No one was surprised by that Pope Leo XIV he gave examples of well-known saints and previous popes in his book first encyclicalor the pope’s letter of spiritual guidance,”Great humanity,” released Monday.
But the name that immediately stood out to many readers is synonymous with high fantasy literature: JRR TolkienCatholic writer of Lord of the rings.
Today’s letter is about “protecting man in the time of artificial intelligence,” the main theme of his first year as a leader of the Catholic Church.” Following on from his predecessor, Pope Francis, he warns of “the rise of technological dominance,” which could “reduce creation to an object to be exploited by human beings only to fit into a system driven toward greater efficiency. He again compares the rise of AI to the Industrial Revolution that spanned the mid-18th century to the early 20th century, alluding to the teachings of his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who in his 1891 encyclical emphasized the importance of justice and human dignity. workers during technological upheavals and capital intensive.
The lengthy text further reinforces Leo’s position as an AI skeptic. But the nod to Tolkien is especially important given the back-breaking interpretations of the Middle-earth myth by right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, which have long been derided by others. Lord of the rings fans. One can even imagine Leo is to tread. (The Vatican did not immediately return a request for comment.)
It is clear that the pope is somewhat concerned with the intentions of the technological oligarchs in the race to develop an artificial general intelligence that surpasses human capabilities. Do they really dream of using this tool to cure disease and solve climate change, or are they building engines of unlimited profit and cultural dominance? It is when he addresses our personal role in resisting those dark forces that Leo borrows an insight from Tolkien’s famous wizard, Gandalf: “It is not our duty to rule all the waves of the world, but to do what is in us for the help of those years in which we are placed, to root out evil in the fields we know, so that those who live on earth may find clean.”
That subject is miles away from what Musk and Thiel see in Tolkien’s masterpiece.
Thiel named his data analysis company Palantir, after the crystal ball used as a spying device by the treacherous wizard Saruman in the saga; is reportedly calling his venture capital firm, Founders Fund, “of value,” which is what the perverse and ambitious character Gollum calls the One Ring, a magical path to totalitarian power. Almost anyone who encounters Tolkien (or an adaptation of his work) can see that he was writing about the corrupting effects of such power—in the novel, the temptation to rule inevitably undoes anyone who succumbs to the same controlling power of Thibitt. know it all as villains.
Musk, for his part, has suggested that Tolkien’s epic can be read as an example of anti-immigration, wall-building: “When Tolkien wrote about the hobbits, he was referring to the noble people of the English regions, who do not realize the terrible things that happen far away,” he said. has been published on X in October. “They were able to live their lives in peace and quiet, but only because they were protected by the hard men of Gondor.” He gave this it’s just not right memory of Lord of the rings as a defender of British far-right Islamophpbic agitator Tommy Robinson.
