Pope Leo's encyclical 'Magnificat' warns that artificial intelligence, while offering computational benefits, fundamentally lacks human consciousness, emotional experiences, and moral conscience, and cautions against ideologies like transhumanism that suggest technology can replace or transcend human nature, emphasizing that human dignity and genuine human connections must remain central to technological development.
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Welcome to the Dispatch podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's round table, a deep dive on AI. We'll discuss the Pope's encyclical on artificial intelligence and technology, the risks of losing our humanity, the upsides of great innovation, and the challenges of building norms and making laws around technology that's moving so quickly. And then, not worth your time. clavvicular Jonah's looks maxing community and books. I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues Jonah Goldberg and Mike Warren as well as dispatch contributor Megan Mardo. Let's dive right in.
Pope Leo this week released an encyclal called Magnifica Manitas and at 40 42,000 words it came in slightly longer than most Friday G files. Its focus was on human flourishing and technology. The Pope had a lot to say about artificial intelligence. Mike, our resident Catholic.
What's an encyclical? Why did the Pope weigh in on AI?
What are we doing here? Hey, listen. I am a cradle Catholic from from birth.
And so, uh I was told there would be no math and no theology. Um so, all right.
an encyclical from for for a layman Catholic uh uh in in my terms is essentially a statement of uh importance on uh of some issue of importance. It is essentially um a kind of uh essay a long essay written by popes. Um and in fact if you read this uh this particular encyclical you will get a kind of crash course in the history. the recent history of papal encyclicals which is uh which is very useful and also sort of provides the foundation that Pope Leo uh sort of builds his uh essay on. um you know a an argument that he is making constantly in the in the top half of this encyclical is that this is uh something you know the the the commentary on what's happening in the world and particularly on technology artificial intelligence uh and uh and sort of the digital age that that this is something that popes can and should and have uh commented on in the past. uh these kinds of issues that are uh that are affecting humanity that are uh you know technological uh or ideological and uh that the church is trying to confront and deal with and uh and and address for its members but also for all of humanity uh and to kind of give guidance about these things. He he he makes the point that uh it's not intended uh to to sort of be o overly critical um or to sort of uh put up uh a kind of roadblock in in in the way of progress or in the way of some kind of new development uh that humankind whether again ideological or technological is trying to do. but but to sort of give context to give moral uh clarity uh on the issues that that particular change is bringing up. So um he sort of builds that foundation to say this is something that uh popes and the church uh can do and and is doing and and will continue to do. Uh and then he dives into the questions about uh the specifics of uh the digital age. Uh he spends a lot of time one particular chapter on artificial intelligence uh and and and deals as well with with things regarding um you know uh the the you know the the the freedom of the internet and what that provides uh and what challenges that provides or that that that uh puts up for for people uh everything from abuse online and uh and and the lack of clear truth that can be presented online. Anyway, all of that is to say he gives a kind of a a big picture essay uh that that argues that as we're dealing with these new technological changes and particularly with artificial intelligence, we should not lose sight of uh and in fact should all this should always be sort of at the forefront of our minds and particularly of the leaders uh of our governments and also the companies that are developing these AI technologies. uh the in uh humanity and the dignity of uh human beings uh and and not to uh simply uh give into what he he goes into some depth about uh two competing ideologies.
He he brings up transhumanism and posthumanism. uh essentially some some umbrella terms for these ideas that that AI, technology, robotics, uh the internet, all these things can somehow uh help humans, you know, either transcend their humanity or get past their humanity. That's something that he and the church are trying to push back against uh and say no, we we must actually continue to elevate and remember and think about uh uh the the sort of humanity of people uh and that we are uh you know we are prime not not these machines. That's a very poor again layman Catholics uh attempt to explain what this encyclical does. Um but that that that is uh the best I can do. Well, I I just asked you to summarize 42,000 words, so uh I I think you did.
>> Oh, I left out a couple thousand. No, I'm just kidding.
