I have found that, for many of the statements about what AI should do, I would actally be happier if the letters "AI" were replaced with "companies"
parineum 2 hours ago [-]
That's because it's a meaningless, populist trope. There is zero helpful information, solution or context which depends on the specific issue at hand.
netcan 2 hours ago [-]
...you could also swap out with "rich people" or "all people," "governments."
In fact, reading these sentences with ad-lib on the subject tends to give these sentences interestingly different connotations.
dist-epoch 43 minutes ago [-]
Well, as Nick Land said, "Capitalism and Artificial Intelligence are the same thing"
floriankarsten 35 minutes ago [-]
And he meant it as a good thing. Something to be embraced.
adolph 2 hours ago [-]
If one considers a firm to be a non-human entity that exhibits cognition, then yes. Various religions also exhibit those characteristics, which would fortify the Roman pope’s position with irony.
See Joscha Bach’s claim about religions not publishing their A|B testing at 51:47:
And while your comment has validity, in the US the phrase uttered by Presidential candidate Mitt Romney adds a layer of complexity:
“Corporations are people, my friend.”
1 hours ago [-]
bluefirebrand 2 hours ago [-]
Same thing though. AI is largely a service provided by companies
Yes yes I know, open source models exist, yadda yadda
I think it's safe to say the overwhelming amount of AI usage in the world today is gates by corporations though. The vast majority of people will barely configure their own OS nevermind managing their own locally hosted open source AI instance
Lerc 2 hours ago [-]
Not at all the same thing. AI is a subset of what companies can do, and many if the issues people have with AI are not intrinsic to AI but rather their use in the hands of companies utilizing then for their own benefit.
fsflover 1 hours ago [-]
Open source models don't exist. Open-weight ones do, which are more equivalent to freeware than free software.
bluefirebrand 1 hours ago [-]
Fair enough, thank you for the correction
stavros 2 hours ago [-]
I don't think anyone actually has an issue with AI. I think people are finally fed up with late-stage capitalism and lashing out.
daheza 2 hours ago [-]
I think if there were any solution to the lack of jobs due to AI implementation then people would be fine. There isn’t any solution from either party in the US so people are naturally attacking the thing that is causing the problem.
Swizec 1 hours ago [-]
It’s really hard to get people excited about not having jobs when you design a whole society around the idea of having a job and make life exceedingly miserable for anyone who doesn’t
You can’t push both “If you dont work, you dont eat” and “Nobody needs to work anymore” propaganda at the same time. Gotta choose
stavros 1 hours ago [-]
The solution to the lack of jobs should be a strong social safety net, but Americans don't want this because socialism, so what can you do? You can't really halt progress, and taxing the rich (or corporations) is very unpalatable there, so everyone is kind of stuck.
daheza 47 minutes ago [-]
Things will continue to get worse until people get too desperate and extreme things happen. Then some politician will realize this can rise to power on this, delivering only a few small promises which will lightly alleviate the pressure and then we continue the cycle again.
titzer 1 hours ago [-]
People were fed up at "Occupy Wallstreet", but the media and craven political situation absorbed those movements back into the fold. Forget "fed up". When do we start seeing actions that don't feed directly back into the oligarchy's capture?
komali2 1 hours ago [-]
Yes! I've felt exactly the same. Everything people have taken issue with - "plagiarism," concentration of wealth and power, termination of jobs, environmental harm to feed data centers, land being wasted on new datacenters, resources being distributed terribly so as to feed the AI monster, slopcode being shit out as fast as possible to stay ahead of the market, software quality dropping for the same reason, engineers phoning it in at work to hit LLM KPIs, it's all just capitalism in its most raw, inevitable, end game form.
Edit: Someone replied to this with a question. I'm rate-limited here for getting into a flamewar with a PRC citizen that was gloating to me about my country being possibly invaded soon (which, fair, flamewars are bad), so I'll need to put my reply below:
There's no exact road map, but generally speaking, in our capitalist countries today, wealth started out more distributed, and governments had more power, in the beginning of their liberalization. States often competed in markets or simply nationalized things like power, healthcare, education. Ongoing examples of that are lots of places in Europe.
With the advent of neoliberalism (Thatcher, Reagan), concentrated capital converts more easily to political power in an exponential manner - more money, more ability to buy government, leads to more money, more ability to buy government.
Corporations are profit generation algorithms. They want the profit to always go up, and when they run against the barriers of laws (restricting their environmental impact, ability to underpay their workers, create cheap and dangerous working environments, do international trade in some way), naturally the next investment step is to remove those barriers.
So, early capitalism is strong regulation, socialized services and infrastructure, government competition, some nationalization, and private ownership of the means of production.
Late stage capitalism is weak/no regulation, no services, privatized infrastructure, no government competition, no nationalization, sectors tending towards monopolization, and wealth concentration.
"Raw capitalism" is where the commodification of everything is complete.
lukan 1 hours ago [-]
"it's all just capitalism in its most raw, inevitable, end game form."
Can you explain, what would be early capitalism and what is the difference to "end game capitalism" to you?
keeganpoppen 3 hours ago [-]
so maybe we'll get to the right place by accident when all companies are effectively replaced by ai ha ha. (not putting a high %age likelihood on that one, obviously, just being cheeky)
2 hours ago [-]
fooker 1 hours ago [-]
This is a surprisingly nuanced and technically literate take on this topic. Kudos.
I wonder if this sort of thing got this dude elected, to navigate the changing times.
(duplicating my comment from the other thread as this seems to have more traction)
stringfood 1 hours ago [-]
he probably fed it through claude before posting, I find that ever since AI has become mainstream all of my colleagues are providing fascinatingly well written prose, but only in Slack, during lunch they go back to basketball
fooker 52 minutes ago [-]
I have no qualms about people writing AI assisted stuff, the points being made matter more.
Of course it's annoying if a single sentence is blown up into a page of prose by AI and an AI summarizes it into a different sentence on the other end :)
tome 2 hours ago [-]
An HN user time-transported in from 15 years ago would find it incomprehensible that there there are only two sceptical responses (both flag killed) on a post about a message from the supreme leader of a nearly 1.5 billion strong religion. Times have truly changed.
nixon_why69 2 hours ago [-]
Times have changed in a lot of dimensions. To name 2: 1) we have an AI thing now, and 2) the pope is American and more trustworthy than all of our current top politicians of both parties.
It's not like people are longing for times of papal authority, they're just looking for anyone at all with common sense.
SV_BubbleTime 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
nixon_why69 2 hours ago [-]
Americans have an accent too, you know.
thrownthatway 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
sznio 2 hours ago [-]
Iran should have a nuke. Might finally bring some peace.
irishcoffee 1 hours ago [-]
Wishing nuclear holocaust on the world was also a view that was abhorrent in this site 15 years ago.
adolph 2 hours ago [-]
> more trustworthy than all of our current top politicians of both parties.
Big if true. Has he addressed the previous rug sweeps about clerical child abuse?
