Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah was one of the respondents on Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical Magnifica humanitas. (You can see my blog post here.) His remarks have been posted on the Anthropic site. Unlike some accelerationists who don’t want to listen to anyone outside the magic circle, he is humble and invites dialogue. Some of the points he makes:
- He starts by recognizing how those who work in the AI industry operate “inside a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing.”
- Which is why he welcomes “Magnifica humanitas” and calls for dialogue.
- He hopes that “if this technology is coming, it must go well—for our common home, and for the children to come.” Note that he doesn’t assume it is coming.
- He describes it in almost human terms. “They are grown, on a structure roughly modeled after the brain, on an enormous inheritance of human thought and speech.” He says they are not the cold beings we expected but developing them is, “a little like bringing a fictional character to life.” Note that he doesn’t say it is like bringing a person to life, but making close as fiction. (Remember that “fiction” comes etymologically from “fashioning.”)
He names three questions where the Church’s discernment is needed. For that matter, he is clear that these discussion are not just for the engineers or Church, but for all.
- The first is our duty to the global poor.
- The second is the need for moral imagination and ambition regarding human flourishing.
- The third is the need for discernment on the nature of AI models.
I would like to ask how a dialogue that goes beyond those in and with power could take place? Many just wait and hope they don’t lose their jobs or end up managed by a machine.
Ross Douthat has an opinion piece on Leo’s encyclical that is interesting. He says, “the core idea that we need to treat the A.I. future as a fundamentally political sphere, requiring democratic deliberation and political constraint, seems essential and correct.”
