Transcription
In the first keynote policy declaration of his papacy, Pope Leo has warned that artificial intelligence must be for the benefit of humanity, not geopolitical or corporate dominance. Will his views have any impact on big tech and governments? This is Inside Story. Hello again. I'm James Ba.
Technology and theology might once have seemed distinct disciplines, but not for Pope Leo. Artificial intelligence and its use in warfare pose dangers to humanity that must be regulated and controlled. According to the leader of the Roman Catholic Church, that he chose AI as the topic for his first encyclical, an official letter from the Pope, is perhaps a statement in itself. Usually, such a landmark policy documents are merely published, but this one was delivered in person to an audience in the Vatican. Algorithms controlled by powerful corporations threaten new means of dehumanization, he warned. AI needs to be disarmed, he said, and not become quote, an instrument of domination, exclusion, and death. So why has Pope Leo spoken out so strongly now? What impact will his views have on big tech and the biggest state drivers in AI, the US and China? We'll find out from our panel of guests in a moment. But first, this report from Ferdier Carr.
>> The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit come down. In his first encyclical or official letter, Pope Leo has focused on the Roman Catholic Church's approach to generative artificial intelligence. He's warned humanity must be safeguarded from the unethical use of the technology, its concentration of power in the hands of the wealthy, and its deployment in warfare.
>> Artificial intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination. exclusion and death. Like nuclear energy, it must be at the service of all and of the common good. Decisions about technology must never be separated from conscience and responsibility.
Pope Leo's warning puts him on another potential collision course with President Donald Trump. The two have engaged in public disputes about the USIsraeli military offensive against Iran. The US military has deployed AI tools to identify targets in that conflict, chiefly using Palunteer's Maven software.
>> It's not just one data feed, it's multiple. And instead of having eight or nine systems for those decision makers to look at every single day in order for them to make decisions, you then fuse it into a single visualization tool.
The company's CEO, Alex Karp, is a vocal Trump supporter and has multi-billion dollar contracts with the US government. Palanteer is also accused of complicity in the genocide in Gaza, where Israeli troops have deployed its software. Joining Pope Leo in his presentation was an unlikely ally, the co-founder of Anthropic, which developed the chatbot Claude. He's warned the task of regulating generative AI must not be left to big tech alone.
>> We need more of the world, religious communities, civil society, scholars, governments, and indeed all people of goodwill to do what his holiness has done here to take seriously to look closely and to push events in a better direction. We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing. We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.
Anthropic is locked in a legal battle with the Pentagon after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegsath declared the company a national security risk. That was after it refused to grant the Pentagon unrestricted access to its AI software for use in weapons and surveillance systems technology. Poplio has also warned that AI risks being used to increase human suffering. I hear very troubling accounts of algorithms that can block access to health care, employment, and security on the basis of data tainted by prejudice and injustice. And I've heard the silence of those who have no voice when decisions are made. The Pope has emphasized that AI is not inherently evil, but it must be used to serve all humanity and its morality must be universal, not determined by a powerful few.
>> Amen.
>> Thank you very much.
>> Freddy car Alazer for Inside Story.
>> So, two very different worlds come together on today's inside story. the world of the Vatican, where some things haven't changed for decades and decades, and the geek tech world of AI, where things are changing faster than many people can keep up with. But we've got the right guest to explain it all to you. From Rome, we're joined by Gerald O'Connell. He's the senior Vatican correspondent for America magazine, a publication focused on Catholic news and analysis. Aa Ibrahim is in New York City. She's a senior visiting fellow at the AI Now Institute. She led the release of blueprint for an AI bill of rights framework under the Biden administration in 2022. And in Dublin, Elaine Burke, a science and technology writer and host of the podcast for text sake. Thank you all three of you for joining us on Inside Story. Gerard, let me start with you and you're going to start by explaining some of this jargon to us. Um, Catholics will know this, the rest of us won't. What is an encyclical?
>> An encyclical is a letter sent by the pope to the Catholics of the world and and this one also to the wider world in which he lays out the thinking of the Catholic Church and his own thinking at this particular moment in history.
>> Just to interrupt you there. You say it's a letter. You say it's a letter? I scanned through it. It's it's it's it's 42,000 words. Um it's got five chapters. It's a pretty massive letter, is it not?