15 years ago it was Pope Benedict, who was a pretty different figure. I can speak only for myself, but I would have had more cynicism about him than I would for Francis or Leo.
dist-epoch 40 minutes ago [-]
That past HN user would be more shocked that Chrome is not considered the second coming of Jesus anymore, to keep the religious theme.
2 hours ago [-]
booleandilemma 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
shermantanktop 1 hours ago [-]
Speculating, without evidence, that hidden forces are suppressing ideas that you prefer is low-value noise IMO.
booleandilemma 1 hours ago [-]
Who said hidden forces? It's the capitalist overlords who are hellbent on replacing us humans with their machine laborers.
For evidence, you only have to look at the mass of flagged and downvoted anti-AI comments on this site.
It's not a hidden force at all, they're quite open about it.
ThrowawayR2 1 hours ago [-]
Comments about flagging/downvoting and brigading are not permitted by the HN guidelines linked at the bottom of the page.
booleandilemma 1 hours ago [-]
Are you the HN police? Lol.
1 hours ago [-]
throw838rjrjrrj 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
regus 2 hours ago [-]
Please cite sources for those claims.
canelonesdeverd 2 hours ago [-]
>and defends abortion before and after birth
abortion after birth? as in, killing a newborm baby? what are you even talking about
throejd94mrdj 2 hours ago [-]
Like defending people who dump babies into bins? Or throw them into river? Because it is not murder at all!
canelonesdeverd 1 hours ago [-]
You are beyond mentally ill. Seek professional help because you are losing touch with reality.
thrownthatway 2 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
netcan 1 hours ago [-]
It's kind of worth reading. Not to learn about AI. But... it is an interesting/historic intersection of religion and technology.
Side note: (a) This new pope is very good at "political rhetoric" and (dare I say) polemic. He's a lot more relevant than recent popes. (b) There seems to have been a vibe shift, re: secular sentiments towards religion.
There is potentially a lot happening at this intersection... say catholicism and AI.
For example... LLMs make scripture a lot more accessible. That tends to be impactful, historically. It's Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza and Schmidt. This kind of thing is a niche interest... even among the faithful, but an important niche. And... it just answers your questions, patiently.
It's also a therapist, confidant and advice giver... potentially a confessor or priest. Talk of "making an AI god" got a little stale, but... there are many ways that LLMs might take god-like roles in people's lives.
Predictions are futile, but I suspect we are going to see AI encroachment into religious/spiritual domains. I further suspect that good, natural, conversational audio is the bottleneck.
Personally... I'm curious about this Pope/AI thing. I find it interesting.
danilocesar 1 hours ago [-]
I'm an atheist, but I have to admit the previous guy was pretty dope.
mentalgear 2 hours ago [-]
The Pope has a better understanding of what's at stake that many of 'our' (lobbied) politicians.
swat535 1 hours ago [-]
Vatican's statements are often grounded in humanity.
They sue for peace in Ukraine / Middle East, humane treatments of immigrants, warn against nuclear weapons, AI, etc..
I go to Church often, there's always a prayer for peace during Mass.
What I like about Pope Leo is that he's talking about current issues that affect people.
I think the Church spent way too much time focusing on matters of sexuality and causing problems. While those are still important, it appears that it's no longer the sole focus of the Church, which is a good thing.
Another thing that I really like is the unification efforts with other religions _and_ Protestants.. recently we had a female Protestant Bishop meeting with the Pope, that was wonderful to watch.
Amazing insight from an organization not traditionally known for a deep understanding of high technology.
ttfkam 1 hours ago [-]
Not known for deep understanding of high technology? The Catholic Church was behind the scientific discovery of The Big Bang through the Catholic priest (and astrophysicist) Lamaître. Mendel, the father of modern genetics, was an Augustinian friar. Steno, a Catholic bishop, formulated the foundational principles of stratigraphy, establishing geology as a formal science. Secchi, a Jesuit priest, was a pioneer in spectroscopy and the first to establish that the Sun is a star, creating the first stellar classification system.
darepublic 3 hours ago [-]
Time to start on the first draft of the orange Catholic bible
Sure, we’ll get a tyrannical worm phase… but really I think I’d prefer that to the path of tech bros and MBAs controlling my universe. At least it makes the focus clear.
ttfkam 1 hours ago [-]
I think you might have skipped over the 10,000+ years of strict feudalism, a shrouded theocracy pushing their century-spanning agendas, aristocracy through landed gentry, and a drug-addled transportation cartel, all overseen by a massive, monopolistic megacorporation that controls all trade, economic affairs, and commerce throughout the universe. And everyone's a drug addict if they can afford it.
But sure, at least they didn't have AI! lol!
In other words, Warhammer 40K but without any aliens to trigger a massive xenophobic response that removed all warlike guardrails.
haaz 3 hours ago [-]
Great to see the Pope recognises the gravity of what is to come with AI and is coming out early with this.
jkwn 1 hours ago [-]
I find it difficult to see how even the measured words from the pope can actually enact this changed needed to 'disarm' AI. The forces behind the armament/war of AI development are innate to the qualities of our governance systems, capitalism, and human behavior, and AI itself.
None of these will go away until something breaks catastrophically, when it will be too late. And even then it will be short repose from another iteration for as long as we are in the digital information age.
There are only two steady end states that I see... either a global surveillance totalitarian system under the industrial complex, or, a radical change of the environment in which the aforementioned can be sustained.
> 110. Finally, I would like to employ the expression “to disarm,” which is close to my heart. Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of “armed” competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life. Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage. For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible.
Modos 52 minutes ago [-]
you know.. a lot of changes came from just words. literally our modern society tend to sway the public opinion through just words from news and influencers..
werber 3 hours ago [-]
I noticed ads on churches in Mexico City for this earlier this year, https://juanito.ai
3 hours ago [-]
3 hours ago [-]
sometimelurker 1 hours ago [-]
the guys name is Leo because the pope who was around for the industrial revolution was named Leo. I think he also has a math PhD but I could be wrong. he's 100% paying attention
michaelsbradley 1 hours ago [-]
It’s a Master’s not a PhD, but in math, yes.
GuB-42 2 hours ago [-]
> A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is determined by a few
Particularly ironic considering the history of the Church.
I mean, it is not wrong, but that's essentially the business of essentially every church, religion, cult,... whatever you call your spiritual organization.
goosejuice 39 minutes ago [-]
And for claiming to have some authority on social justice when women are shunned from priesthood and leadership roles. At least they're coming around a little bit with the first woman appointee of a head of a dept of the roman curia in 2025.
Between the Canadian residential schools and sexual abuse scandals alone, it's shocking that people actually look to the holy see as any kind of moral authority. Nevermind the connections to slavery, fascism, and even the cosa nostra.
pj_mukh 2 hours ago [-]
I would love for the Pope to answer this question:
If a technology existed that reduced the cost of producing a critical thing (think food, housing, medical care) down to near zero, however, it made the humans currently building the thing redundant, should we build it? Would it be okay to use the hyper-optimization power of Capitalism to build such a technology faster?