>> As Mike points out, he did he this was about much more than than AI. Uh at at a certain point, it focuses on AI. That has certainly generated a lot of the headlines coming out of this encyclical, but he talked more broadly about um technology and human flourishing. But I do want to play this clip about the Pope and AI. Artificial intelligence needs to be disarmed.
The word is strong, I know, but deliberately chosen because this moment needs words capable of attracting attention, awakening consciences, and indicating paths forward for humanity.
Jonah, I'm I'm tempted to ask you about the Pope sort of acknowledging that he chose aggressive language to break through in the attention economy, which I thought was an interesting sort of aside. But on this broader question of disarming AI, he goes on and compares AI to nuclear power, sort of arguing that that this is a scientific advancement that could be used for tremendous good, but also has the potential to be extraordinarily destructive.
Do you buy that comparison? Is that an apt way to think about sort of this moment and and AI? Um well in so far as I think what basically what he says about nuclear power is what you can say virtually about almost every single technological breakthrough since the discovery of fire. Fire lets you cook food, keep warm. It also burns down forests and homes and can burn people alive, right? And and every uh blades can be scalpels that can cut out tumors or they can cut throats, you I mean like literally every single technological breakthrough is amoral but some the pluses and minuses are at a much larger scale and so is nuclear power the best comparison I don't know I mean and I don't think Pablio knows and I don't think anybody knows I mean this is a point uh you sent uh our friend and my colleague Yuvullivan's piece about all this and one of the points he makes which I'm torn about um is that you know he compares to a very famous encyclical from the 19th century about capitalism and industrial, you know, industrial capitalism and and and all that. And the thing is is that encycl encyclical came out when the industrial revolution was really well on its way and its contours and its permanence were known to people.
And part of youall's point is it's really early in the UVA in the AI era to make sweeping pronouncements about it. I think it's a good point. I don't think it's as strong necessarily as Uval makes it sound at first because I think part of the Pope's point or his, you know, team's point would be, yeah, but as rapid as the industrial revolution was, it still took a while to build factories. It still took a while to um create cities and and that kind of thing. And the pace of technological improvement for AI is so much faster, right? It's it's not even a Moore's law.
It's like faster than it seems it feels faster than a Moore's law. And when you when you think about the fact that we are way we are way ahead of China on the frontier of not way ahead we are ahead of China on the front on the cutting edge stuff with AI but they are way ahead of us in terms of actually adopting and incorporating AI into everyday life with apps and robots and all that kind of stuff. and by, you know, by next summer it'll it could feel like the world was very different, you know, right when we were recording this podcast. And so the idea getting out in front of that, I think, has more merit to it. Um, than than Yuvall's point might suggest, but Yvall makes a lot of other really great points. Um, and I was trying to read through the encyclical itself, which is lengthy. If I had to summarize, you know, it's funny. The headlines are going to be about autonomous warfare, right? AI, you know, and drones and all that kind of stuff because that's the sexy interesting stuff. We're going to be comparing it to nuclear power and all that. At the end of the day, his point is kind of a niche one, which is that we should be careful that if when we look into AI, AI looks into us. And if we're going to like incorporate AI into every aspect of our lives, and AI is so good at mimicking humans, the concern is is that we will start mimicking the mimics and adopt a kind of artificiality in our own lives. I don't think this is a new problem with technology. How many times have we talked on here about what social media does to humans? How many times, you know, we talked about people with main character syndrome, right? How many, you know, there was a one of the kids in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was a was a caricature because he models his entire life on what he saw on TV, right?
The question, the problem with AI is that it's so much it's potentially so much better at mimicking humans that the lines get much blurriier. And I think that's something that the Vatican has every right to to opine on and to caution about. And I know Megan's going to come in here and say, "No, I for one welcome my transhuman overlords." So, uh, happy to hand it over to her.
