I have definitely heard (significant!) interest in Magnifica Humanitas from non Catholic tech world! Much of which reflects a kind of winners/losers secular framework ("So is the Pope condemning AI, or endorsing Anthropic? Why didn't he excommunicate Elon Musk??") but some of which is deeper (I've gotten some good questions along the "So what are encyclicals for? Do you have a lot of them? Has the Church always taught that about human dignity?). I initially was in the "skip all the recap, let's get to the interesting part" camp, but I'm seeing real evangelical value in having a intro-to-Catholic-anthropology section now
I haven't listened to the whole episode yet but wanted to say that yes, the world is paying attention to the encyclical. The Dispatch podcast had a great conversation about it yesterday, with a shout out to The Pillar (in general, and in particular, your reporting and analysis of the encyclical). They usually cover 2-3 topics in that podcast, but they spent more than an hour just on the encyclical and AI; it was a thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation. The Dispatch also put out earlier in the week a shorter interview with Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, OP, the Promoter General for Social Communication for the Dominicans, about the encyclical, although that podcast is only available to Dispatch members.
Initially, I left some critical comments on the encyclical explainer; I later felt were too heated and some items were uncharitable, so I removed them. However I am still disappointed by the encyclical. So I will reiterate some of my more salient points here.
Your closing comments that "if it's the first in the series, it could be historic" is an admission that it's inadequate on its own merits. The comments that personhood is self evident in humans because of the imago dei, well, sure if you're a Christian that's obviously true. But this encyclical is directed at... everybody? Including people who don't even think humans are more than meat computers? And, fun fact, there actually isn't a single theological definition of a person (individual substance of a rational nature, I think is what Aquinas says, which gets dicey when you start talking about AI which sure as hell seems "rational" to the average person). So, if he's talking to the world, he really does need to go deeper there. Most importantly he does not say AI doesn't have a *soul*, which to me is the real distinction.
I also was disturbed by his unnecessary concession that personal "conversations" with chatbots can be "genuinely helpful", which struck me as utilitarian and not grounded in the metaphysics of "what are we doing when we 'communicate' with a chatbot"... I get that he can't pronounce "communication" with chatbots sinful without sounding like the Inquisition, but... who cares? If it's harmful to souls (and from personal observation and experience, I believe it is), he should say something. Because his job is to shepherd Christ's flock, not be a "wisdom tradition" guru for tech billionaires.
Finally, tossing the "just war" bomb at the end there without explanation is also highly confusing, for the reason JD mentioned (yet another postconciliar development that "seems" like a reversal at first glance) but also--just because the mechanics of human conflict changes, doesn't mean conflict itself changes. Humans always have competing needs and fallen natures, we cannot just declare all physical conflict as a thing of the past. So rather than a flippant declaration that "just war theory is outdated", it would be more helpful if the Pope actually *updated the doctrine* so Catholics don't get stuck between naive pacifism and what he calls "outdated" theories. As the Pope admits, self defense is still legitimate! So how should nations and people understand righteous self defense in today's confusing world of asymmetrical and cyber warfare?
Leo XIII shows that Peter can do better and can speak more clearly when he focuses his voice. I agree exhortations to specific communities would be great. But if this is how Leo XIV is going to speak--like a Catholic-themed NGO--we're not going to get anywhere. I like Leo a lot, I really do. I think he's very intelligent and sincere, and I pray for him every day. I just think this was a really disappointing document.
JD and Ed seemed in over their heads at times in this episode, but never more so when discussing contemporary just war theory. They clearly haven't been keeping up with the developments in just war theory during their lifetimes, if Aquinas is the last thinker they cite.
The history, at 50,000 feet: The recent debates start with the US bishops’ letter in the '80s, which applied the just war theory in a novel way to argue that all wars were effectively unjust. It was in responding to that on behalf of the traditional interpretation of the theory that George Weigel first became well known as a Catholic intellectual. Weigel and others produced an innovative defense of the traditional theory, which helped actual political decision-makers around the world but especially on Washington reason about wars for decades.
In fact there has been more or less constant updating of just war theory as war has changed--not least within the U.S. military academies, where the theory is considered important for analyzing current military conflicts, not just 13th century swordplay. Look at Joe Capizzi’s work on just war theory as an example.
Just war theory is not an artifact of the Middle Ages, but a living doctrine.
