alt Hacker NewsWho is this for? Is this to promote AI to the general Catholic public, or is it some kind of cultural signal to potential conservative institutional customers that Anthropic isn’t just a stereotypical bunch of godless California hippies?
Normally when I see these sorts of things it’s obvious what it is for and why, but this one confuses me.
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I hope you saw others' correction to the title here that indicate Olah is just a speaker at an event on the same day, not an author (although he almost certainly was consulted for his opinions while the Pope and his assistants were working on the Encyclical). So what matters here is what the Pope is trying to do, not Olah's intentions in his minor role.
The Pope has already spoken quite a bit about ai, and exhorted priests to keep ai out of their homilies, which should be a sacred fruit of prayer and study.
Just from what I have seen he said and my Catholic Theological background, I would say he will definitely be talking about at least a couple things: 1) the relationship between ai and our intellectual labor, and how to use it fruitfully to grow without losing ourselves in it (a very similar concern to many on hn as far as I understand); and more importantly for him and again for many 2) how to use ai in society in a way that everybody can enjoy the fruits of it, instead of just the elite few (similar to the priority of Rerum novarum). This Pope chose his name because of this theme, and has consistently demonstrated that social justice is amongst his highest priority concerns - to the point that he has asked the Church to stop focusing so heavily on sexual ethics because there are such weighty injustices in the world that require our focused effort and attention.
The encyclical is for the Pope to express the church's view on AI and its impact to society to other Catholics. My guess for why Christopher Olah is there is to signal that Anthropic is the ethical AI company.
> Who is this for?
For the shrinking Catholic church it's trying to regain relevance. For Anthropic it's PR.
It’s for me. It’s strange so I’m probably going to watch it. It helps that I generally like the modern Catholic church’s direction on things (besides abortion but I’m willing to overlook that).
It's part of the gradual agenda to label AI the antichrist.
My guess is that it (re)affirms that LLMs don't have souls and only people do.
If you've read any Vatican publications, the theme is being the authority on the ontology of reality.
EDIT: A decree for bioethics https://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/docu... I'd expect a similar deal for AI.