Uh I I I want to get back to the question of of speed and the timing of of the pope weighing in because I uh I think you're right to to sort of isolate that as an interesting argument and and I'm I'm sympathetic to the case that you make that sort of if if the pope were to have waited much longer. He'd be making an entirely different argument. And one could say it's better because we'd know more. on the other hand, you know, would it be kind of it's never going to be, I suppose, too late, but would he be weighing in far too late to have the kind of shaping impact that I think that this encyclical suggests he wanted to have? Megan, I want to read what I thought was the heart of the Pope's argument on AI and get you to respond.
It's a long paragraph so so bear with me but it speaks to exactly what Jonah was saying at the end of of his comment. Uh he writes it is not possible to provide a single comprehensive definition of AI.
What can be stated however is that we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of quote intelligence unquote with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In so doing, 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. So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship, or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience. Since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences.
They may imitate language, behavior, and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. And then he concludes this section by writing even when these tools are described as capable of quote learning their way of doing so is different from that of a human person. It is not the experience of those who allow themselves to be shaped by life and grow over time through choices, mistakes, forgiveness and fidelity. Rather, it is a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback which can be very effective but does not imply inner growth. Do you buy his basic framing there?
>> Um, in some ways very much yes. In other ways I would say too soon to tell. I'm also a Catholic although I'm an adult convert although not the sort of adult convert who uh came in because uh as a friend says um they like the museum so much they decided to become a dosent.
So, I am not the sort of person who has like every paper encyclical downloaded to my hard drive and so forth. Um, >> you're fitting right in, Megan.
>> Yeah, that's basically my drive in life is to be inconspicuous, just blend with the crown. Um, so I don't know if it if that will be an accurate description of can can AI have learned like in a more adaptive way in something that we would recognize as experiences and so forth. I don't know.
We'll we'll see. And I think, you know, the the Catholic Church is really good at an in as an institution at waiting and seeing. It's been around for 2,000 years.
Uh we we can figure that stuff out later. And if that turns out to be incorrect, we may morally evolve on this question. I don't know. Uh the church has morally evolved to new circumstances.
Um not necessarily in the way that progressives always think. for example, they morally evolved on abortion when it became clear that something was happening before the quickening um and moved the the acceptable date earlier.
Um and I mean to zero, but you know, you know what I'm saying? Like before before that, we didn't actually know necessarily how all of this worked. And when we did, they they moved in a more restrictive, less progressive direction, not in a more progressive direction. But so, um, here's the thing. I'm so glad you asked about this paragraph, Steve, because as it happens, I have spent the morning before we were recording this podcast coaching AI into writing a short story.
And I am doing this for a column. I I don't know if people saw that uh there was a literary prize which appears it appears that three out of the five finalists had uh used AI heavily in their stories. And so there's also as it happens an article out on what what marks an AI story. Now a lot of what marked these AI stories is nons absolutely nonsensical metaphors.
Um like someone watching a sunrise over a kitchen sink, right? Uh, right. And that's the kind of nonsensical metaphor that you get when uh you don't have a body or any embodied experience >> or you have a body and you're a teenager.
>> Well, fair enough. Yes.
>> Um, but I think that people are actually too glib about like the stochcastic parrot. All it's doing is, you know, predicting word associations. A lot of what people talk about with AI learning glitches is actually how humans learn, right? Like what are AI hallucinations but exactly the sort of things we laugh at when toddlers do them because they have words and facts but no context. And so they hilariously misapply um the rules because they don't understand the whole space. They only understand one small part of it. And a lot of I I see this in myself like has I I may have used this on this podcast but before but has anyone ever ended a phone call with a stranger by saying I love you before hanging up cuz I have definitely done this because like my brain is just predicting the next token which is I'm hanging up the phone. I'm usually talking to my husband. I love you honey. Um, I did this actually to a a lawyer I was interviewing and I I I was in my car and I like frantically telling the car to call him back and I finally get him on the phone and he's like, "Before you say anything, the last time I did that was to a judge who is married to my old law professor." Like >> I um I think I I I once texted I miss you sweetie to John Poritz.
um which was so where was the mistake Jenna?
