No one was shocked that Pope Leo XIV cited well-known saints and former pontiffs in his first encyclical, or papal letter of religious steering, “Magnifica humanitas,” launched Monday.
However the title that instantly jumped out to many readers is one synonymous with excessive fantasy literature: J.R.R. Tolkien, the Catholic writer of The Lord of the Rings.
Leo’s letter is worried with “safeguarding the human particular person within the time of synthetic intelligence,” a serious theme of his first 12 months as chief of the Catholic Church. Drawing from his predecessor, Pope Francis, he warns of “the rising dominance of a technocratic paradigm,” one able to “lowering creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system pushed towards ever higher effectivity.” He once more compares the rise of AI to the Industrial Revolution that spanned from the mid-18th century to the start of the twentieth, alluding to the teachings of his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who in his personal 1891 encyclical asserted the significance of employees’ rights and dignity throughout a time of technological upheaval and burgeoning capitalist empire.
The prolonged textual content additional solidifies Leo’s stance as an AI skeptic. However the Tolkien nod is especially salient given some backward interpretations of Center-earth mythology by right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, which have lengthy been ridiculed by different Lord of the Rings followers. One would possibly even suppose Leo is trolling. (The Vatican didn’t instantly return a request for remark.)
Clearly, the pope is considerably involved concerning the motives of tech oligarchs racing to develop synthetic normal intelligence that surpasses human capabilities. Do they actually dream of utilizing this software to treatment ailments and resolve local weather change, or are they constructing engines of limitless revenue and cultural dominance? It’s when he addresses our private duty in difficult such darkish forces that Leo borrows an perception from Tolkien’s well-known wizard, Gandalf: “It’s not our half to grasp all of the tides of the world, however to do what’s in us for the succour of these years whereby we’re set, uprooting the evil within the fields that we all know, in order that those that dwell after might have clear earth to until.”
That lesson is miles away from what Musk and Thiel apparently see in Tolkien’s masterpiece.
Thiel named his knowledge analytics agency Palantir, after the crystal ball used as a spying gadget by the traitorous wizard Saruman within the saga; he reportedly calls his enterprise capital agency, the Founders Fund, “the valuable,” which is what the twisted and covetous character Gollum calls the One Ring, a magical technique of totalitarian energy. Nearly anybody who encounters Tolkien (or variations of his work) can see that he was writing concerning the corrupting impact of such energy—within the novels, the temptation to rule inevitably undoes anybody who succumbs to it—but Thiel appears to enjoy the identical potentialities of authoritarian management and omniscience because the villains.
Musk, for his half, has instructed that Tolkien’s epic might be learn as an anti-immigration, build-the-wall parable: “When Tolkien wrote concerning the hobbits, he was referring to the gentlefolk of the English shires, who don’t understand the horrors that happen distant,” he posted on X in October. “They had been capable of dwell their lives in peace and tranquility, however solely as a result of they had been protected by the laborious males of Gondor.” He provided this merely inaccurate recollection of Lord of the Rings as a protection of Islamophpbic far-right UK agitator Tommy Robinson.
