The first American pope has emerged as one of the most lucid critics of Silicon Valley in the artificial intelligence era.<\/p>\n
Pope Leo XIV has warned of \u201cthe extremely rich people who are investing in artificial intelligence, totally ignoring the value of human beings and of humanity\u201d.<\/p>\n
He has repeatedly called for AI development to prioritise serving humans rather than replacing or diminishing human dignity.<\/p>\n
In a social media post on X last year, he wrote: \u201cTechnological innovation can be a form of participation in the divine act of creation. It carries an ethical and spiritual weight, for every design choice expresses a vision of humanity.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Church therefore calls all builders of #AI to cultivate moral discernment as a fundamental part of their work \u2014 to develop systems that reflect justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life.\u201d<\/p>\n
The response to the head of the Catholic Church (which has about 1.4 billion religious followers) from some powerful corners of Silicon Valley has been mockery. Marc Andreessen, the billionaire venture capitalist (X followers: 2 million) who argued in The Techno-Optimist Manifesto that \u201cany deceleration of AI will cost lives\u201d, responded to the pontiff\u2019s statement on social media with a viral meme depicting a GQ interviewer raising her eyebrows as she asks the actress Sydney Sweeney<\/a> about her controversial American Eagle jeans advertisement<\/a>.<\/p>\n Please enable cookies and other technologies to view this content. You can update your cookies preferences any time using privacy manager.<\/a><\/p>\n Enable cookiesAllow cookies once<\/p>\n The investor, whose firm has backed AI companies including OpenAI and Mistral AI, later deleted the post following a public backlash.<\/p>\n Peter Thiel<\/a>, another billionaire venture capitalist, who is a self-described Christian and has warned of the perils of slowing down technological advancement, also appears to be rattled by the pope. <\/p>\n Speaking at an invitation-only lecture at the University of Cambridge last month, he speculated about candidates for the antichrist, warning of the danger of the pope becoming aligned with a \u201cwoke\u201d or anti-progress US president such as the left-wing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez<\/a>, according to The Spectator, which attended the event.<\/p>\n \u2022 Tempus: Is investment in Nvidia still a good bet?<\/a><\/p>\n Theologians are worried about grandiose visions emanating from Silicon Valley that suggest AI will solve all of our problems.<\/p>\n The importance of recognising AI\u2019s limitations, such as its inability to replicate human relationships, was a theme of discussion at a panel I was invited to speak on last week at Reuben College, Oxford, on the topic of \u201cGod and Silicon Valley: The Place of Religion in the Development of Artificial Intelligence\u201d.<\/p>\n Questions posed by academics during the event included: \u201cShould we anthropomorphise the machine? Will faith in tech replace faith in God?\u201d<\/p>\n The panel had been inspired by a column I wrote last year<\/a> on the rise of Christianity in Silicon Valley, as advances in artificial intelligence raise questions for tech workers, such as: \u201cWhat does it mean to be human, if we can be gods? Should we be gods?\u201d<\/p>\n Those concerns do not appear to be front of mind for the leaders of AI companies, who are embracing the Trump administration\u2019s green light to develop superhuman AI without guardrails, in a policy environment framed by the technological arms race between the US and China.<\/p>\n