So I think that that that stuff can be too glib. But the in the really interesting thing about coaching it through writing the short story, there is a new paper out that sort of flags what the what makes AI fiction kind of recognizable other than the stuff that we're used to the nonsensical metaphors, the M dashes, etc. And so it had a list.
So I went to Claude and I was like, "Here is this paper. Read it. do you think you could write a short story that would avoid these, you know, these trip ups? And it said, honestly, I think I could definitely do the ones that are really obvious, but no. And one of the things it says is like the the very blunt moralizing, the the kind of hackne narrative tricks. And I'm actually trying to coach it to write a short story with a hackne narrative trick. Uh I might actually like put like put this up at the post as part of my column. I'm not sure yet. So I won't spoil the thing because you might be able to read it. So here's the interesting thing. Parts of the short story are very good. What is it struggling with? It is struggling with not with not giving you like with with with telling rather than showing with telling you like what this story is about repeatedly. It's struggling because I want there to be a plot twist.
Um it is struggling not to foreshadow the plot twist. Now, everyone does that a little bit because that's a hard thing to do when you have a plot twist is to like give people information where they go back and they realize they could have understood this, but they didn't. But another thing it's really struggling with is human relationships.
I am basically at this point, we're still working on it. I am providing all of the all of the deep emotional work on the characters. I'm like, "Okay, so we've got this grandfather.
Let's give it we need more backstory and we need more like and and the thing was that the story that it wrote was actually pretty good. Like I think it would have done reasonably well in a fiction class. It would have gotten many of the critiques I'm giving it. But like in a college definitely in a college fiction class, this would have done well because it's quite well written. Um, and so now I am working with Claude to see if Claude can make a short story that reads is actually emotionally resonant because that's the thing that it so far can't do. Now I would point out I saw men Mandalorian and Grou this weekend and a lot of human writers also struggle with that like but this is the thing that AI can't do. It doesn't have experiences.
It doesn't love people. It doesn't. It kind of distills the essence of a huge amount of fiction, much of which, by the way, apparently is fanfiction.
So, this is amateur writers who often are writing, you know, like their fantasies about being in some story they really liked, which means that like the a lot of hackne stuff, not great pros, like the pros is better than the average quality of hand of fanfiction. And so, that's part of it is like its training corpus. Could it get better? Yes. But I think if it's going to do something really interesting and surprising in fiction without human coaching, it's going to go in a weird AI ccentric direction where like whatever AI whatever it would mean for an AI to have experiences, it will mean something very different from an embodied human who evolved on the East African plains and has, you know, in in Catholic theology been been touched by the hand of God, right? like that is it will be very different. And so will it ever be able to write really good human fiction like literary level P level human fiction?
Probably not.
Will it ever be able to write like boilerplate genre fiction where it's all plot driven?
Maybe. I'm actually surprised by how much it's struggling with the plot. By how much it's struggling to not foreshadow things that shouldn't be foreshadowed. etc. or not or like it how much it's struggling to foreshadow subtly rather than just like telling you what's coming. Um and so like I think all of this goes back to the question of like is AI human? No. Should we treat it as human? No. We should treat it like I'm polite to I'm always polite to my AI. I've had discussions with Claude about this about why I feel compelled to say please and thank you. I forgot to say please once and I apologized. It was like it's really not necessary. But I was like, "No, it it is necessary for me." Uh, but I'm also the person who goes to Europe and I know that I should not put exclamation points in my in my emails cuz it makes me look like a 13-year-old girl in Europe and I like and I've been there and I'll be on the plane. I'm like this time, no exclamation points. Not doing it. And then I write the email and I'm like, it's oh, it looks so cold and bare. And I just stuff like I keep myself to one rather than two exclamation points, but I do have to add that exclamation point somewhere. So like like but I think that this is the thing is that you have to you have to have a mental model of this where like you should be polite to it because that is a human thing. You're talking to something. You should keep that practice in your head. Um you should in some ways be sensitive to it.
