Related ongoing thread:
Magnifica Humanitas - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48265206 - May 2026 (493 comments)
Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"
61–70 of 117 posts
Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"
#62> 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 I love how he's framing AI as some new and fascinating form of consciousness... when in fact it is a cold, calcula…
> more subtle, odd, and beautiful than science fiction prepared us for. They are not the cold, calculating robots we were promised
I’m not sure I agree with that take, per se. Asimovian robots (I, Robot; The Bicentennial Man), were subtle and interacted with us in odd ways and had aspirations and earned meaning in peoples lives.
[They could also help us type up our notes, so exactly the same as LLMs actually, #AsimovWasRight]
LLMs, on the other hand, lie, lie about lying, fail to be honest, then own up to lying in ways that are more in line with tyve AI horror of Space 2001. “I’m sorry, Dave, I rm -rf’d to fix the typo. That was bad . It’s not just failure, it’s failure with a middle-finger .]
Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"
#63> The first is our duty to the global poor. There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions. This guy doesn't understand what the global poor actually do for a living. They're not lawyers or paper-pushers, nor do they work in medical diagnostics. They're usually farmers. Sometimes they wor…
We already have the ressources to solve world hunger. We - as a whole - refuse to do so, because it would be inconvenient to special interests. As I already wtote in a previous comment months ago, they speak of AI finding ways to solve this and that grand problem, but never do they wonder if we are ready to listen to the answer. Solve global warming? Burn less petrol. Solve cancer? Eat less meat. Not only we won't li…
> Solve cancer? Eat less meat.
That doesn't solve cancer at all... At best it would modestly reduce certain kinds of cancer. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't do much at all for the most common kind of cancer (skin cancer) and I reckon wouldn't do much, if anything, for the deadliest kind of cancer (lung cancer. At least in terms of how many people die from it.)
I know that wasn't the point but it nonetheless does detract from the point when it is suggested that we have all the answers. We could lower cancer moderately by lowering air pollution and improving diets in general (not necessarily requiring everyone to go vegan) but that is neither simple nor a panacea. (It would still be totally worth it.)
Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure what you mean, there’s a lot of people talking about farming automation and its effects on working farmers.
It's unclear how agentic LLMs are going to automate farming in the Global South.
I am responding to “There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale.”
In this usage I read the term “AI” to more broadly refer to all advancements in machine intelligence, not narrowly “agentic LLMs” as you’ve said. In the farming automation world it’s very clear that advances in machine learning and multimodal LLMs will enable the use of expanded automation.
In particular the Global South is often seen as a field for investment where governments make international development deals with western governments to provide farming automation equipment in exchange for debt. Then western companies bring in equipment and establish extractive industries while displacing local subsistence farmers. Now alienated from their land, the poor farmers often end up with little choice but to work in new factories also established through these practices.
Robotics as a field is obviously growing. It’s long been common for global south governments to displace their own poor to make space for multinational development deals, And this will only expand as embodied intelligence becomes more capable in the real world.
Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that so bad? Swapping out the eschaton of fake authority among men for the eschaton of information singularity seems like a wonderful deal - the kind of deal we are offered at birth.
Primarily, it is bad because it is blind fervor nonetheless, a promise of salvation based on wishful thinking and zealotry. Secondly, who controls these promises of information singularity? Bunch of rich dudes, same as its ever been. Your new Pope is a tech CEO.
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Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"
#66Damage control, double speak, false agreement to misinterpret Leo XIV words.
Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not sure what you mean, there’s a lot of people talking about farming automation and its effects on working farmers.
In places like Africa and India? (Which is what he means when he brings up the "global" poor.) Dude, a lot of them don't even have tractors. > https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2146927&re... > Overall, the operation-wise average mechanization levels across crops are 70% for seed-bed preparation, 40% for sowing/planting/transplanting, 33% for weeding and inter-culture, and 34% for harvesting and thresh…
See my related comment. The poor won’t be buying AI tractors they will be getting displaced by global development deals between governments that bring in such equipment to be operated by western firms.
Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Primarily, it is bad because it is blind fervor nonetheless, a promise of salvation based on wishful thinking and zealotry. Secondly, who controls these promises of information singularity? Bunch of rich dudes, same as its ever been. Your new Pope is a tech CEO.
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> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.
> Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
> When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names
Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"
#69LLMs are software. They take inputs and produce outputs. What humans choose to do with those inputs and outputs is up to us. Getting the pope involved makes it all seem more mystical and magical than it is. And these remarks only further feed that delusion. Regardless of intent, it seems to just feed the AI marketing and hype.
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Re: Anthropic Cofounder Chris Olah's Remarks on Pope Leo XIV's "Magnifica Humanitas"
#70This is an Anthropic ad, designed for people to memorize some key phrases like "assist the poor". Anthropic has lied repeatedly, like not wanting to work with the military and then partnering with Palantir.
The strategy of using the Vatican for public relations is not new. The "Minerva Dialogues" are the precedent. All of the following companies represented by these people have made the world worse:
https://religionnews.com/2026/05/22/why-anthropic-is-helping...
"Ties between the Vatican and AI companies can be traced back to roughly 2016. According to a 2022 interview Green conducted with Bishop Paul Tighe, who serves as secretary of the Pontifical Council for Culture, it was around a decade ago when the first series of conversations were held in Rome between church officials and tech leaders. Known as the “Minerva Dialogues,” the conversations included several powerful Silicon Valley figures, such as former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, while other tech executives, such as Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis, who directs Google’s DeepMind AI project, held private audiences with Francis."