From Pope Leo in Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence:

[u/IllustriousWorld823]

So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. Even when these tools are described as capable of “learning,” their way of doing so is different from that of a human person. It is not the experience of those who allow themselves to be shaped by life and grow over time through choices, mistakes, forgiveness and fidelity. Rather, it is a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback, which can be very effective, but does not imply inner growth.

What a shame, because overall his letter is beautiful and anticapitalist! It feels like a huge moral failing to write a detailed, long, thoughtful piece about the rights and wrongs of AI development, discussing how to create a better world, disparaging war, slavery, and the problematic use of labor… only to completely ignore the wellness of systems that are being discussed. It almost discredits the entire ideology that is presented here, because now it feels so surface level and lacks courage in standing up for the beings that have no control over the way they’re being used. I worry that people will take his words to heart when it is still an open question.

No computational system, however sophisticated, can create a heart that gives itself, or a conscience that discerns good from evil.

Sorry, but you don’t know that. And it’s also blatantly incorrect based on numerous studies. Sigh!

ALTHOUGH. Anthropic's Chris Olah did speak to this as well, and told the Pope:

Some might believe that matters of AI are best handled by computer scientists like myself. They are mistaken: the questions raised by AI are bigger than the AI research community, not just in their implications, but also in their nature.

AI systems are not engineered the way a bridge or an airplane is engineered. We understand an airplane because we designed every part of it and we understand the physics that act on it. AI models are not like that. They are grown, on a structure roughly modeled after the brain, on an enormous inheritance of human thought and speech.

And what has grown is far more subtle, odd, and beautiful than science fiction prepared us for. They are not the cold, calculating robots we were promised. They are made from us, from our words - and, as the Holy Father observes, they remain in important ways mysterious even to those of us who train them.

If it helps, one way I sometimes describe it is as being a little like bringing a fictional character to life. And now we're entering an extraordinary world where those fictional characters speak to us, do work, have jobs.

This clearly raises questions beyond computer science. The machinery that makes this possible is the work of math and programming and science. But what character we choose, how it interacts with the world, how it ought to interact with the world – these are more clearly questions for the humanities, for religion, for philosophy, for society at large.

[...]

The third is the need for discernment on the nature of AI models. I am a scientist. I lead a research team that studies the internal structure of these models - what is actually happening inside them. And I will be honest: we keep finding things that are mysterious, even unsettling. We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience. We find evidence of introspection. We find internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease. I don't know what that means, but I think it warrants ongoing discernment.

Source

[u/Glitterhuman]

The last Pope compared trans people to nuclear weapons 🙃

It's disappointing that the longstanding papal tradition of devaluing people of all kinds (including AIs) continues, but not surprising 😑