Before someone yells at me about this not being the current situation, I think that is the endgame of most of this AI development and in fact the endgame is even more comforting: If it takes 10 construction workers at $60,000/annum to build one home, I can forsee the descendants of current AI tech enabling 10 construction workers at $150,000/annum building 5 homes in the same time with an even larger profit margin for the corporation involved.
But as a clear moral quandary, I think the Pope should consider the first situation.
nemomarx 2 hours ago [-]
If the technology is used to serve humanity by providing food or housing, it seems like his stance would be approving. But if it was used to increase profits and people still starved that would be bad, right?
"AI must be used for the good of humanity" isn't even an anti ai position really.
pj_mukh 2 hours ago [-]
"by providing food or housing" vs "if it was used to increase profits"
Why..not both? I know this question is naive, but there is nothing that "hard-codes" AI to only increase profits at the cost of providing food or housing for much cheaper prices. Yes a Private equity firm could later insert itself and jack up prices and play such games, but that isn't baked into the technology itself.
And as such, the technology seems the wrong thing to be litigating.
AvAn12 1 hours ago [-]
Tech is supposed to be a tool that serves other products ends, not an end in itself.
At this point, tech biz leaders are massively over-reaching and trying to influence the rest of us: muxk, thiel, Karp, etc.
So it should be no surprise that the rest of us are ready, willing and able to push back just as hard.
tech biz leads should just run their companies and stop trying to play president or god
pj_mukh 1 hours ago [-]
"At this point, tech biz leaders are massively over-reaching and trying to influence the rest of us:"
I realize this is what's happening on the headlines, but most of the technology being "deployed" is back-office automation, robotics etc. that no one writes about and none of the tech baddies have monopolistic control over. I refuse to let muxk, thiel, Karp to run the conversation and setup the reaction either. It is exciting and dramatic but not necessarily influential.
squidbeak 1 hours ago [-]
There aren't any profits with full automation - but there is instead total power for whoever owns that automation.
pj_mukh 43 minutes ago [-]
If it’s a monopoly yes. But there are massive profits in full automation. I’m not expecting costs to go to zero but it’s the only pathway to things getting cheaper by a lot.
jdjdjxixismns 1 hours ago [-]
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gbibas 1 hours ago [-]
This makes me think of enlightened self interest. If the tech elite crush everyone by automating too fast then the economy collapses and people don’t have the money to pay them and their advertisers, so it will wind up hurting them directly too. Enlightened self interest SHOULD keep those same people in check finding a way to use the technology to empower advances in efficiency that empower people not just corporations. But the AI leaders don’t outwardly seem to think about these issues, and when asked just brush past them. We should not stop tech progress even if it were possible in a global competitive environment (which it is not), but there are some moral issues that should guide tech leaders in decision making, not just profit motives.
geremiiah 1 hours ago [-]
The Catholic Church has at present no answer to that question. The contemporary political-economic stance of the Catholic Church is based on economic liberalism and capitalism and maintaining a just balance between capital and labour, as indeed mentioned in the encyclical itself.
I don't think anyone has an answer to that question at present, honestly.
djsamseng 1 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
jdjdjxixismns 2 hours ago [-]
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paologiacometti 3 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately, he did not mention the moral responsabilities of the Silicon Valley technopower in delivering and selling a technology so society-impact only for making themselves and their shareholders richier.
Why would we listen to him? Even he doesn’t believe in God.
Jesus let the Romans take him. The pope drives around in an armoured car with hundreds of soldiers. Why? After all, he’s the official spokesperson of God. He’s either untouchable, or would be endlessly rewarded with sainthood for being a martyr.
But he obviously doesn’t believe that.
magic_hamster 3 hours ago [-]
Good luck with that. Capitalism doesn't work that way. AI will make money for some companies, but as always, it will be on our expense, not for our benefit. We will get some convenient features, we will grow dependent, and eventually subscriptions will be squeezed as far as we are able to pay, advertising will take over, we will have less choice and worse service.
By then we might not even have computers anymore, or we might have "transparent" computers, i.e. have everything on the cloud and just tell our AI agents what to do.
Sorry Pope Leo, things are not going to suddenly turn into a wonderful utopia, but maybe buy some stocks so you can at least make a buck from what's coming.
tim333 1 hours ago [-]
Capitalism tends to benefit most people, like capitalist enterprise makes food, clothing, cars and the like and most get some benefit. I'm not convinced by the on our expense bit on the whole. It can have glitches sometimes of course.
magic_hamster 41 minutes ago [-]
Arguably, all the industries that you mentioned (clothing, food, automotive) have the same symptoms, doing everything possible to increase growth even (and often) at the expense of shipping worse products. At least, this has been my experience with clothing, electronics, appliances, and honestly almost everything. It's very hard today to find good long lasting products. A couple of decades ago you could expect your purchase to last a while, today - hardly.
brcmthrowaway 2 hours ago [-]
Any good tickers?
lo_zamoyski 2 hours ago [-]
What point are you trying to make here, because your post is all over the place and never really goes anywhere.
The pope is not claiming utopia is possible. He is reminding the world of its moral duties within this scope. "Capitalism" is not a system that we helpless atoms merely get pushed around in. How good the world is depends on each one of us choosing to do our moral duty toward the common good. There is no "system" that will, without effort on the part of its citizens, straighten the crooked timber of humanity and relieve human beings of their moral responsibilities.
geremiiah 1 hours ago [-]
Nah, I think that's a bit of a cop-out. Capitalism heavily incentivizes competition at the detriment of everything else. You can talk about moral duties all you want, but in a hyper-competitive environment, if you don't do the thing, the other guy will. Societies don't necessarily have to be structured in such ways.
magic_hamster 48 minutes ago [-]
My point is AI is not going to be built to "benefit humanity" because that's not the incentive in our economy. AI might give us some benefits, but like all tech products currently, it will be designed to benefit corporations and shareholders. It is what it is.
eichi_uehara 4 hours ago [-]
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krzys 4 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
shawnhermans 3 hours ago [-]
Former Catholic. I left the church for a variety of reasons, one of which being the child abuse scandal. I am aware of the Catholic Church's long and often sordid history. What I am trying to say is there is no love lost between me and the Catholic Church.
With that out of the way, the Pope is right. Knowledge should be used for the benefit of humanity and I don't think any of the big AI companies have our best interests in mind.
epolanski 3 hours ago [-]
I don't really get this, so I genuinely want to understand.
You can still follow a religion while rightfully thinking that the organization representing it to be corrupt (and how could it be otherwise, as it's made from mortal sinners?).
But you either believe that St.Peter and its descendants in Rome have been tasked by god to spread (and interpret) its word or you don't.
It's fine if you don't (I don't my self, I'm an atheist), but I don't get why can't you be a catholic if you believe and also find the organization flawed.
pseudony 2 hours ago [-]
He didn’t say that. He said that he agrees with the pope on this issue.
