A warning regarding artificial intelligence has been issued by Pope Leo, who also called for regulation while quoting Gandalf from The Lord of the Rings in the process.
Within a manifesto concerning the future safety of mankind titled Magnifica Humanitas (Magnificent Humanity), the pontiff urged governments to decelerate the development of generative AI technologies and create regulations to prevent misinformation. He also condemned the use of AI in warfare, arguing that reducing human control of weaponry makes it harder to consider a war just. Leo warned against launching an AI arms race. The pontiff, who has described AI as the biggest challenge facing humanity today, stated in the document that it was not permissible to entrust irreversible, lethal decisions to AI systems.
The Magnifica Humanitas document features a section titled We can all do our part where Pope Leo channels Gandalf to emphasise his point.
This section includes a quote from the twentieth-century Catholic author J.R.R. Tolkien, where a protagonist in one of his novels describes our responsibility in this way:
“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.”
That quote originates from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, where the famous wizard addresses a gathering of the lords of the allies at the gates of Minas Tirith. At this point, Denethor and Théoden are dead and Faramir is recovering from his wounds in the Houses of Healing. Among those listening is Aragorn. Here is the quote in full:
“Other evils there are that may come; for Sauron is himself but a servant or emissary. Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.”
The question remains whether the tech leaders of the world, who are so obsessed with AI that it has come to dominate western economics, will listen to Pope Leo. Among the attendees at a Vatican event presenting the text on Monday was Chris Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic, which produces the Claude AI tools. We know at least one of the major players listened to what the Pope had to say.
“We cannot be satisfied with merely calling for the moralization of machines, the so-called alignment of AI with human values, without also having the courage to insist on a further condition: the possibility of openly discussing the ethical frameworks involved and subjecting them to shared standards of social justice,” Leo continues in the text.
“Otherwise, those who control AI will impose their own moral vision, which will become the invisible infrastructure of these systems. A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few. What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating, and of protecting the opportunities for communities still to be able to participate and ask questions.”
During this month, Peter Jackson, the legendary director of The Lord of the Rings movies as well as the Hobbit trilogy of films, dismissed concern about the impact of AI on filmmaking. He said:
“I don’t dislike it at all. I mean, to me, it’s just a special effect.”
His work on The Lord of the Rings continues with a film due next year, The Hunt for Gollum.
Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP.
