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The Pope Urges Vigilance About Who Controls AI (bloomberg.com) 53

An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week, sounding like a digital media consultant, Pope Leo XIV urged reporters to avoid "the degrading practice of so-called clickbait." He was addressing global news agencies at a gathering in Vatican City about the risks of a post-truth world, with a speech that also doubled as a severe societal warning about the dangers of AI.

"Artificial intelligence is changing the way we receive information and communicate, but who directs it and for what purposes?" the pontiff said, according to Reuters. "We must be vigilant in order to ensure that technology does not replace human beings."

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The Pope Urges Vigilance About Who Controls AI

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  • Don't worry (Score:4, Informative)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Monday October 13, 2025 @10:48AM (#65721452)

    As long as we can keep AI from getting into the hands of a multi-billionaire tribalist who owns car, robotics, brain chip, social media, and rocket companies we'll be fine.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      OK, give AI to the catholic church for the pope to write prompts, then. Enjoy your christofascism, authoritarian!

  • AI is capital (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Monday October 13, 2025 @10:52AM (#65721464)
    And it's going to be owned by a handful of billionaires and used for automation that replaces labor that otherwise gets paid for by those billionaires.

    It's post capitalism without the socialism. And it's going to suck for everyone except about 6000 out of 6 billion
    • by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Charlie Stross labels it craptialism.

    • Why would you want socialism? It has been tried in more than 100 countries by now, and every time it included concentration camps and related goodies (strictly speaking, there were close shaves like Grenada which had only disorganized killing -- but given that it lasted only 4 years in a nation with 100k people, two towns and a bunch of villages, I'll give it a pass). Also, every major brand of socialism: soviet, nazi, maoist -- includes a massive push for propaganda and social control. Are you going to

    • It's post capitalism without the socialism. And it's going to suck for everyone except about 6000 out of 6 billion

      So what? Nobody cares about the powerless, so those 6,000 people will be the only people who matter. If they are the only ones alive, the human race has succeeded as a whole. Don't you feel proud for helping the human race to succeed? No more man-made climate change. No more economic crises. No more social unrest. No more wars. (if you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that is for sale.)

  • AI will disrupt they way of thinking for a lot of religions in the long term. Especially when the next generation is brought up with AI schooling that makes them "worship" AI.
    • In this trading of one hallucination for another is at least one advantage, no one has begun a war over which AI is better.
      At least not yet.

    • The birth of the Mycogenians! :)

    • The billionaires are happy to use the existing power structures of religion and they're the ones that control AI because they control the capital backing AI.

      Peter thiel is going around taking about Christian end times even though he's gay.

      Like Dan McClellan says, the Bible is not uni vocal and you people give it meaning.
      • That's generally not how the Vatican works. They're a power unto themselves, and they are often the ones doing the controlling. Though not to the extent that they did in the past.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Peter Thiel is one spectacular failure as a thinker. No understanding of the greater scheme of things at all.

        He is also a spectacular failure at being a halfway decent human being.

      • Peter Thiel's take is pretty much denial and projection that he himself is creating the very thing that he thinks is christ. It's bizarre he's trying to start this movement even though most Christians think the exact opposite of what he does on the matter. Luddites won't be the antichrist, it's going to be christians who have long been trained to expect and reject the mark of, and worship of, the "beast".

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Has been a failure so far. AI has convinced some people they are "God" though.

    • I think it's more likely to subjugate the anti theists into a cult/religion first that they will claim is based on science and exists in reality, and major denominations of religions ln Christianity will increasingly become a radical resistance movement to reject it as the beast/antichrist

  • by hey! ( 33014 ) on Monday October 13, 2025 @11:14AM (#65721514) Homepage Journal

    If we're not Catholic ourselves, I mean.

    I'll tell you why: 2/3 of the Supreme Court justices are Catholic.

    • One of those Catholics is Sotomayor, one of the group of "progressive" justices. What exactly are you ham-handedly trying to imply?

      Best,

      • by hey! ( 33014 )

        I'm not implying anything. I'm saying the Pope's opinion is particularly significant to more than half the Supreme Court. They won't necessarily take those words as marching orders; I doubt that they would even agree that all the other Catholics on the court are good Catholics. But it means those words are automatically more weighty than if, say the Dalai Lama or the Lubavitcher Rebbe said them.

        • I don't recall seeing much concern about Joe Biden being a Catholic. But it's important here?

          • by hey! ( 33014 )

            I had no concern with Joe Biden being Catholic, but I *would* think something was fishy with the *Electoral College* if six of the last nine presidents were Catholic given that fewer than one in five Americans are Catholic.

            I'm not saying Catholics (or Jews) shouldn't serve on the Supreme Court, although maybe it would be good idea to have some justices who weren't Catholic or Jewish. Maybe an atheist, or polytheist.