You don’t become a catholic from agreeing on an issue
mattnewton 2 hours ago [-]
Litmus tests about personal beliefs are not really how religious organizations function for most people in my experience. It’s about whether you want to associated with a tribe or movement, then the beliefs come with that package.
hnlmorg 2 hours ago [-]
Catholicism is as much about hierarchy and pomposity as it is about faith.
Plus personal and social experiences are often catalysts for changing one’s beliefs. It happens so often there’s a term for it: “crisis of faith”
epolanski 18 minutes ago [-]
But it should be a crisis of trust in the organization, not it's credos.
luizfzs 2 hours ago [-]
My take is that scandals can make some people realize that the Church is fallible, which can lead people to question about the legitimacy of such religion. e.g. if the church representatives can be corrupt, what if their other actions also weren't in service of God?
My point is that once you see a sort of contradiction between words and action, it may make one deeply reflect on it.
2 hours ago [-]
lo_zamoyski 2 hours ago [-]
> I left the church for a variety of reasons, one of which being the child abuse scandal.
What you do is your business, but you understand the fallacy, yes? One does not belong to the Church for the priests. And btw, if you want to be consistent, you should dissociate yourself from all institutions, because statistically, the rate of abuse in the Church (estimated by John Jay to be around 4%) is representative or less than the rates in all other religious or secular institutions. Public schools are notoriously bad in this regard, but you wouldn't know it, given the obsessive coverage of the Church to the exclusion of everyone else.
(I, of course, condemn all such sexual abuse, and I am critical of those who failed to deal with the issue properly. There is indeed a sense in which abuse by a priest carries much more gravity, and this is the position of the Church itself. Sexual abuse also peaked during the heyday of the sexual revolution, roughly during the 1960s-1980s. It wasn't a pedophilia scandal, as around 80% of victims were post-pubescent male teenagers. It was a homosexual ephebophilia scandal. Still terrible, but it does shift understanding of the nature and source of the problem significantly.)
> I am aware of the Catholic Church's long and often sordid history.
Sure, if you simply accept the ignorant tropes, ideological propaganda, and black legends circulating in a culture hostile to the institution since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, then maybe you'll be left with a dramatically dark picture that you describe as "sordid". But this is historically illiterate and intellectually immature.
tranceylc 2 hours ago [-]
> It wasn't a pedophilia scandal, as around 80% of victims were post-pubescent male teenagers. It was a homosexual ephebophilia scandal. Still terrible, but it does shift understanding of the nature and source of the problem significantly.
I feel like this pseudo-defence hidden in the middle of your few paragraphs tells the reader what they really ought to know. Making that distinction is enough to question your nature to be allowed around vulnerable people.
lo_zamoyski 32 minutes ago [-]
Thanks for being so charitable. It is not a defense. I explicitly said it was still terrible. It was a factual correction. You cannot accuse those guilty of wrongdoing of things they did not commit. That is still unjust.
If you don't see a difference of gravity between sexually abusing prepubescent children and post-pubescent teenagers, then I question your capacity to make moral judgements. Perhaps you'll attack someone for recognizing that murder is worse than rape, too.
And frankly, the libelous phrase "question your nature to be allowed around vulnerable people" that you directed toward me is utterly disgusting. How dare you.
But then, you've already demonstrated your comfort with false accusations.
bbor 2 hours ago [-]
> It wasn't a pedophilia scandal, as around 80% of victims were post-pubescent male teenagers. It was a homosexual ephebophilia scandal.
Honestly pretty unreal to come face to face with someone from a history book.
mycall 3 hours ago [-]
The church was a great archive of knowledge for the longest time. They were the powerful few too.
Luker88 3 hours ago [-]
And they hoarded and kept such knowledge for themselves and those who swore fealty for as long as they could, concentrating and maintaining power for centuries.
Still, I agree with the pope this once.
jnovek 3 hours ago [-]
I mostly agree with you, but I’ve come to appreciate that there was a period of time in the Middle Ages where the Catholic Church held the fabric of society together in their corner of the world. I think much more knowledge from antiquity would’ve been lost without them.
pseudony 2 hours ago [-]
Wrong - I am very far from a catholic, but this just doesn’t reflect history.
They did a lot to make the middle ages more tolerable.
After that, maybe they overstayed their welcome.
huijzer 3 hours ago [-]
Agreed. Crusades have also close ties with gnosticism since the Templars themselves were gnostics.
jhbadger 2 hours ago [-]
It's complicated because besides the ones in the Middle East, there was also one in the 1200s in France against the Cathars -- a "heretical" sect of Christianity that was into gnosticism/dualism
Interesting. Thanks. The seeming contradiction can be resolved by the statement “no honesty among thieves”. I don’t know exactly about the sect, but I do know that the Templars were not a particularly honest bunch. True criminals without a conscience will also often blame the other side of crimes they themselves conduct; probably to keep blame away from them since the false accusations cause massive confusion
Pay08 2 hours ago [-]
That is rather incorrect. Most people in the centuries you talk about could only read a local language (where "local" could be anything from 5km² to 500km²), if they could read at all. Of course, for a long time, becoming a priest was the only way for the average person to learn to read Latin, but universities, both ones that were sponsored by the Church and ones that weren't are older than you think (14th century off the top of my head), with the Church frequently cooperating and patronising the non-affiliated universities as well.
huijzer 3 hours ago [-]
The Catholic church has also burned Christians in various era’s including in the 15th century.
deadbabe 3 hours ago [-]
How crazy would it be if the Vatican started training up their own custom AI models?
werber 3 hours ago [-]
I noticed ads? maybe not the right word in this situation, for https://juanito.ai, on several of the large Catholic churches in Mexico City this year.
dylan604 4 hours ago [-]
I had a similar thought. Something about a splinter in someone's eye while a plank in your eye blah blah
Lerc 3 hours ago [-]
The Pro human AI Delcaration has as one of its list of denands
Child Protection: Companies must not be allowed to exploit children or undermine their wellbeing with AI interactions creating emotional attachment or leverage
I think it entirely consistent with many of the supporters of this statement that this leaves open the opportunity for the church to do it with AI, or indeed companies and the church to do it by other means.
lo_zamoyski 3 hours ago [-]
So is the Church what? That the Church must serve humanity or that it is the "powerful few" as some here are saying?
In the first case, I claim that it has and that it does. I'm not sure how you can credibly claim otherwise. Only ideologically informed animosity could distort one's views here. If you know the mission of the Church, then I see no issue. Do members of the Church fail? Of course. Everyone does, and indeed this is captured best in the Christian acknowledgment that everyone is a sinner, without exception. Everyone falls short.
In the second case, I don't know what the implication is. Is it that the Church is one of the "powerful few" and therefore evil? The first question you must ask is what your notion of "power" here is. The second, whether the Church is actually powerful according to that definition. The third, whether you are falsely linking being one of the "powerful few" with being evil. The problem, after all, is not with power, but with the way power is used. In an ideal world, all power would be exercised morally, and all authority would have commensurate power.
