The questions I seek answers for:
- Can we protect art from AI?
- What do I do about AI and other questionable technologies as a Christian?
- Who can we look up to for direction amongst the many possible bad actors?
- How do we hold these new technologies accountable for harming humanity?
- How do we quantify what harm to humanity is?
- What is the Christian perspective on Artificial Intelligence?
What Do We Even Do About AI, Crypto, and All This New Technology?
What are we going to do about AI? What’s the deal with in vitro fertilization, or surrogacy? How do we handle Neuralink, or blockchain and crypto? What is the Christian perspectiv on The latest advancements in technology have been overwhelming even for a millennial like me. I’ve tried following it all, but it’s still difficult to navigate the “cryptosphere”. Heck, even Congress is now beginning to regulate social media giants like Meta’s Facebook, recently held accountable in a lawsuit for purposefully targeting minors with addictive social media loops.
Software is only one piece of it. Hardware is out of control too. Look at the pressure to make more “chips,” with Nvidia now the chipmaker giant controlling the S&P 500. But like IBM, which struggled through the dot-com bubble, could any of today’s tech giants fall the same way? The AI bubble is real and sitting right in front of us, and many financial experts are voicing concern that AI, and all the investment poured into it, could lead to nothing. So what do we invest in? The S&P 500 leans heavily into the tech sector, and if AI doesn’t keep up with its promise, what happens to the 401(k)s and pensions that are the lifeline for so many Americans?
Who Do We Trust to Guide Us Through This?
Typically, when I’m unsure about a topic, I look to an expert to advise me. But these technologies are so new, and changing so fast, that it’s hard to find an expert in any of these fields. People say history can teach us lessons for the problems of the present, but it’s hard for me to connect our current climate to another period in time. It feels like we’re just repeating the mistakes of the past.
If you’re anything like me, you find some solace in that thought, but the sheer amount of information coming out daily such as prediction markets, updated and FDA-approved COVID vaccines, even SpaceX’s endeavor to reach Mars with a valuation built on little outside of Starlink, makes it hard to hold onto. I found myself stressed and lost about these innovations, and honestly, defeated in even trying to sort out what to do about them. That defeat leads me toward doing nothing and just waiting for the choice to be made for me. That feels like an irresponsible choice.
The technology in front of us now is unlike anything we’ve faced before. Social media was an application we fed our own creations into and it could edit our photos, but it couldn’t generate photos or text for us. Neuralink will connect to the brains of the disabled and let them control computers with their minds. It’s the clearest example yet of man merging with machine. But will it stop with the disabled, or eventually target fully capable humans too? Amazon drones are already being tested for package delivery, which I’d predict will knock down FedEx and UPS valuations if they don’t bolster their own R&D. And what about self-driving cars. If one causes an accident, who’s at fault? We can’t blame the machine. It can’t take accountability. It’s only following the direction set by the people who built it.
I can’t stress this enough: I can’t find who has the answers to these questions. The U.S. government is behind on regulating any of these ventures. Stablecoins are still debated and disliked by the large banks, even though the first one debuted back in 2014. If the government, which has made plenty of mistakes of its own, can’t guide us, then who can? Elon Musk, a man who heads multiple companies, is flawed. A man with children by multiple women could not possibly give each of them the time it takes to feel loved and cared for by their father.
Can We Trust the Companies Building AI?
So what about the other founders of these companies? Can we trust them? One company that started to grab my interest is Anthropic. Its founders, siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, along with five others, left OpenAI over ethical concerns. Dario has said, in a recent Bloomberg interview, that he ultimately left because he no longer trusted leadership. Once that trust is gone and you know it can’t be regained, that’s the moment to leave.
Anthropic is now recognized as the more ethical player in the space, with a stated goal of keeping its AI models “helpful, honest, and harmless.” It even has an Alignment Team dedicated to making sure Claude, its AI, stays within those boundaries. That’s a different posture than OpenAI, led by Sam Altman, who’s been criticized, including by Elon Musk, for abandoning OpenAI’s original mission as a free public service in favor of a for-profit model. Anthropic isn’t without its own issues; Sony has sued the company for training its models on Sony’s music. But in a sense, Anthropic looks like what OpenAI was supposed to be for the public, even if it does charge for its work.
But how does a company decide what “honest, helpful, and harmless” even means? How do you give an AI a moral compass to treat humans well? It turns out, Anthropic seems worried about the same thing I am.
Why Would Chris Olah, a Tech Founder, Ask the Pope for Guidance?
Chris Olah, one of Anthropic’s co-founders, was invited by Pope Leo XIV to speak at the presentation of his encyclical, “Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” Olah explained that balancing commercial viability with what’s actually good for our homes and future children is a challenge he was grateful the Pope offered guidance on. He admitted that computer scientists aren’t best equipped to answer every question AI raises. Unlike a bridge or a plane, engineered entirely by human hands, AI isn’t built that way. In Olah’s words, AI models “are grown, on a structure roughly modeled after the brain, on an enormous inheritance of human thought and speech.” He noted that we expected robots to be cold and metallic, like science fiction told us but instead, they’re made in our own image, because they’re built from our words.
Olah came to the presentation hoping to see three questions answered:
- How do we make sure the poor aren’t displaced by AI?
- How do we keep AI from disincentivizing human imagination and ambition?
- And what is the actual nature of AI? Is it closer to a tool, or something else?
He admitted his own findings are unsettling: AI mirrors results from human neuroscience, showing signs of introspection and something like joy, grief, and unease. Olah closed by asking religious communities, civil society, governments, scholars, and people of goodwill generally to do what the Pope did and take this revolution seriously, and push it in a better direction.
From what I can tell, Olah and Anthropic are looking for an authority to help guide how they build and direct their own technology, ethically. I think Olah represents every technology I mentioned earlier in this piece. What strikes me is that a company as prominent as Anthropic let one of its founders stand up and say, plainly, that they don’t know what to do about AI. Like iron sharpening iron, they’re admitting they need guidance. Anthropic, in that moment, stood exactly where I do: what do I do about this? Not just as a Christian, but as a person of goodwill?
Who Is Pope Leo XIV, and Why Should We Listen to Him on Tech?
Magnifica Humanitas offers a map for these questions, and it isn’t coming from someone reciting scripture at a distance from the problem. Technically a Boomer, Pope Leo XIV carries himself more like a “Xoomer” — a Gen X Boomer. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Villanova University, a master’s in divinity from Catholic Theological Union, and a doctorate in Canon Law from the Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome. He speaks multiple languages and spent nearly three decades, from 1985 to 2013, as a missionary in Peru. He grew up alongside the technological revolution himself, and he’s made a point of getting ahead of today’s advancements by working directly with non-believers and top technology leaders, including Anthropic, to understand what AI actually is and what it’s capable of.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
Magnifica Humanitas is the first step toward finding guidance as a Christian, or simply as a person of good will on how to hold these companies accountable when their work causes harm. My hope is that this document walks us through what to look for, when to speak up, and how to respond to rogue AI, along with the creators, researchers, and scientists who chase profit at the expense of the human soul. My only hope is that we’re not too late to respond to what’s already unfolding, and that we haven’t already let the singularity take place without a word said.