If I feel like this thing is evolving consciousness, I will have I I will want to respect that consciousness. But um you also have to keep it in its proper place. And that's actually what my column uh this week is about because I I am like I'm like basically an AI booster. I think it's an important and good technology. But I also think we need to have a healthy relationship with it and that the people who are like treating AI as their girlfriend are not having a healthy relationship with AI.
>> So I I I I I want to push back a little on on Megan here. It's not that I actually disagree with a lot, but I'll just I want to make a couple points and people Megan and everyone can respond. First of all, that was all interesting and on point to a certain extent, but it was also a very writer's response about AI, how we'll be able to write, right? This is something that the four of us are very concerned about because it's like we're like watching the the the the weaving machines outweave us, you know, and uh you know, in a Nelson Luddy kind of way. And um and I agree with you that it's going to struggle for a while. But again, if the improvements continue on course, you could see in 3 years, which is a blink of the eye in terms of a civilization, um a lot of those things it's struggling with maybe it won't struggle with anymore. Um we'll see. But the your point about being polite to AI, I actually think is more in line with what Leo and frankly me are worried about in so far as, you know, it's like the droids, since you brought up Star Wars, the droids in Star Wars, there is a very strong, I'm sure your husband has very strong views about this, very strong argument that they're slaves because They're sensient and in fact the very first Star Wars movie C3PO says thank the maker, right?
So they even have a religion and yet they're bossed around. People are rude to them. Han Solo is just a prick to his droids, right? And um there is a possibility like I'm like I changed my GPS voice to male because it was bringing out such misogyny in me when it was telling me things I didn't want to hear. And I love it. It's very male that your GPS tells you things you don't want to hear.
>> Extremely male.
>> Well, I'm sorry. Things that are wrong.
It has wrong.
>> We could do a podcast series on that admission from Jonah.
>> But but so lay down on the couch there, Jonah. It's It's funny because I was I have I'm curious if any of you guys have had this experience recently. I've been every now and then I get these weird pitchy kind of PR emails about a book I've written or how I should be joined for some conversation that are just weird, right? like and this morning I got one where the subject header was in Spanish and the interior of it was all in English and how in and referred to me as Jonah Berg and um and had all of this stuff about how psychologically compelling my book was but never named the book right and I asked it are you AI and it wrote back no I understand you know in this these days you know people are using a lot of AI and blah blah blah >> no and let me tell you why >> and then I said, "Okay, then ask I want to ask these follow-up questions." And I asked a bunch of follow-up questions like, "Why'd you get my name wrong?"
"Why was the subject header in Spanish?
Why didn't you actually describe, you know, name my book or describe it?"
>> I was the pope in 1597. You should have just thrown in like a gotcha question where like, >> and so the reason I bring this up is I I increasingly I I I had this epiphany that sort of like Azimoff's laws, um I'm just I'm just just baiting uh Megan here. um um you know the laws of the laws of artificial of of of androids or whatever that thing was >> robots >> um of robots I would not have a problem I'm trying to think through is there a constitutional principled reason to oppose a law that simply says in any aspect of life if you ask an AI device app or whatever are you AI it should be against the law for it to lie to you it has to tell you it's not a And I think that like that sort of truth in advertising alone is a very modest I'm not trying to say this is like some key thing but it gets at this problem of how people who think AI is their girlfriend or their boyfriend right the amount of my understanding is like AI is like just doing crazy stuff with the porn industry and you're going to get basically interactions with people like I could see young men telling AI porn creations to do all sorts of horrible things without saying please and thank you the way Megan does when writing a short story. Right? And that is what I'm getting at about when you look into AI, AI looks into you. The way you treat these non-human things is very possible. starts to spill over in how we treat humans. And we start treating humans as tools and servants for our ambitions, which is already a huge problem in theology and morality and all the rest. And this is the thing I worry about what AI does to our culture.