I would say this: the Church has authority. Whether it has power depends on your definition of power and the particular historical epoch. It is not reduced to a simple boolean.
It's best to avoid cheap jabs that rely on boring and unthinking tropes that appeal to widespread prejudices rather than to informed reason.
YetAnotherNick 3 hours ago [-]
Everything you say apply to the AI. Even more so that there are very good open models which anyone can host and get almost exact same power.
lo_zamoyski 2 hours ago [-]
Isn't that kind of the pope's point? That whether AI serves humanity or tyrannical interests is up to us?
watwut 3 hours ago [-]
> anyone can host and get almost exact same power.
This is not true at all.
And the claim about mission of the church and mission of the ai being the same is absurd. Or ai being authority. Like, the rest of that comment does not apply to ai at all.
YetAnotherNick 2 hours ago [-]
> This is not true at all.
In what sense is it not true?
> mission of the church and mission of the ai being the same is absurd
Did I claim that?
I just said any point you wrote against church representing powerful few is applicable to AI.
watwut 49 minutes ago [-]
In the practical day to day sense as in not having money for it. The open models are not that cheap to run.
You seem confused. Read the article you linked.
Or, in case it wasn't clear enough: AI must serve humanity. So must the church.
zahlman 2 hours ago [-]
For reference, the general form (so that I can use letters to refer to parties and avoid convoluted phrasing):
(Axiom: B has done X.)
A (to B): You have done X, and you should not have done so.
C: I note here that certain prior actions of A could also reasonably be characterized as X.
D (to C): Ah, here you commit the fallacy of "tu quoque".
This argument is not sound. It misunderstands the fallacy. (To be clear: Wikipedia describes the fallacy accurately; it's just that it's rare in practice, and very often falsely accused.)
Everyone should uphold the standards to which they hold others (and I consider it an obvious moral failing not to do so). The fallacy only applies where C either continues on to argue that B has, somehow, not actually done X (because A did); or, at least, clearly has the purpose of distracting from the fact that B has done X.
But there is nothing fallacious about simply pointing out that A does not live up to A's own implied standards. There is nothing fallacious about the implication that A is therefore being either i) dishonest about the anti-X belief, or ii) simply hypocritical. (To be fair, we don't know, from the given information, which of those is the case; but I think it's fair to say that neither is "fair dealing" and that A is thus a legitimate target of criticism regardless.)
It is also not fallacious for C to use this as a jumping-off point to argue that X is in fact okay to do, although of course this requires further support.
Curosinono 3 hours ago [-]
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mystraline 3 hours ago [-]
I have writings going back to the 1500's of priests fucking boy children altar boys, cause that's evidently not 'reallllly' a violation of celibacy.
The Catholic Church has always had this go on.
fthepope 2 hours ago [-]
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WarmWash 4 hours ago [-]
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chasd00 4 hours ago [-]
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triceratops 3 hours ago [-]
Yeah so? That's not really "news" anyway.
SecretDreams 4 hours ago [-]
I'm sure most of the elite probably hold similarly wonky views.
criddell 3 hours ago [-]
In other news? Why not talk about this news? Do you disagree with the Pope?
Ardren 3 hours ago [-]
> Do you disagree with the Pope?
Yes I do. I don't think you a prayer can literally transform wine into blood. How about you?
krzyk 3 hours ago [-]
You do know it is not literal transformation?
Ardren 3 hours ago [-]
It's actually is a literal transformation (and only a Catholic thing)
> Transubstantiation means the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of his Blood. This change is brought about in the eucharistic prayer through the efficacy of the word of Christ and by the action of the Holy Spirit. However, the outward characteristics of bread and wine, that is the “eucharistic species”, remain unaltered.
geerlingguy 3 hours ago [-]
There's an important distinction between the 'substance' and the 'accidents' (outward characteristics), that matters a lot in Catholic theology.
But I'd say any Catholic who believes in the Eucharist would admit, yeah, it's a bit of an odd thing, especially by today's standards, to consume the blood of a sacrificed animal.
cyanydeez 4 hours ago [-]
Presidents through out American history has believed various forms of genocide and slavery were applicable practices to modern problems; hell the current president thinks variously incredulous things.
So you know, you might want to adjust your measuring stick before you critique people.
dylan604 4 hours ago [-]
Both things can be true at the same time, so shutting down the critique (possibly because it is critiquing something you like??) just because another critique can be made is not a good counter argument
watwut 4 hours ago [-]
In that case, the Pope does not believe "wine turns to blood if you say things to it."
> Transubstantiation means the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of his Blood. This change is brought about in the eucharistic prayer through the efficacy of the word of Christ and by the action of the Holy Spirit. However, the outward characteristics of bread and wine, that is the “eucharistic species”, remain unaltered.
Edit: It's a catholic thing, and it's very silly (other denominations say its symbolic)
watwut 47 minutes ago [-]
And that quote is not the same thing as was written originally. Explicitely hedges and ends with clear "wont have that taste, wont get you drunk".
The simplification in the original in fact imploed that.
dylan604 35 minutes ago [-]
This is not the only part of Catholicism that is not written originally, but even "originally written" is difficult.
totobrechi 4 hours ago [-]
Lets not forget the hideous acts that this church has commited against young men and children in america. This would the last place I'd accept leadership advise from.
This message is not focused on u.s or its presidents. Its focused on leadership world wide.
SecretDreams 3 hours ago [-]
The people best suited to give advice on how AI should be used, distributed, and controlled are probably those disconnected from the profit structure of AI.
gordian-mind 4 hours ago [-]
Not every conversation is about Trump, is it possible to stop this?
SecretDreams 3 hours ago [-]
I think the whole world would like to stop talking about Trump.
gordian-mind 2 hours ago [-]
He got elected, get over it.
SecretDreams 57 minutes ago [-]
World doesn't seem over it yet. Like Brexit and plenty of other poor choices the various electorates of the world have previously done.
gordian-mind 21 minutes ago [-]
It's your point of view that those were bad choices. Why pretend otherwise?
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 47 minutes ago [-]
More to the point, "it" is not the fact of his election but the fact of his policy decisions, which are ongoing. Of course the world is still talking about that.
miningape 4 hours ago [-]
inb4 "EvERyTHing Is PolItiKz"
boxed 4 hours ago [-]
Their excuse was that they lived a long time ago when people were idiots. What's the popes excuse today?
4 hours ago [-]
Ardren 4 hours ago [-]
> Presidents through out American history has believed various forms of genocide and slavery were applicable practices to modern problems; hell the current president thinks variously incredulous things.
And we shouldn't criticize them? Is that the point?
krapp 4 hours ago [-]
Both American presidents and Abrahamic faiths have, historically, justified slavery and genocide (and often by the same pretense.)
