The newly appointed, Chicago-born Pope Leo XIV recently singled out growing inequality as a significant issue in the world. He specifically called out the gargantuan pay package Tesla is offering Elon Musk, which would turn him into the world’s first trillionaire.
Now, the US-born Pope is using his lofty soapbox to draw a new line in the sand by declaring that there will be no AI Pope on his watch. Sounds like complete nonsense, but that’s just what the news sounds like nowadays.
In a recent interview with his biographer, Eloise Allen, the Pope recalled someone asking for his blessing to create an AI version of himself that people could chat with online. He basically responded with as close to a “hell no” as the Pope can.
“If there’s anybody who should not be represented by an avatar, I would say the Pope is high on the list,” he told Allen in an interview with the Catholic news outlet Crux.
Pope Leo Kind of Hates the Idea of an AI Pope
Pope Leo seems to have a firm grasp on the concept of worker exploitation. He named himself after Pope Leo XIII, who authored a manifesto railing against worker exploitation called Rerum Novarum way back in 1891.
So far, our current Pope Leo appears to view the AI boom for what it truly is: another Industrial Revolution that will harm people more than it will benefit them.
“If we automate the whole world and only a few people have the means with which to more than just survive, but to live well, have meaningful lives, there’s a big problem, a huge problem coming down the line,” said Pope Leo.
If I’m parsing his words correctly, it seems to me that in the Pope’s eyes, Big Tech isn’t disrupting industries so much as it’s disrupting humanity and our connection to one another.
He warns of a future where the super-rich own the algorithms. At the same time, the rest of us are turned into pawns to be shifted around at their leisure, or completely wiped off the board if our lives are ultimately inconvenient hindrances to their bottom lines and quarterly reports.
All we’d be left with is the illusion of connection, but we’d be yelling into a void; the internet reduced to one giant echo-y dead mall by the very same companies who profit from replacing us.
Ultimately, all the Pope is demanding is that tech evolve alongside humanity, not at its expense. It shouldn’t be an antagonistic relationship, and yet that’s the only type of relationship Silicon Valley seems interested in establishing with us.
None of that sounds revolutionary, and yet, unfortunately, some people are only programmed to hear it that way.
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