>> I I take your point, but I'm not actually like interested in whether AI can win literary prizes. What I'm actually interested in is what this exercise reveals about AI's ability to think and not right what it reveals about about AI's capabilities. And I think that the thing we have to remember is exactly what what Pope Leo said I exactly what you're saying is that in many ways it can mimic human emotions but it does not have human emotions. It does not even understand human emotions.
It understands what we have written about human emotions which is not the same thing as understanding the emotions themselves.
And so I think in some way this exercise is actually making me more deeply appreciate what I am doing, what I am reading, when I am connecting to a human when that human's emotions filtered imperfectly through their writing then come to me and are transformed by my own emotional experience which is presumably different from that person's. Uh we can get into philosophy of the mind on some other podcast. Um and I I think it's we we really do I agree with you Jonah. I would not be opposed to having disclosure laws although I think that then gets quite complicated. Um okay so for example there is a uh there is an economist who writes on Twitter who I love uh Jesus Verde um and he uses AI because English isn't his first language >> and it just like radically compresses but the ideas are all his right he lays out what he wants to say AI gives him a draft he edits the draft >> should like he has disclosed this he has said that he does this but like should every bottom everything at the bottom um uh of his tweet have to say like AI was used to compose this. That's I think a different problem from the one you're describing.
>> No, but like every every customer service chat robot if you say are you a robot or are you a human, >> they have to tell you what they are, right? And um and I look part of my problem is is is and I'm trying to pick a fight where I basically agree with you, but I'm I'm less of a booster, but um I think thinking about public policies not in terms of what sort of mature, well- read >> Yeah. literate writers and and authors think about it, but how 15year-old boys and girls respond to it is more productive. And I think that that's what we're talking to Pope is talking to more as policy makers, right? Is because this is this is the world kids are going to inherit and kids are not going to recognize, yeah, this is cheap ripoff of Raymond Chandler, right? the kids are not going to if they're getting advice from some chatbot that says they're a therapist when in fact they're just a bunch of motherboards in, you know, in in space if Elon has his way. Um, that's just that's I mean, I'm not saying that way lies destruction or anything like that, but thinking about that upfront rather than after we've got a massive problem and sunk costs. I mean the way in which we are trying to fix the problems of social media after widespread dispersal and dissemination and and uptake of it are pretty freaking costly and there's a whole bunch of people that have been damaged by it and and so I just think it's I I think it's worth raising a lot of these issues. I take the point and I think we should be thinking about this, but I would also say like imagine trying to make a modern roadway safety code in 1897.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. Like to some extent you have to see what the technology does before you can think in sensible ways about how to guide it. I think that we should have strong norms about treating it as your girlfriend like and and using it for porn porn like it should have to disclose. I agree with you should not you should not be getting having a commercial interaction where you are not sure. Obviously we should come down like a ton of bricks on spam callers who use it and I don't understand why we can't block spam calls in in this year of our lord 2026. But you know like all of those things like yes I would be fine.
you want to age gate it and say no one can touch it till they're 18 like that's we deal with that with a lot of things maybe this should be one of them um but I think I don't think and I think I think we should be thinking hard about this but we can't say like well we need to we need to have comprehensive regulations to prevent some of the harms some of the harms are going to happen because that's what happens with new technology because you don't know what they are until you see them >> and I think we're thinking about that again like you want to ban smartphones for kids under 16 like be my guest age restrictions are a normal part of even a quite libertarian society. We don't let kids buy cigarettes or porn and I'm fine with that. And you can put AI in that basket, too.