And the current President's ridiculous beliefs are just as ridiculous as believing in transubstantiation. Believing angels manifest on Earth and intercede in human affairs is no more rational believing that aliens are manifesting on Earth but are really demons, which Catholic VP JD Vance believes. The former is just more culturally accepted, and thus given the weight of dignity, but both are valid as far as a naive and literalist interpretation of the Bible is concerned, because demons exist in the Bible, but not aliens.
Either way, as much as the Pope is a silly man in a silly hat looking like a fucking wizard who is required to believe in supernatural nonsense while leading a corrupt den of pedophiles, he's also absolutely and objectively correct on this specific topic and it's clear he's put far more researched thought into his opinions on AI than 99% of people on HN. Hell, he even apologized for the Church's historical support of slavery, and many people here won't even concede that slavery was ever a problem.
totobrechi 3 hours ago [-]
The only significance here with history is we don't repeat it. There is no reason ever concede anything. Its akin to dwelling on indians introducing americans to tobacco. No group of people in the future should be judge on peoples beliefs or indiscretions. There is no connection.
thrownthatway 2 hours ago [-]
How can a person apologise for something they never did, to people it never happened to?
Talk about nonsense.
krapp 29 minutes ago [-]
You folks really do play to type sometimes.
krunger 4 hours ago [-]
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throwuxiytayq 3 hours ago [-]
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mrKola 3 hours ago [-]
He is right. Why should you not listen to him?
throwuxiytayq 2 hours ago [-]
He’s not even right about whether god exists, and that’s literally his job. Why should I assume he’s competent about anything else?
Pay08 2 hours ago [-]
I'll listen to him when he has materially acknowledged the horrors the Church did and continues to do and dismantles the institutions responsible for those horrors.
magic_hamster 3 hours ago [-]
In my way of life, the idea that people follow and care deeply about what some mullah has to say is very foreign. There's a mass of these people though. Their life must be so incredibly different than mine, it's just hard to fathom. I can't even imagine caring about the Pope or what they have to say. In my imagination the Pope is something out of roman times, it's just so weird this still exists today.
thrownthatway 1 hours ago [-]
> mullah
Nope. Straight to hell. Do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect 200 virgins.
magic_hamster 29 minutes ago [-]
I don't see any value discussing which set of rules and outcomes is better because it's all nonsense.
To be honest, I did have some very in depth conversations with religious friends, and it was enlightening. I am convinced that for them, it has some benefits.
But I know all this stuff is totally made up, so even if you can channel it to a good thing, I personally can never do it. And even though I won't say this to their face, part of me thinks, how can you believe this stuff.
fHr 3 hours ago [-]
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dontfeedthemac 3 hours ago [-]
because he is right and he is more for the people than the dumb shit you spew out of your mouth
jaybrendansmith 3 hours ago [-]
Have you actually read it? It is not a boring take. It's actually the best thing I've read on moral philosophy in quite some time. I suggest you take the time to read it.
Pay08 2 hours ago [-]
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Kuyawa 3 hours ago [-]
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factorialboy 3 hours ago [-]
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henry2023 3 hours ago [-]
Tu quoque is a fallacy my friend.
hooverlabs 3 hours ago [-]
Do you think we are even talking in the same ballpark of wealth? Elon Musk is slated to be the first trillionaire
Its still true. The church gained massive amount of land in germany due to the fear they put into humans. Hell, purgatory etc.
The church owns 2% of land in germany. A f. church...
nba456_ 2 hours ago [-]
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tyjen 2 hours ago [-]
Yes and people who use it for dominating industries and markets out of pure greed have the potential displace and disenfranchise large swaths of the population. The possibility to tier society into people with full access to AI and people with severely limited access binding them with significant permanent disadvantages.
You don't have to agree with everything to Pope stands for to understand the potential dark paths AI could lead humanity to.
SV_BubbleTime 2 hours ago [-]
> Yes and people who use [AI] for dominating industries and markets
Uh, who?
Smoke of course; but did you find fire?
jungturk 2 hours ago [-]
Wouldn't your claim be consistent with the Pope's request? Why would he be unhappy about that?
add-sub-mul-div 1 hours ago [-]
100% of the knowledge was already available, and without the need to be logged in to an account to be tracked.
KptMarchewa 2 hours ago [-]
Cool. Any other celebrities with hot takes?
SV_BubbleTime 2 hours ago [-]
I’m not going to be contented until I can get Ja’s take on if LLMs even have the slightest potential to be an engine behind artificial general intelligence. Or that they definitely won’t be but the ideas that will come from layering and transformers will be vital for example.
synergy20 2 hours ago [-]
said from someone lives in a palace
missedthecue 1 hours ago [-]
LLMs are some of the most fairly distributed technology in history. It's actual insane how equitable global access is, especially compared to the previous evolutions of the computer industry (mainframes, then desktop, and eventually mobile phones). People are just saying stuff to say stuff at this point.
Rendered at 17:32:59 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
In fact, reading these sentences with ad-lib on the subject tends to give these sentences interestingly different connotations.
See Joscha Bach’s claim about religions not publishing their A|B testing at 51:47:
https://youtu.be/7bqdPHLIY8w
“Corporations are people, my friend.”
Yes yes I know, open source models exist, yadda yadda
I think it's safe to say the overwhelming amount of AI usage in the world today is gates by corporations though. The vast majority of people will barely configure their own OS nevermind managing their own locally hosted open source AI instance
You can’t push both “If you dont work, you dont eat” and “Nobody needs to work anymore” propaganda at the same time. Gotta choose
Edit: Someone replied to this with a question. I'm rate-limited here for getting into a flamewar with a PRC citizen that was gloating to me about my country being possibly invaded soon (which, fair, flamewars are bad), so I'll need to put my reply below:
There's no exact road map, but generally speaking, in our capitalist countries today, wealth started out more distributed, and governments had more power, in the beginning of their liberalization. States often competed in markets or simply nationalized things like power, healthcare, education. Ongoing examples of that are lots of places in Europe.
With the advent of neoliberalism (Thatcher, Reagan), concentrated capital converts more easily to political power in an exponential manner - more money, more ability to buy government, leads to more money, more ability to buy government.
Corporations are profit generation algorithms. They want the profit to always go up, and when they run against the barriers of laws (restricting their environmental impact, ability to underpay their workers, create cheap and dangerous working environments, do international trade in some way), naturally the next investment step is to remove those barriers.
So, early capitalism is strong regulation, socialized services and infrastructure, government competition, some nationalization, and private ownership of the means of production.
Late stage capitalism is weak/no regulation, no services, privatized infrastructure, no government competition, no nationalization, sectors tending towards monopolization, and wealth concentration.
"Raw capitalism" is where the commodification of everything is complete.
Can you explain, what would be early capitalism and what is the difference to "end game capitalism" to you?
I wonder if this sort of thing got this dude elected, to navigate the changing times.
(duplicating my comment from the other thread as this seems to have more traction)
Of course it's annoying if a single sentence is blown up into a page of prose by AI and an AI summarizes it into a different sentence on the other end :)
It's not like people are longing for times of papal authority, they're just looking for anyone at all with common sense.
