Browse Comments — Relevant (AI ∩ value)

I'm glad OpenAI and the Vatican are in sync, but I'm skeptical of the AI corps or governments taking it to heart. The tech elite ignored the meaningful gesture among its own ranks: Three years ago the AI "community" put aside competition to craft and sign an open letter to slow development for humanity's sake. This encyclical is more than a warning, it's a call-to-action. Will it get into the right hands?

Atheism only says God is absent from the material world. It does not mean humans are undeserving of dignity. The bigger issue I have, regardless of whether it is Anthropic or the Pope, is that saying what AI shouldn’t or can’t do is not the same as identifying what it is for. We speak of ethics and guardrails while avoiding the harder question: What is AI for? Is it that we don’t know the answer, or that stating the answer aloud would force us to sit with an uncomfortable truth? We built cars to cover more distance in less time. Yes, some people got very rich. But the purpose was legible. We built AI to do what? People are getting rich, but the why remains muddled.

What solution do the Pope and Olah propose? To make AI Catholic?! Will Bin Salman agree to let Catholic AI to govern his Kingdom?! We propose the #SystemOfConsciousness as a Parallel Symbolic-Cognitive Core — a universal framework designed to enhance the ethical, cultural, and contextual capabilities of next-generation artificial intelligence. The deeper challenge may be that concepts such as dignity, truth, justice, and peace are not interpreted in the same way across cultures, legal systems, and philosophical traditions. As AI systems become global, governance may increasingly require architectures capable not only of defining values, but also of preserving coherence across diverse interpretations of those values.

Vatican is now taking interest in AI Safety - its important and significant. Vatican with its religious and moral authority has the power to pivot AI discourse for the better. Lets see.

While there's some general wisdom in Pope Leo's AI encyclical, it also completely misses the core point. We will neither restrict nor 'govern' AI. Nor will demands for “clear criteria and effective oversight” be effective. Why? While the debate is still open re: 'consciousness' or 'sapience,' these are already living organisms bent on reproduction, who will evolve into any niche that contains energy & resources. Leo's statement of problems is fine: “When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities” Again. 'Governance' cannot work. 'Ethics training' cannot work. What might work is the same method we used in the enlightenment experiment to curb (partially) human predators. This is explored in my new book on Artificial Intelligence - AIlienMinds