Yes, it it is. A letter is perhaps an understatement, but it's it's a statement of official authoritative statement of the pope to the Catholic world and to the wider world on a given subject. And this subject is on uh protecting the human person in the age of artificial intelligence. So it's it's not just on artificial intelligence. It's on the much broader question. How do you care for? How do you uh protect humanity in an age in which uh technology is taking us into fields that not even the practitioners know where it's leading? A you worked in the Biden administration, yes, a Catholic president, but where you are in New York City, is is this something that's making noise right now? Is the Pope going to cut through on this very big issue?
I mean it is my sincere hope that he does. I think the pope laid out what are the pressing questions as it relates to the pressing issue of our of our time raising the spectre of the distribution of power of resources of of capital, the dignity of man, the dignity of workers. And so it is truly my sincere hope that it does break through. I think the fact that this is the first thing that the pope decided to focus his attention on um really reflects the overall attention being paid to the issue around the world.
>> Elaine, one of the Pope's cardinals said it's not just about AI, this document. It's about what it means to be human in the age of AI. And is that not the problem with AI? It doesn't really have humanity and morality built into it.
I I mean it AI is a very very broad church of technologies, excuse the pun. Um, but you do have people's work imbued into it in many different ways. You have the people who are labeling data for the massive data sets that are used to underpin models for their training and then you have the actual creative work of people that was uh by their um admission stolen for uh use in these training models as well. So there already is a a lot of human exploitation I would say built into these systems. And while the the spirit of the Pope's encyclical has many things that I would agree with um he even speaks to the idea that to slow down um your adoption of AI is not to be anti-progress which is something that I speak about a lot because there is a lot of uh pressure for people to race ahead with adoption of these technologies. There are some aspects of this that feed into the marketing around AI as well. So you speak about it in the context of this encyclical. It's it's then seen as this very powerful tool almost too powerful that needs to be held into check. It uh is spoken about as something that can and will replace jobs and that kind of assumes a certain level of capability of the technologies as well. And yes, absolutely. The co-founder of Anthropic being alongside the pope during the announcement of the this text uh does position them as they have tried to market themselves as the moral AI company, as the ethical AI company, but they they too have partnerships with Palunteer. And while they have said they don't agree with AI being used in autonomous weapons right now, they absolutely haven't ruled that out as something that they would pursue in the future.
>> Okay. Okay. Well, we'll come back to the whole role of AI in warfare and what the Pope uh said about it a little later in the program. But Gerard, can I ask you about how this was launched and when it was launched? Because I'm told these encyclicals are normally presented by cardinals, but the Pope was there in person. That I suppose shows that he thinks this is a really big deal. But also, the date was deliberately chosen, the 15th of May. I'm told that's the 135th anniversary of another encyclical. Uh that was the one in 1891 that was all about the industrial revolution. This was all very deliberately timed and the way it was launched very deliberate, wasn't it?
Yes, this is a very important and it's also a necessary correct colle connection between the document of Leo, Pope Leo I 13th produced during the first industrial revolution. We're now in the fourth industrial revolution. Uh, and that focused on the question of labor and capital. What was happening to people at the time of the industrial revolution? What was happening to families? What was happening to workers? What was the relation between labor and capital? How were workers being treated? So, it was dealing with an issue that was fundamental importance 135 years ago. Uh, Pope Leo the 14th, he said, "I took my name because I I connect with that with Leo the 13th." He was dealing with the first industrial revolution. I'm basically dealing with the fourth industrial revolution. And this revolution in technology is touching every aspect of our lives. And the batic Vatican has been following this engaging with some of the high-tech people for at least 10 years if not more trying to understand its influencing communication world. It's influencing education. It's it's impacting on families. It's impacting on workers. Uh, who will have jobs? Who will lose jobs? What kind of new jobs will be created? What will be the situation? And then it's impacting of course on war. and the Vatican in recent years have been following exactly what happened in Gaza, what happened in in in Lebanon, what happened in Iran and what's happening in in uh Ukraine. And so it it has seen here we're having in instruments being developed which are touching everyone from the young child who's got a smartphone and who's being influenced by what comes in on the smartphone to the person on the front line facing the the enemy in his or her estimation and then we have it in the whole field of medicine. So where is all this new developing technology which is undoubtedly bringing enormous uh benefits to humanity but also enormous threats. Now the pope said uh AI is not neutral because it is a a tool that has been designed by some people with certain understanding certain visions certain aspirations and he's saying well what is under and then it's also controlled by a very small pe few people. The pope said in the past in c in the past it was states who really governed more or less the development of technology. Today it is private individuals private groups multi multinationals in some ways investors uh and who who's controlling them? We have more power today than we've ever had in the history of humanity. And who's controlling it? And what is the vision of these people? Where do they want to take it? And is
>> if you don't mind, let let me let me bring in air again if I can. And that just that comparison to 1891, the history of this the industrial revolution, a time when machines were replacing human labor. We have this new encyclical at a time when um machines may be replacing human thought compared to the industrial revolution. Is this perhaps an even bigger moment?
