No one was surprised that Pope Leo XIV cited well-known saints and former pontiffs in its first encyclicalor papal letter of spiritual direction, “Great humanity», published Monday.
But the name that immediately jumped out at many readers is synonymous with high fantasy literature: JRR Tolkienthe Catholic author of Lord of the Rings.
Léon’s letter is concerned with “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence“, a major theme of his first year at the head of the Catholic Church. Inspired by his predecessor, Pope Francis, he warns against “the growing domination of a technocratic paradigm”, capable of “reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to simple cogs in a system pushed towards ever greater efficiency”. He again compares the rise of AI to the industrial revolution which took place from the mid-18th century to the beginning of the 20th century, alluding to the teachings of its namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who, in his own 1891 encyclical, affirmed the importance of workers’ rights and dignity in an era of technological upheaval and burgeoning capitalist empire.
The lengthy text further reinforces Leo’s position as an AI skeptic. But Tolkien’s nod is particularly salient given some retrograde interpretations of Middle-earth mythology by right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, which have long been derided by others. Lord of the Rings fans. One might even think that Leo is trolling. (The Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
Clearly, the Pope is somewhat concerned about the motivations of tech oligarchs who are rushing to develop artificial general intelligence that exceeds human capabilities. Do they really dream of using this tool to cure disease and solve climate change, or are they building engines of unlimited profit and cultural domination? It is when discussing our personal responsibility in fighting these dark forces that Leo borrows an idea from Tolkien’s famous wizard, Gandalf: “It is not our duty to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us to help these years in which we are, by uprooting evil from the fields we know, so that those who live after may have clean soil to cultivate.” »
This lesson is miles away from what Musk and Thiel apparently see in Tolkien’s masterpiece.
Thiel named his data analytics company Palantir, after the crystal ball used as a spying device by the treacherous sorcerer Saruman in the saga; he reportedly called his venture capital firm, the Founders Fund, “the precious“, this is what the twisted and greedy character Gollum calls the One Ring, a magical means of totalitarian power. Almost anyone who encounters Tolkien (or adaptations of his work) can see that he was writing about the corrupting effect of such power – in the novels, the temptation to rule inevitably undoes anyone who succumbs to it – yet Thiel seems to revel in the same possibilities of authoritarian control and omniscience as the villains.
Musk, for his part, suggested that Tolkien’s epic can be read as an anti-immigration, wall-building parable: “When Tolkien wrote about hobbits, he was referring to the gentlemen of the English shires, who are unaware of the horrors taking place far away,” he said. job the X in October. “They were able to live their lives in peace and quiet, but only because they were protected by the harsh men of Gondor.” He proposed this simply inaccurate memory of Lord of the Rings to defend British far-right Islamophbic agitator Tommy Robinson.
In fact, Tolkien’s depictions of marauding armies pillaging the land were inspired by the horrors of militarization and industrialization – two phenomena with which the English of Tolkien’s generation were more than familiar. His experience of mechanized horrors during the First World War is widely considered crucial inspiration for Saruman’s murderous campaign, which relied on the destruction of an ancient forest for fuel and the labor of brutalized orc slaves.
On the contrary, this allegory better suits Pope Leo’s criticism of the technological elite, those who sow division and inequality, direct their resources towards war, ravage the environment and seize power at all costs. (Neither Thiel nor Musk immediately responded to a request for comment on the encyclical.)
Thiel, at least, seems somewhat self-aware on this point, given his favorite allusions to Tolkien and Palantir’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Musk, even though he considers himself one of the heroes of history, supervised the bulldozing of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths all over the world and probably millions more future. And both continue to support a Trump administration that has harnessed AI for everything from racist propaganda to planning where to drop bombs in Iran– and, of course, I used Lord of the Rings has promote and promote ICE.
In this context, Leo shouting Gandalf could be seen as very deliberate.
A quote from this beloved figure in a treatise condemning a society that values efficiency above all else and concentrates immense power and wealth in the hands of a few, appears as a direct message to these people – intentionally or not. But with their written comprehension, who knows if it can pass.