Big if true. Has he addressed the previous rug sweeps about clerical child abuse?
For evidence, you only have to look at the mass of flagged and downvoted anti-AI comments on this site.
It's not a hidden force at all, they're quite open about it.
abortion after birth? as in, killing a newborm baby? what are you even talking about
Side note: (a) This new pope is very good at "political rhetoric" and (dare I say) polemic. He's a lot more relevant than recent popes. (b) There seems to have been a vibe shift, re: secular sentiments towards religion.
There is potentially a lot happening at this intersection... say catholicism and AI.
For example... LLMs make scripture a lot more accessible. That tends to be impactful, historically. It's Augustine, Aquinas, Spinoza and Schmidt. This kind of thing is a niche interest... even among the faithful, but an important niche. And... it just answers your questions, patiently.
It's also a therapist, confidant and advice giver... potentially a confessor or priest. Talk of "making an AI god" got a little stale, but... there are many ways that LLMs might take god-like roles in people's lives.
Predictions are futile, but I suspect we are going to see AI encroachment into religious/spiritual domains. I further suspect that good, natural, conversational audio is the bottleneck.
Personally... I'm curious about this Pope/AI thing. I find it interesting.
They sue for peace in Ukraine / Middle East, humane treatments of immigrants, warn against nuclear weapons, AI, etc..
I go to Church often, there's always a prayer for peace during Mass.
What I like about Pope Leo is that he's talking about current issues that affect people.
I think the Church spent way too much time focusing on matters of sexuality and causing problems. While those are still important, it appears that it's no longer the sole focus of the Church, which is a good thing.
Another thing that I really like is the unification efforts with other religions _and_ Protestants.. recently we had a female Protestant Bishop meeting with the Pope, that was wonderful to watch.
Amazing insight from an organization not traditionally known for a deep understanding of high technology.
But sure, at least they didn't have AI! lol!
In other words, Warhammer 40K but without any aliens to trigger a massive xenophobic response that removed all warlike guardrails.
None of these will go away until something breaks catastrophically, when it will be too late. And even then it will be short repose from another iteration for as long as we are in the digital information age.
There are only two steady end states that I see... either a global surveillance totalitarian system under the industrial complex, or, a radical change of the environment in which the aforementioned can be sustained.
> 110. Finally, I would like to employ the expression “to disarm,” which is close to my heart. Disarming AI means freeing it from the mentality of “armed” competition, which today is not limited simply to the military context, but is also an economic and cognitive phenomenon. This entails a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets, driven by the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance. To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern. To disarm does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity. It means freeing technology from monopolistic control and opening it to discussion and debate, therefore making it human-friendly and restoring it to the plurality of human cultures and ways of life. Our task today is not only ethical or technical. It is ecological in the deepest sense, for it concerns a new dimension of our common home. AI is already an environment in which we are immersed, as well as a force with which we must engage. For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible.
Particularly ironic considering the history of the Church.
I mean, it is not wrong, but that's essentially the business of essentially every church, religion, cult,... whatever you call your spiritual organization.
Between the Canadian residential schools and sexual abuse scandals alone, it's shocking that people actually look to the holy see as any kind of moral authority. Nevermind the connections to slavery, fascism, and even the cosa nostra.
If a technology existed that reduced the cost of producing a critical thing (think food, housing, medical care) down to near zero, however, it made the humans currently building the thing redundant, should we build it? Would it be okay to use the hyper-optimization power of Capitalism to build such a technology faster?
Before someone yells at me about this not being the current situation, I think that is the endgame of most of this AI development and in fact the endgame is even more comforting: If it takes 10 construction workers at $60,000/annum to build one home, I can forsee the descendants of current AI tech enabling 10 construction workers at $150,000/annum building 5 homes in the same time with an even larger profit margin for the corporation involved.
But as a clear moral quandary, I think the Pope should consider the first situation.
"AI must be used for the good of humanity" isn't even an anti ai position really.
Why..not both? I know this question is naive, but there is nothing that "hard-codes" AI to only increase profits at the cost of providing food or housing for much cheaper prices. Yes a Private equity firm could later insert itself and jack up prices and play such games, but that isn't baked into the technology itself.
And as such, the technology seems the wrong thing to be litigating.
At this point, tech biz leaders are massively over-reaching and trying to influence the rest of us: muxk, thiel, Karp, etc.
So it should be no surprise that the rest of us are ready, willing and able to push back just as hard.
tech biz leads should just run their companies and stop trying to play president or god
I realize this is what's happening on the headlines, but most of the technology being "deployed" is back-office automation, robotics etc. that no one writes about and none of the tech baddies have monopolistic control over. I refuse to let muxk, thiel, Karp to run the conversation and setup the reaction either. It is exciting and dramatic but not necessarily influential.
I don't think anyone has an answer to that question at present, honestly.
Jesus let the Romans take him. The pope drives around in an armoured car with hundreds of soldiers. Why? After all, he’s the official spokesperson of God. He’s either untouchable, or would be endlessly rewarded with sainthood for being a martyr.
But he obviously doesn’t believe that.
By then we might not even have computers anymore, or we might have "transparent" computers, i.e. have everything on the cloud and just tell our AI agents what to do.
Sorry Pope Leo, things are not going to suddenly turn into a wonderful utopia, but maybe buy some stocks so you can at least make a buck from what's coming.
The pope is not claiming utopia is possible. He is reminding the world of its moral duties within this scope. "Capitalism" is not a system that we helpless atoms merely get pushed around in. How good the world is depends on each one of us choosing to do our moral duty toward the common good. There is no "system" that will, without effort on the part of its citizens, straighten the crooked timber of humanity and relieve human beings of their moral responsibilities.
With that out of the way, the Pope is right. Knowledge should be used for the benefit of humanity and I don't think any of the big AI companies have our best interests in mind.
You can still follow a religion while rightfully thinking that the organization representing it to be corrupt (and how could it be otherwise, as it's made from mortal sinners?).
But you either believe that St.Peter and its descendants in Rome have been tasked by god to spread (and interpret) its word or you don't.
It's fine if you don't (I don't my self, I'm an atheist), but I don't get why can't you be a catholic if you believe and also find the organization flawed.
Plus personal and social experiences are often catalysts for changing one’s beliefs. It happens so often there’s a term for it: “crisis of faith”
My point is that once you see a sort of contradiction between words and action, it may make one deeply reflect on it.
What you do is your business, but you understand the fallacy, yes? One does not belong to the Church for the priests. And btw, if you want to be consistent, you should dissociate yourself from all institutions, because statistically, the rate of abuse in the Church (estimated by John Jay to be around 4%) is representative or less than the rates in all other religious or secular institutions. Public schools are notoriously bad in this regard, but you wouldn't know it, given the obsessive coverage of the Church to the exclusion of everyone else.
