Vatican Engagement and Corporate Narratives

Hey Friday,lay Sters, weelcome to another edition of Shad and Friday. These are Slate plus exclusive conversations for when you want to laugh at the news instead of cry And there' so much going on in the world. so much that is not good. Stuff like Ebola spreading at a breakneck base in Congo, stuff like the Iran warar still happening. and kind of there's not a ceasefire and oil prices are rising. And maybe you have Graham Platner with another scan on his hands. we have so much, so much, but we are not talking about that here because this segment is about finding the joy. And over the past couple of weeks, I feel like I've f a little joy over the fact that the Pope has begun grappling with AI in his first Very long encyyclical And that's why Lizzie O'Leary is here because Lizzy You and the folks over at Wnext DBD know so much more about tech than I do. Truly, welcome. Hello. Hello. Hi. it's actually really nice to get to hang out with you. I did not think that we would be talking about the Pope, but you know, I just mean like in general, who knew that the pope would be on my beat But you know what? The guy is trying to be on everyone's beat. He's on it. He is trying to be on everyone's beat. They're like memes about Chicago Bob He just did like a video about like sport and the World Cup and how it can like bring us together and I'm like, you're really, you're just on all the things here. I mean, have you seen the pictures of him wearing old school Nikees? Y Vestimments? Yeah. Yeah. They gott to bring back the Pope Force one Okay, Okay, I'm going to make you talk about the encyclical. It came out a couple of weeks ago over the weekend, Memorial Day weekend And I think If you were just reading the push notifications about it. you'd be forgiven for just thinking Pope really took on AI here, right? Be this is a forty two thousand word document. So first of all You're probably not reading it. But second of all he was saying we need to get some control over AI, but part of what I thought was interesting is in our editorial meetings, you were basically like, it's a little more complicated than that. Can you explain first of all what he said in the encyclical? and then why you're like, it's more complicated than like black or white here I would call this like an improv comedy, yes and So yes, he is warning about AI. He's warning about what he calls a culture of power, right? sort of distillation of power in the hands of a few people, of a few companies. He talks about, you know, the potential powerower of Babel effect, like is this whole section in the encyclle, A, very, very long Um I am sorry to my Catholic grandmothers, I did not read the whole thing. I Uh where he talks about like, you know AI isn't human. It cannot replace humanity. I mean a lot of this, the through lines are really about humanity. Humanity is complicated, humanity it's Magnifica humumanitas. So this is really about in the face of the machine. He talks about AI, it does not have feelings, it does not have thoughts. Yeah, magnificical humuman tells. that's the name of the encyclical. Yes, that is the name of the Ecyclical. And he also released it on the one hundred thirty fifth anniversary of another encyclical by the last Bope Blio, that was all that the Industrial Revolution. It was about the Iustrial Revolution layers Yes There's no signaling here. But what does this signaling all mean in the end So what he is talking about is Honestly, a little bit of a realist approach. So when he talks about control over platforms and data and computing power He says it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development And so I think you have to kind of pull apart two different things here Number one, the Catholic Church thinking about the poor. and K of the idea of faith through R? Like devotional works, devotion to the poor But the other part of this is a much more realistic The Vatican has been thinking about AI for years. Really? Yes. They go back to twenty twenty. they had a conference about it And so there there is a pretty sophisticated understanding that there is a lot of money and power and even I would say philosophical heft, depending on the companies you're talking about. Um in the world of AI. and this is not the first time that the Vatican has reckoned with that. It's just the first time that we have seen this. like big broad statement and obviously everyone is paying attention to AI now, so it all kind of dovetails together Does the Vatican have like a good, bad vvealence to AI? Like is that how they're seeing this technology I don't know that I would say they're having a good bad valence to AI. I think it's I think there's like a recognition that development is happening But I think it's very notable. So we can talk about Chris Ola, who is a part of Ethropic. He's one of the founders. He's like the philosopher guy within the company. He was there He was there the He was there He was there with the pope. He gave a speech Yes, he gave a speech and you know, he also talks about the dangers too. Like this is one of the things that I think is really fascinating is that again, a lot of this is narrative how these companies position themselves and how they position themselves visa vis big actors like the Vatican or the White House and where they try to kind of shape public opinion for what is going to happen going forward, which is notably really big IPOs Itounds like you're saying the Vaticanus kind of been willingly co opted by someone like like anropic or like like, okay, so in my Instagram, I would say they're engaging with it Yeah They're Instagram feed, I get a ton of Cheryl Sandberg being like, hey girls, you got to get with AI. Like now's the time. If you don't do this, men are going to like take it over. AI poses real challenges for jobs, real challenges. But we know that the people who will do the best in the job market in the AI years to come are going to be the ones who And if we're encouraging more men than women to use that technology, we're already starting off and we can fix it by just encouraging women as well as men. Is that kind of like half of what the pope is doing here? I mean Gl bossing AI is the popeirl bossing AI? I think maybe a little bit. Yeah That's it for now. and if you want to hear the rest of this episode, the way to do it is to subscribe to Slate Plus Unlock sllate plus now by going to slate. com forward slash what next plus