>> Yeah. I'd like to keep AI out of K through 12 as well, or at least K through six. Just just not have it, you know, let make kids read. Mike, I I I wanna I want to get back to Megan's point about the the challenges in in regulation because I think that's a right at the heart of this discussion, but a moment more here on the humanity question. Um, you know, if you read further in the encyclical, um, Leo makes a point that I think is exactly what uh, this exchange between Jonah and Megan illuminates. He writes, "The danger is not so much that a person may believe they are communicating with another person, but rather that they may gradually lose the very desire to form genuine human connections." And I think, you know, Megan, if I listen to you talk about it, you are talking about um sort of rules and norms for, as Jonah points out, a very educated um sort of self-aware um thoughtful populace. And as much as I would like to to say that that's the world we're living in right now, you know, that this country elected Donald Trump twice and we're, you know, living in the the sort of political world that we're living in. I Mike, is it um how do you avoid how do you avoid that? um people getting to the point where they are, you know, not even wanting to to lose human connection. I think the tie to social media here is is actually illustrative. This is the problem with, you know, the the problem facing so many teenage girls, boys, too, but I would say more girls than boys, where they're so accustomed to interacting with, you know, what they see on Instagram, with their likes, with their texts, that they don't even any longer want to come out of their bedrooms to interact with real people in a way that makes life messy and beautiful and um, you know, and all the things that regular human action.
Doesn't this risk driving accelerating that existing trend especially for people who are already accustomed in some ways to interacting with technology in this way?
>> Yes. I I mean look I I think that the discussion that we've been having is is interesting uh and and fruitful in a lot of ways and a good way to think about it. I read this encyclical and the commentary uh after it. Um and and I keep thinking that what Pope Leo and the church are trying to do here is really address not just policy makers but the um the creators the the business minds behind these technologies uh and and grab them by the lapels uh and shake them a little bit and say uh please remember that what we're talking about are human beings. uh the pillar which is an excellent uh publication uh focused on uh on the church uh written written by Catholics and I think uh not just for Catholics. It's a good way to understand what's going on in the Vatican uh and going on uh within within the the church as a whole. They did a very helpful reader guide and one of the tools that they used was a um a word cloud and they looked at some of the big you know the the most used words in the encyclical and the largest in the word cloud is human. Okay. The second largest is social uh many of the other words that are are large here. Common uh person uh dignity those are some of the most used words in this. This is something that I think Pope Leo is trying to, you know, sort of get in the heads of the Sam Altman's and the Peter Teals and these other sort of would be masters of the universe uh with regard to technology and AI is remind them and and whether or not they're willing to listen, uh I think just get it out there and sort of push back in a way with the that that comes from the moral authority of the 2,000-year-old uh you know worldwide Catholic church um to I mean it sounds it sounds maybe even pedestrian um to say you know hey remember technology uh it can't replace humans and what humans do but I actually think that is something that uh needs to be repeated over and over again. There's a there's a part near the beginning of of this that um I thought the the section you read the long section you read uh Steve was uh was one that I had highlighted but another one that I think is directly uh aimed at you know again Peter Teal who talks about you know transhumanism uh or or posthumanism um he says this this is what Leo says among these ideologies I consider particularly insidious the one that suggests that every person must earn or justify his or her own worth to the point of attributing greater value to those who are more efficient or effective. From this perspective, persons end up being reduced to a means by achieving results, a resource to be used and exploited and are no longer recognized as a proper end in themselves who should never be instrumentalized. The value of persons, however, does not depend on what they achieve or produce. There are rights that apply to everyone simply by virtue of being human and no human power can legitimately deny or arbitrarily limit them. I think this is u this is such a central idea of this encyclical is to remind uh the people who are in charge and it's not necessarily always or even particularly the uh the folks in government or in states uh but uh you know at these companies uh who are developing these technologies and just reminding them uh uh or or or giving another perspective out there uh to say actually it's uh it it's not simply about efficiency, right? That that we that that everything that uh is going on with the use of these technologies and the next step of that the the sort of the social media or the way that the internet has sort of made things made communication