>> I think it really depends on what we do in this moment. I have to agree with uh I think it was Elena that said this earlier. None of this is fate a complaint. None of this is a self-fulfilling prophecy. We can decide the trajectory of this technology. we can decide how it affects and interacts with people and with our societies and our economies because the question of technology policy is often about everything but the technology itself. And so this is surfacing questions of how we value people, how we value their contribution to society, how we value work and creative product and intellectual property. Technology often functions as a forcing mechanism and so it is compelling us to confront issues for which we've been kicking the can down the road on for some time right the separation of wages from productivity people are doing more and being paid less for it uh but on the question of the industrial revolution and the comparison there I mean again it really goes back to the decisions that policy makers and and leaders like Polio and others push us to make and the ways in which we're framing the debate and how we are prioritizing the what will inevitably be disperate impacts and with the industrial revolution in the coming decades you then had a bit of a I backlash which compelled a series of reforms at least here in the United States. you had the progressive era and the establishment of the work week and the weekend and child uh labor protections and the 8-hour workday and so on. And so I think that this is also an opportunity for us to get at pretty significant structural uh deficiencies and problems which we've avoided for some time.
Let me pick up again if I can pick up that point with Elaine. So it worked at the time of the industrial revolution over decades systems came into shape. Isn't the problem this time around that things are just moving far too fast?
>> Uh I suppose everything does feel faster when it comes to technology because the barriers to create and spread things are are less physical really. We've kind of overcome that in many ways through software and the internet. But we did have resistance to that original industrial revolution and the the ludites have been painted quite unfairly in a historical context as being anti-technology but really they were workers who wanted to see a just transition and wanted to make sure that they would continue to have rights and a good quality of life uh as this uh transition was put upon them in terms of moving to factory work out of college industries literal college industries. And I see this a lot. I encounter people all the time who are at work today and feel that AI is being forced upon them in their workplace and they don't feel right about that. For some people it's a cause of anxiety. They feel like they are being put into a position where they are being told and ordered to train a system to monitor their workflow to understand it so that it can automate it away from them essentially. And while it's sold in many ways under the promise of things that would sound beneficial to workers like more time to think, more time for creative uh projects, more time for leisure, even we've been talking about a 4-day work week for a very long time now. But that's not necessarily what's transpiring. And even some studies point to workers feeling that they have to take on more work because the tools that there are available to them give them the sense that they should be able to do more. That even if you're not a writer, you should be able to write because you have a text generation machine at your hands. If you're not a creative, you should be able to create graphics and posters uh just because you have an image generation tool at your hands. And that is actually making things quite complicated, quite exhausting for workers and leading to quite a lot of stress and burnout.
>> Gerard, I mean the focus is on AI, but as you mentioned earlier on, uh we had AI used in the Gaza war. The US has been at war in Iran. AI has been used and the pope says some quite important things about the rules of war in this encyclical. Um, there has been something called just war theory uh that in the past the Catholic Church uh said that in certain cases it was morally acceptable to go to war. But let me just read you what the pope says in this. The just war theory which has been all too often used to justify any kind of war is now outdated. That's pretty significant isn't it?
>> Yes. In the past, uh, war is always been seen in the Catholic, uh, way of thinking, the Christian way of thinking as a last resort. Uh, the Pope said recently, uh, there's aess for war. Uh, that the the just war theory laid down that you had to have it had to be a last resort. You had to it had to be carried out proportionately to correct the wrong done. and so on. There were me many criterias but today we are in a situation where people put aside diplomacy, put aside uh patience, put aside uh the question of proportionality and the one with the heaviest weapons can decide to move in immediately when the other group, the other country, the other side does not agree. and and and Pope Leo is saying that we're in a new world. We're not in the world of the early 20th century when you had the first world war and then the second world war or even the Vietnam war. We're in new world today. uh and uh he he is pointing to the fact that the decisions are they being taken by human beings when you get a whole lot of people suddenly being targeted exactly where they are. You're using artificial intelligence to identify this and then much of the weaponry that's being used. It is the human factor is being reduced reduced you reduced and so just the top leader can say well go ahead and do this.
