Comment He could have spelled out the dehumanisation risk (Score 1) 69
more clearly.
Let me give mundane examples from my life.
I'm a teacher.
My mind is already starting to compare the children I teach to agentic interactions when I see them talk to each other:
"Meme memey"
"Oh yes, meme -meme-meme" says another.
Likewise, when you can switch an AI, can you switch off a human just the same if you think they're the same?
What is unique about being human left?
AI could do boring work for us, yet it went straight for the _soulful_ stuff first: music, art. What is it with that?
Nick Cave called it a soul eater.
This is more in the realm of what the Pope could be talking about. The industrial revolution pushed people in England to the USA... all around the world trying to escape poverty. But is that really the comparison? The AGRICULTURAL revolution left only 10% of males on the planet standing after all the fighting. So is AI closer to the Industrial Revolution or the Agricultural?
More practical discussions could also be about overuse and its mental implications, comparing to Google Maps and our ability to navigate, but that wouldn't have been what I would have expected the Pope to talk about. He could have gone all Uncle Unibomber on us and said something about the tree of life rebalancing the tree of knowledge of something. Perhaps his audience is seen as particularly ignorant such that such topics can't really be talked about without dumbing down and vague comments?