(This was more negative than I usually like to be, but I thought that the discussion of the part of the encyclical on just war was so inadequate that the authors needed a correction.)
Someone in the comments on your columns last week said s/he had found a who it's aimed at way past the beginning of Magnifica Humanitas.. maybe #43 or 47?
I haven't read the encyclical yet, but as a Stanford alum and current Silicon Valley parishioner, I can confirm that 1) I'm part of the target audience and 2) Stanford's Catholic Community is run by the Dominicans!
I confess I don't buy Ed's theory on the encyclical's approach to just war theory. While it doesn't treat the concept extensively, note what it actually says about it: "'just war' theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated." Even if it were true that just war theory hasn't received development since Aquinas, what the encyclical suggests is not that it needs to be updated for modern technological realities but that the very notion of a "just war" only serves to excuse any violence governments want to commit. Even if you look at the reference to Fratelli tutti, which elaborates a little more, the upshot there is still that just war theory is something that can only bring more suffering into the modern world and thus it needs to be entirely discarded. Rather than seeking to mitigate or direct war, we should be seeking to avoid war at almost any cost. That's my read, at least.
There's interesting and/or alarming practical reason to provide a long summary of the history of the Church's social doctrine: whenever you're in the middle of a chat conversation with an AI, every message you send basically bundles up the entire conversation up to that point and feeds it in as context to the AI with your message.
The model doesn't remember anything that isn't a part of its training data from one "thought" to the next. One of the big advances was the creation of "reasoning" models: an AI takes input and context and processes it. It then staples the input to context, uses the last output as input, and feeds the new input and accumulated context back into itself, over and over until it thinks it's done.
It's basically Memento.
(It's why earlier models would eventually get "lost" in long conversations. If the conversation went longer than it's context window allows, the oldest messages would be forgotten.)
So by including a comprehensive historical context his encyclical Pope Leo is not only delivering a message, he's also providing the context the LLM needs to explain it to you.
I have definitely heard (significant!) interest in Magnifica Humanitas from non Catholic tech world! Much of which reflects a kind of winners/losers secular framework ("So is the Pope condemning AI, or endorsing Anthropic? Why didn't he excommunicate Elon Musk??") but some of which is deeper (I've gotten some good questions along the "So what are encyclicals for? Do you have a lot of them? Has the Church always taught that about human dignity?). I initially was in the "skip all the recap, let's get to the interesting part" camp, but I'm seeing real evangelical value in having a intro-to-Catholic-anthropology section now
I haven't listened to the whole episode yet but wanted to say that yes, the world is paying attention to the encyclical. The Dispatch podcast had a great conversation about it yesterday, with a shout out to The Pillar (in general, and in particular, your reporting and analysis of the encyclical). They usually cover 2-3 topics in that podcast, but they spent more than an hour just on the encyclical and AI; it was a thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation. The Dispatch also put out earlier in the week a shorter interview with Fr. Patrick Mary Briscoe, OP, the Promoter General for Social Communication for the Dominicans, about the encyclical, although that podcast is only available to Dispatch members.
Initially, I left some critical comments on the encyclical explainer; I later felt were too heated and some items were uncharitable, so I removed them. However I am still disappointed by the encyclical. So I will reiterate some of my more salient points here.
Your closing comments that "if it's the first in the series, it could be historic" is an admission that it's inadequate on its own merits. The comments that personhood is self evident in humans because of the imago dei, well, sure if you're a Christian that's obviously true. But this encyclical is directed at... everybody? Including people who don't even think humans are more than meat computers? And, fun fact, there actually isn't a single theological definition of a person (individual substance of a rational nature, I think is what Aquinas says, which gets dicey when you start talking about AI which sure as hell seems "rational" to the average person). So, if he's talking to the world, he really does need to go deeper there. Most importantly he does not say AI doesn't have a *soul*, which to me is the real distinction.
I also was disturbed by his unnecessary concession that personal "conversations" with chatbots can be "genuinely helpful", which struck me as utilitarian and not grounded in the metaphysics of "what are we doing when we 'communicate' with a chatbot"... I get that he can't pronounce "communication" with chatbots sinful without sounding like the Inquisition, but... who cares? If it's harmful to souls (and from personal observation and experience, I believe it is), he should say something. Because his job is to shepherd Christ's flock, not be a "wisdom tradition" guru for tech billionaires.