(I, of course, condemn all such sexual abuse, and I am critical of those who failed to deal with the issue properly. There is indeed a sense in which abuse by a priest carries much more gravity, and this is the position of the Church itself. Sexual abuse also peaked during the heyday of the sexual revolution, roughly during the 1960s-1980s. It wasn't a pedophilia scandal, as around 80% of victims were post-pubescent male teenagers. It was a homosexual ephebophilia scandal. Still terrible, but it does shift understanding of the nature and source of the problem significantly.)
> I am aware of the Catholic Church's long and often sordid history.
Sure, if you simply accept the ignorant tropes, ideological propaganda, and black legends circulating in a culture hostile to the institution since the Reformation and the Enlightenment, then maybe you'll be left with a dramatically dark picture that you describe as "sordid". But this is historically illiterate and intellectually immature.
I feel like this pseudo-defence hidden in the middle of your few paragraphs tells the reader what they really ought to know. Making that distinction is enough to question your nature to be allowed around vulnerable people.
If you don't see a difference of gravity between sexually abusing prepubescent children and post-pubescent teenagers, then I question your capacity to make moral judgements. Perhaps you'll attack someone for recognizing that murder is worse than rape, too.
And frankly, the libelous phrase "question your nature to be allowed around vulnerable people" that you directed toward me is utterly disgusting. How dare you.
But then, you've already demonstrated your comfort with false accusations.
Honestly pretty unreal to come face to face with someone from a history book.
Still, I agree with the pope this once.
They did a lot to make the middle ages more tolerable. After that, maybe they overstayed their welcome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albigensian_Crusade
Child Protection: Companies must not be allowed to exploit children or undermine their wellbeing with AI interactions creating emotional attachment or leverage
I think it entirely consistent with many of the supporters of this statement that this leaves open the opportunity for the church to do it with AI, or indeed companies and the church to do it by other means.
In the first case, I claim that it has and that it does. I'm not sure how you can credibly claim otherwise. Only ideologically informed animosity could distort one's views here. If you know the mission of the Church, then I see no issue. Do members of the Church fail? Of course. Everyone does, and indeed this is captured best in the Christian acknowledgment that everyone is a sinner, without exception. Everyone falls short.
In the second case, I don't know what the implication is. Is it that the Church is one of the "powerful few" and therefore evil? The first question you must ask is what your notion of "power" here is. The second, whether the Church is actually powerful according to that definition. The third, whether you are falsely linking being one of the "powerful few" with being evil. The problem, after all, is not with power, but with the way power is used. In an ideal world, all power would be exercised morally, and all authority would have commensurate power.
I would say this: the Church has authority. Whether it has power depends on your definition of power and the particular historical epoch. It is not reduced to a simple boolean.
It's best to avoid cheap jabs that rely on boring and unthinking tropes that appeal to widespread prejudices rather than to informed reason.
This is not true at all.
And the claim about mission of the church and mission of the ai being the same is absurd. Or ai being authority. Like, the rest of that comment does not apply to ai at all.
In what sense is it not true?
> mission of the church and mission of the ai being the same is absurd
Did I claim that?
I just said any point you wrote against church representing powerful few is applicable to AI.
(Axiom: B has done X.)
A (to B): You have done X, and you should not have done so.
C: I note here that certain prior actions of A could also reasonably be characterized as X.
D (to C): Ah, here you commit the fallacy of "tu quoque".
This argument is not sound. It misunderstands the fallacy. (To be clear: Wikipedia describes the fallacy accurately; it's just that it's rare in practice, and very often falsely accused.)
Everyone should uphold the standards to which they hold others (and I consider it an obvious moral failing not to do so). The fallacy only applies where C either continues on to argue that B has, somehow, not actually done X (because A did); or, at least, clearly has the purpose of distracting from the fact that B has done X.
But there is nothing fallacious about simply pointing out that A does not live up to A's own implied standards. There is nothing fallacious about the implication that A is therefore being either i) dishonest about the anti-X belief, or ii) simply hypocritical. (To be fair, we don't know, from the given information, which of those is the case; but I think it's fair to say that neither is "fair dealing" and that A is thus a legitimate target of criticism regardless.)
It is also not fallacious for C to use this as a jumping-off point to argue that X is in fact okay to do, although of course this requires further support.
The Catholic Church has always had this go on.
Yes I do. I don't think you a prayer can literally transform wine into blood. How about you?
https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/arch...
283
> Transubstantiation means the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of his Blood. This change is brought about in the eucharistic prayer through the efficacy of the word of Christ and by the action of the Holy Spirit. However, the outward characteristics of bread and wine, that is the “eucharistic species”, remain unaltered.
Some deeper discussion around Aquinas' philosophy on the difference: https://iep.utm.edu/thomas-aquinas-metaphysics/#H4
But I'd say any Catholic who believes in the Eucharist would admit, yeah, it's a bit of an odd thing, especially by today's standards, to consume the blood of a sacrificed animal.
So you know, you might want to adjust your measuring stick before you critique people.
That claims is, very simply, a lie.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/arch...
283
> Transubstantiation means the change of the whole substance of bread into the substance of the Body of Christ and of the whole substance of wine into the substance of his Blood. This change is brought about in the eucharistic prayer through the efficacy of the word of Christ and by the action of the Holy Spirit. However, the outward characteristics of bread and wine, that is the “eucharistic species”, remain unaltered.
Edit: It's a catholic thing, and it's very silly (other denominations say its symbolic)
The simplification in the original in fact imploed that.
This message is not focused on u.s or its presidents. Its focused on leadership world wide.
And we shouldn't criticize them? Is that the point?
And the current President's ridiculous beliefs are just as ridiculous as believing in transubstantiation. Believing angels manifest on Earth and intercede in human affairs is no more rational believing that aliens are manifesting on Earth but are really demons, which Catholic VP JD Vance believes. The former is just more culturally accepted, and thus given the weight of dignity, but both are valid as far as a naive and literalist interpretation of the Bible is concerned, because demons exist in the Bible, but not aliens.
Either way, as much as the Pope is a silly man in a silly hat looking like a fucking wizard who is required to believe in supernatural nonsense while leading a corrupt den of pedophiles, he's also absolutely and objectively correct on this specific topic and it's clear he's put far more researched thought into his opinions on AI than 99% of people on HN. Hell, he even apologized for the Church's historical support of slavery, and many people here won't even concede that slavery was ever a problem.
Talk about nonsense.
Nope. Straight to hell. Do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect 200 virgins.
To be honest, I did have some very in depth conversations with religious friends, and it was enlightening. I am convinced that for them, it has some benefits.
But I know all this stuff is totally made up, so even if you can channel it to a good thing, I personally can never do it. And even though I won't say this to their face, part of me thinks, how can you believe this stuff.
https://www.wordonfire.org/articles/debunking-the-myth-of-va...
Its still true. The church gained massive amount of land in germany due to the fear they put into humans. Hell, purgatory etc.
The church owns 2% of land in germany. A f. church...
You don't have to agree with everything to Pope stands for to understand the potential dark paths AI could lead humanity to.
Uh, who?
Smoke of course; but did you find fire?