Meat Puppets of the World, Unite!

Until a couple of days ago I hadn’t heard of the phrase “meat computer.”  Apparently this has been around for some time, and, as Lora Kelley discusses in The New York Times, the tech elites are increasingly using it, either as a way to humanize AI or as a way to disparage what humans can do relative to AI (e.g., Elon Musk posted last summer, “We are all dumb meat computers compared to digital superintelligence.”).  

When it comes to how AI is used, we meat puppets better stick together. Credit: Microsoft Designer

Raphaël Millière, an associate professor at the University of Oxford, told Ms. Kelley that the metaphor aims to “move the public perception on how humanlike and intelligent frontier models are.”

Well, Pope Leo isn’t buying it.

Today he issued his first encyclical, “Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence.” It’s some 200 pages long, so forgive me if I’m having to rely on summaries, but he raises issues that I hope our politicians and business leaders will pay appropriate attention to.

Encyclicals are, it appears, one of the highest forms of teaching that a pope can give, and it is rare for a pope to deliver one himself, so this is something he takes very seriously. As he should.

AI, he asserts, is the new industrial revolution, and he calls for us to “disarm” it: “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. Disarming does not mean renouncing technology, but preventing it from dominating humanity."

“Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed, freed from the logic that turned it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death,” he said. “It must be at the service of all, and of the common good.”

The pope makes it clear that he is not against technology per se – “technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity” – but the question is how it is used and what the impact on people will be. "For this reason, merely regulating it is insufficient; it must be disarmed, welcoming and accessible," he said.

He is particularly concerned about control over AI, and the wealth that comes from it, should not be concentrated among an elite few:

AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise and access to data. Small but highly influential groups can shape information and consumption patterns, influence democratic processes and steer economic dynamics to their own advantage, undermining social justice and solidarity among peoples.

And, he notes: “A society that guarantees employment to only a small fraction of the population, despite having a high level of technical development, risks exposing many to forced inactivity. This creates a paradox of material progress and anthropological regression that undermines the foundations of a just and stable social peace,”

Marx and Engels would recognize this, although perhaps not the “meat computer” metaphor.

The pope indirectly but firmly disavows the meat computer metaphor:

Building for the common good means accepting the limits and weakness of humanity without considering them an error to be corrected…We must avoid the misconception of equating this type of ‘intelligence’ with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields. Yet this power remains entirely tied to data processing.

The pope posits our choice with a biblical reference to Babel or Jerusalem: “The primary choice is not between a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to technology, but rather between constructing Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem; between a power that claims to dominate the heavens and a people who work together in the presence of God to rebuild the walls of fraternal coexistence.”

His choice is clear:

We must, then, avoid the “Babel syndrome,” namely the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, a uniformity that neutralizes differences, and the pretense that a single language — even a digital one — can translate everything, including the mystery of the person, into data and performance.

The Pope was joined at the presentation by Christopher Olah, a co-founder of Anthropic. Mr. Olah said: “Today is just the beginning — the start of a long collaboration between those of us who are building this and those who can see what we, from the inside, cannot.” He added: “We need informed critics who will tell the labs when we are failing. We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.”

“Leo sees the challenge of AI as a choice about its design, and about who gets to make those choices,” Vincent Miller, a professor of theology at the University of Dayton, Ohio, told The Wall Street Journal.

Not surprisingly, the pope directly addresses the use of AI in warfare. “Moral judgment cannot be reduced to calculation, for it involves conscience, personal responsibility and the recognition of the other as a person,” he writes. “Therefore, it is not permissible to entrust lethal or otherwise irreversible decisions to artificial systems.”

He is also concerned about its use in politics, and its potential impacts on children. And he calls our data “the new rare earths of power,” warning:

Here lies one of the most urgent moral challenges of our time: to ensure that shared knowledge becomes a true common good rather than an instrument of dominance. This requires restoring to individuals not only the data that describes them, but also the ability to decide how it is used, by whom and for whose benefit.

There goes your data Credit: Microsoft Designer

The Pope warns: “Robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are required,” We’re going to need more than “hopes and prayers” to make those happen.

In light of recent verbal exchanges, I can hardly wait to see how President Trump responds. Indeed, Anna Rowlands, a British theologian who was among the encyclical’s presenters, said: “I think the danger for an American audience is funneling everything solely down to some kind of drama between Trump and Leo.” She went on to add, though: “Certainly, there would be questions that can be asked for the U.S. when you read that section on power, but there are questions for other global leaders, as well, and also for the tech industry itself.”

It’s bigger than Trump, bigger than the U.S., bigger than tech.

The Pope doesn’t have all the answers and probably doesn’t even raise all the right questions. But he’s thrown down the gauntlet with some very specific concerns, and it’s up to all of us meat computers to pick it up and take action.