No one was stunned that Pope Leo XIV cited well-known saints and former pontiffs in his first encyclical, or papal letter of religious steering, “Magnifica humanitas,” launched Monday.
However the identify that instantly jumped out to many readers is one synonymous with excessive fantasy literature: J.R.R. Tolkien, the Catholic creator of The Lord of the Rings.
Leo’s letter is anxious with “safeguarding the human individual in the time of synthetic intelligence,” a significant theme of his first 12 months as chief of the Catholic Church. Drawing from his predecessor, Pope Francis, he warns of “the rising dominance of a technocratic paradigm,” one able to “lowering creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system pushed towards ever larger effectivity.” He once more compares the rise of AI to the Industrial Revolution that spanned from the mid-18th century to the starting of the twentieth, alluding to the teachings of his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who in his personal 1891 encyclical asserted the significance of staff’ rights and dignity throughout a time of technological upheaval and burgeoning capitalist empire.
The prolonged textual content additional solidifies Leo’s stance as an AI skeptic. However the Tolkien nod is especially salient given some backward interpretations of Center-earth mythology by right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, which have lengthy been ridiculed by different Lord of the Rings followers. One would possibly even suppose Leo is trolling. (The Vatican didn’t instantly return a request for remark.)
Clearly, the pope is considerably involved about the motives of tech oligarchs racing to develop synthetic common intelligence that surpasses human capabilities. Do they actually dream of utilizing this device to remedy illnesses and clear up local weather change, or are they constructing engines of limitless revenue and cultural dominance? It’s when he addresses our private duty in difficult such darkish forces that Leo borrows an perception from Tolkien’s well-known wizard, Gandalf: “It’s not our half to grasp all the tides of the world, however to do what’s in us for the succour of these years whereby we’re set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we all know, in order that those that dwell after could have clear earth to until.”
That lesson is miles away from what Musk and Thiel apparently see in Tolkien’s masterpiece.
Thiel named his knowledge analytics agency Palantir, after the crystal ball used as a spying machine by the traitorous wizard Saruman in the saga; he reportedly calls his enterprise capital agency, the Founders Fund, “the valuable,” which is what the twisted and covetous character Gollum calls the One Ring, a magical technique of totalitarian energy. Nearly anybody who encounters Tolkien (or diversifications of his work) can see that he was writing about the corrupting impact of such energy—in the novels, the temptation to rule inevitably undoes anybody who succumbs to it—but Thiel appears to experience the identical prospects of authoritarian management and omniscience as the villains.
Musk, for his half, has advised that Tolkien’s epic could be learn as an anti-immigration, build-the-wall parable: “When Tolkien wrote about the hobbits, he was referring to the gentlefolk of the English shires, who don’t notice the horrors that happen distant,” he posted on X in October. “They had been in a position to dwell their lives in peace and tranquility, however solely as a result of they had been protected by the arduous males of Gondor.” He supplied this merely inaccurate recollection of Lord of the Rings as a protection of Islamophpbic far-right UK agitator Tommy Robinson.
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