For a man who roots for the Chicago White Sox (they did win their Wild Card series over the Astros), Pope Leo XIV keeps making strong, welcome choices regarding artificial intelligence.
The leader of the Catholic Church wrote a post on X Friday morning denouncing AI-generated “art” and confirming the church’s commitment to human artists and institutions.
“In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce,” the Pope wrote. “There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others.”
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“Algorithms lack the spark of humanity,” he continued.
Even despite some insane AI justification replies, many of the replies to Leo’s treatise are overwhelmingly in agreement. “AI cannot love its creations,” reads a personal favorite.
Not the first time
This isn’t the first time that Pope Leo XIV has positioned the Catholic Church against AI. In May, he wrote an encyclical letter calling for AI to be “disarmed” and emphasizing the importance of human dignity.
“It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till,” the Pope wrote, referencing Gandalf of Lord of the Rings.
The Pope’s human-first stance hasn’t stopped companies like Anthropic from pitching AI to religious leaders, including Pope Leo XIV. This week the New York Times reported that the company was trying to make the case that Claude has consciousness.
The newest Pope has not been afraid to use his platform to speak out against anti-humanity matters such as President Donald Trump’s push for immigration deportation and the war in Iran. He’s even apologized for the Vatican’s role in legitimizing slavery.
As AI development continues apace, it’s interesting to see one of the largest institutions in the world take a fervently anti-AI stance.
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