanization,\u201d he wrote, \u201cis an ancient and ever-new temptation that today takes on a technical guise.\u201d The weight of those statements, not the technical specifics, is likely to be its lasting impact.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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