            • Pew research believed that only 4% of Americans identify as atheists. So there should be approximately zero Supreme Court justices that are atheist if you want the representation to be proportional.

              The real problem with too many atheists on the Supreme Court is it can balloon our budget was the Bibles would keep bursting in flames. It's far cheaper and safer to limit the number of atheists that are in a position where they have to hold a Bible. ;-)

          • America got over the fears of having a Catholic in office when JFK was President. I mean someone still disliked him enough to kill him, but most of America was more focused on JFK's policies, on either side, than on his religion. (There was a handful of cranky protestants writing nasty editorials in their local papers, but they did that even before a Catholic was in office)

            But both for JFK and Biden it is known that they struggle with serving the people of a secular government and serving the Catholic churc

    • by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Monday October 13, 2025 @11:24AM (#65721530)
      For once we have a Pope who is aware of tech related concerns. Christian or not, "We must be vigilant in order to ensure that technology does not replace human beings" is pretty relevant.
      • For once we have a Pope who is aware of tech related concerns. Christian or not, "We must be vigilant in order to ensure that technology does not replace human beings" is pretty relevant.
        Correction, for once we have a Pope who shares your views on technology. I am pretty sure when previous Pope's were discussing Geocentric vs Heliocentric views of the universe or the evils of the crossbow or rifling of gun barrels, those were "tech related" concerns.
    • You shouldn't.

    • Why should we care what the Pope says?

      You shouldn't care, unless the Pope says something that is accurate and insightful. Disregarding what someone says should not be based on that person's station in life. Since you will only think in the context of this discussion, the last sentence is a truism regardless of which way you look at it: Disregarding what someone says should not be based on that person's station in life.

  • by GoTeam ( 5042081 )
    Thanks for the opinion pope. Now for an equally important opinion on tech, let's see what Homer Simpson thinks about AI...
  • Why is this even news ?

  • The answer to Drakes equation has been found. Stupid people + AI + "how do I" prompts.

    I think we need to partition the world, some physical firewalls.

  • by groobly ( 6155920 ) on Monday October 13, 2025 @01:23PM (#65721866)

    The guy who thinks he gets messages from some guy in the sky is going to offer advice on how to work in the real world?

  • A handful of mega-corporations under control of some megalomaniac tech bro. The thing will be hijacked by those who would turn it into a digital panopticon. Power concentrated in opaque algorithms, freedom reduced to an illusion. Already, the current IEs hide information or downright lie to promulgate their owners' prejudices. Once direct access to the WEB is disabled - it'll be game over.
    • The end game is technofeudalism.

      Star Trek warned all these guys that if left to our own devices, the common people would expect equality, security, free expression, and leisure in a post-scarcity age. We gave away our playbook to the enemy and they have spent the last 50 years trying to steer us away from a society that doesn't seem to have class of ultrawealthy that can pull the strings of government.

      The plan right now is that we're all users. Our data belongs to a handful of corporations, and we are bei

  • Stage 1: A few people crack the problem, monopolies ensue (Windows, ChatGPT) but we tolerate them thanks to the innovation.

    Stage 2: Concern grows as those monopolies act in their interest instead of ours.

    Stage 3: Open source players bring competing solutions to the market and break the monopolies.

    This is happening faster for AI than it did for operating systems.
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      This is happening faster for AI than it did for operating systems.

      No surprise. MicroShit had a lot of time to coerce, threaten, sweet-talk and bribe their crap into a dominant position. LLM-type AI did not and there is actual competition in that space.

      Although, at this time, Microsoft has basically started dying because they clearly cannot perform on the level needed anymore and seem to be getting worse. Unfortunately, giants die slowly. On that topic, there are some new suspicions that the 787 has some major design flaws...

  • A very progressive opinion for someone who usually would be expected to support conservative structures.
    Yes, you should be worried about too much centralization. And you should be worried about the large companies killing small competition. Did you follow how Anthropic every now and then publishes articles about how AI is dangerous? Yeah ... and they can gatekeep their AI behind their API, but the evil open ai models ... they can't be allowed as anyone could ask how to steal the moon and the model might ans

  • "... but who directs it and for what purposes?" As he's already aware, those decision have long ago been made. We'll keep asking these questions for the next few years until it truly is too late. That's the game plan. It keeps everyone from mobilizing until the only thing that remains is the illusion of choice.
  • "We must be vigilant in order to ensure that technology does not replace human beings." -> "Thou shalt not make a machine in the liness of man"
  • Clickbait thumbnail on the youtube start page: "The 10 things the Pope doesn't want you to know".

  • Old white men.

The first time, it's a KLUDGE! The second, a trick. Later, it's a well-established technique! -- Mike Broido, Intermetrics

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