>> Okay. Yeah, I mean if I can ask you about the fact this came from the Vatican because you could argue this is the most consequential and certainly the most lengthy document that's come out in recent years on AI much more substantial for example than anything that's come out from the United Nations. Now I suppose that's because the secretary general of the United Nations who happens actually to be a devout Catholic but doesn't talk about it very often doesn't decide things there. You have to have things by consensus by 193 uh nations. um how do you get something to regulate AI that everyone signs on to and isn't that a problem with the speed that things are moving that Elaine just spoke about?
>> Yes. So it's certainly a a challenge and the fact that we have not seen really any major robust frameworks uh at least legal or even multilateral is a testament to that and going back to those who are are leading this industry. So much of the conversation they have pivoted towards the question of geopolitical competition and they've become very uh fluent in that language and that in and of itself has posed a barrier to any movement on constraints or regulation or oversight. you mentioned the perpetual conflict and warfare that Pop Leo um raises in in the letter and I'd just like to point out that there is a major profit incentive underlying a lot of the development the partnerships with the Pentagon and with other governments around the world its deployment in conflict zones and and in war. So there is an incentive to slow down um any kind of regulation at least here in the United States. These major AI firms and labs have set up uh massive super PACs. So these accounts that will allow them to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in our coming midterm elections to influence the direction of any uh regulation. And globally, and the pope alludes this as well, there's just been a crisis of multilateralism across the board. And so the the venues and forums for which countries can come together and um negotiate what would be oversight for this uh are increasingly limited.
>> Elaine, the EU has uh regulation on AI, the world's most uh comprehensive. The problem is that the EU is not really the big leader in this. The big leaders are China and particularly the US. Um, do you think any one in the AI industry, the big players with the exception perhaps of anthropic which went to the Vatican is going to listen to the Pope?
>> Um, I'm not sure they'll be incentivized to do so. What does incentivize them is finance and bottom lines and things like that. And as ya pointed out, war is a very profitable business to be getting involved in. Um, and Antropic, who was alongside the pro Pope, have not ruled themselves out of taking part in that business themselves. Um, but it's fair to say that the EU isn't leading on the that financial side of AI in terms of the investment in it. It's and China definitely leads in terms of the scientific output on AI, but it could be seen as a leader when it comes to regulation. I think there's um a bit of trepidation at the moment that they are pulling back from that position of strength that they used to be in in terms of regulating on technology and the Brussels effect that they were once louded for appears to be something that they don't want to tout any longer when they talk about things like simplification and a regulation. But we do have uh coming into place and coming into force the EU AI act which has taken this riskbased approach to regulation. So it is trying to I suppose center the human impact in terms of how it's regulating. So if something is considered high risk it's highly risky to individuals to EU citizens. And these are things that could cause real and direct harm like some of the extremes we were talking about. But it's also things like making a decision on who gets insurance making a decision on who gets hired for a job. These are also considered high-risk areas here.
Gerard, if I could could bring you bring you in at the end. Um, the the Pope has issued this very lengthy document. Do you think he's finished with this subject? He's pronounced or do you think this is something that he's going to keep on about and perhaps use different methods of communication that are more accept uh more accessible to people around the world than a very very long letter.
The idea of this document is it's a wakeup call to people to those in business to those in government uh to say where is the world going? What is it doing to people? What's going to happen to humanity if we go along with control over so such important instruments by only a few people with enormous investment in the arms industry in the weaponry because a lot of the the uh technology is being channeled into forces of destruction. destructions of countries of people uh without human we see bombs being dropped targeted to kill one person and they eliminate a hundred.
Gerard Okonnell a Ibrahim and Elaine Burke thank you. If you joined us late or missed any of our program you can always see it again on our website aljazer.com. We'd love to hear from you. Go to our Facebook page that's facebook.com/ajjinsidstory. Alternatively, look for us on X. Our username There is AJ inside story. From me James Bay and the team here. That's it for now. Please stay tuned though. Al Jazzer's coverage continues with all the latest coming up in just a moment.