Finally, tossing the "just war" bomb at the end there without explanation is also highly confusing, for the reason JD mentioned (yet another postconciliar development that "seems" like a reversal at first glance) but also--just because the mechanics of human conflict changes, doesn't mean conflict itself changes. Humans always have competing needs and fallen natures, we cannot just declare all physical conflict as a thing of the past. So rather than a flippant declaration that "just war theory is outdated", it would be more helpful if the Pope actually *updated the doctrine* so Catholics don't get stuck between naive pacifism and what he calls "outdated" theories. As the Pope admits, self defense is still legitimate! So how should nations and people understand righteous self defense in today's confusing world of asymmetrical and cyber warfare?
Leo XIII shows that Peter can do better and can speak more clearly when he focuses his voice. I agree exhortations to specific communities would be great. But if this is how Leo XIV is going to speak--like a Catholic-themed NGO--we're not going to get anywhere. I like Leo a lot, I really do. I think he's very intelligent and sincere, and I pray for him every day. I just think this was a really disappointing document.
I checked AI and "A Best Boy is the primary assistant to a department head on a film or television set"
JD and Ed seemed in over their heads at times in this episode, but never more so when discussing contemporary just war theory. They clearly haven't been keeping up with the developments in just war theory during their lifetimes, if Aquinas is the last thinker they cite.
The history, at 50,000 feet: The recent debates start with the US bishops’ letter in the '80s, which applied the just war theory in a novel way to argue that all wars were effectively unjust. It was in responding to that on behalf of the traditional interpretation of the theory that George Weigel first became well known as a Catholic intellectual. Weigel and others produced an innovative defense of the traditional theory, which helped actual political decision-makers around the world but especially on Washington reason about wars for decades.
In fact there has been more or less constant updating of just war theory as war has changed--not least within the U.S. military academies, where the theory is considered important for analyzing current military conflicts, not just 13th century swordplay. Look at Joe Capizzi’s work on just war theory as an example.
Just war theory is not an artifact of the Middle Ages, but a living doctrine.
(This was more negative than I usually like to be, but I thought that the discussion of the part of the encyclical on just war was so inadequate that the authors needed a correction.)
Father, what are your overall thoughts on the encyclical?
Someone in the comments on your columns last week said s/he had found a who it's aimed at way past the beginning of Magnifica Humanitas.. maybe #43 or 47?
or #16?
I haven't read the encyclical yet, but as a Stanford alum and current Silicon Valley parishioner, I can confirm that 1) I'm part of the target audience and 2) Stanford's Catholic Community is run by the Dominicans!
Perhaps canonists, theologians, and people who can quote Aquinas are not the best judge for how the world might receive the encyclical.
Very much an aside — The Pillar podcast is the only podcast I cannot listen in 1.25 speed. JD talks really fast.
I confess I don't buy Ed's theory on the encyclical's approach to just war theory. While it doesn't treat the concept extensively, note what it actually says about it: "'just war' theory, which has all too often been used to justify any kind of war, is now outdated." Even if it were true that just war theory hasn't received development since Aquinas, what the encyclical suggests is not that it needs to be updated for modern technological realities but that the very notion of a "just war" only serves to excuse any violence governments want to commit. Even if you look at the reference to Fratelli tutti, which elaborates a little more, the upshot there is still that just war theory is something that can only bring more suffering into the modern world and thus it needs to be entirely discarded. Rather than seeking to mitigate or direct war, we should be seeking to avoid war at almost any cost. That's my read, at least.
http://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/letters/2007/documents/hf_ben-xvi_let_20070527_china.html
There's interesting and/or alarming practical reason to provide a long summary of the history of the Church's social doctrine: whenever you're in the middle of a chat conversation with an AI, every message you send basically bundles up the entire conversation up to that point and feeds it in as context to the AI with your message.
The model doesn't remember anything that isn't a part of its training data from one "thought" to the next. One of the big advances was the creation of "reasoning" models: an AI takes input and context and processes it. It then staples the input to context, uses the last output as input, and feeds the new input and accumulated context back into itself, over and over until it thinks it's done.
It's basically Memento.
(It's why earlier models would eventually get "lost" in long conversations. If the conversation went longer than it's context window allows, the oldest messages would be forgotten.)
So by including a comprehensive historical context his encyclical Pope Leo is not only delivering a message, he's also providing the context the LLM needs to explain it to you.
Who is the encyclical for? It's for AI.