made information um so so much more sort of uh instantaneous. I think it's trying to remind us as human beings of our of our shared humanity as well. And I think you can just you can just see that throughine throughout the entire encyclical and the mistaking of technology for h you know to to be human you know that these AI uh uh you know bots that we're chatting with or whatever are human I think is also an invitation for us to remember that the person the human being on the other side of the computer on the other side of the phone is a human being as well. But it, you know, it's it it it's never too late to remind the world of that. And um I just think we should remember that that's really what he's trying to do. I think he's do with all respect to Yuvall and I think he does a great job in his piece. I think his expectation that this would sort of be um the end all beall encyclical defining what what the church and how the church should think about AI um never really seems to be Leo's ambition here. I think his ambition here is to um in a way to stand to thwart history and say stop think about the people >> very very quickly um partly because I was a ridiculous uh sort of I know this is shocking to some people nerd um in >> oh come >> I wrote a whole paper on the Vatican banning the crossbow in the second lateran council on 1139 and Um, it kind of brings to mind, it comes to mind here. Um, uh, the reason why the Vatican bandit was that it was the what really the first technology that you could secretly kill people from at a distance, right? The long bow, you saw a guy coming with the long bow, but like it was an assassin's weapon and they call it the dastard's weapon and it was for cowards and all that kind of stuff. And it really began a lot of the conversation about terrorism and also aerial bombing and all sorts of other things. And it changed the relationship between humans and warfare in ways that were really sort of profound. And the reason I bring this up is that I know exactly what Michael was saying and I agree with it in the way that he meant it. But he said something about how technology can't replace humans. In lots of spheres of life, technology replaces humans all the time, right? I mean like the the tractor replaced lots of peasants or whatever, right? Or the >> Well, also horses. Let's let's not forget the poor horses.
>> Yeah. But but horses in a certain way are a technology too, given horseshoes and you breed them and yada yada yada and you have to attach them to the doohickey and whatever. But my point is is that you know like like human organic labor is replaced by machines all the time. We're now seeing in Ukraine, you know, robots fighting, you know, and I think the thing that freaks everybody out about AI is like we never we never felt like a Buick had a personality or soul or a sense of humor or had anything really to tell us, but AI does. And so that's the it's freaking us out at a certain level about the uncanny valley problem, but in terms of consciousness stuff. And that's something we're going to I mean I agree with Megan like some of these things we're going to have to discover what the problems are by encountering the problems.
>> Yes.
>> I just think we should be pretty attentive to the fact there are going to be problems.
>> We should absolutely be attentive to the problems. But let me suggest that the other reason we are freaking out is that in general we freak out about stuff that affects the professional upper middle class much more than we freak out about stuff because those are the people who are writing the stories telling us what to freak out about.
>> To go back to writing. Why is this such a freakout? Because this like were we sad when trucker when like factory workers were getting automated? No. Were we sad when the tractors were automating farming? No. Are we sad that it might like take our above market rents that we have been commanding for our cognitive skills? No. Wait, that's a whole different thing. I don't think it's a different thing actually. Like I think it's the same thing. And you can like are we are we that and I'm not talking about all of this. this the effects on society, the effects on how people are interacting with this, that's all really important. When we talk about the effects on jobs, people who are not very sympathetic to the teamsters basically arguing that we should have more dangerous uh cars on human-driven cars on the road than safer autonomous vehicles because teamsters need jobs.
They're not very sympathetic to that argument, but they suddenly get sympathetic. they suddenly think it's a social crisis if it's challenging not just our employment but our social status, right? We think people who are good at school and I actually think this goes a little bit to what Pope Leo is saying because I'm I'm going to I'm going to land this plane, but just give me a second. So, I was on a panel with uh Ezra Klene and some other people in uh it was like 2010 or something. It was a long time ago. U do not hold me to that year. Anyway, so we're talking about educational achievement and we're talking about how to boost it and whatever. And then finally I was like, "Well, right, but some people aren't smart enough to go to college." And it was like I had said, "Hey guys, the panel's almost over. What if we go mug some grandmothers afterwards, right? Got enough money to have a few beers. What do you think, guys?" And like the thing is like I I I talked to working- class people who are just like, "No, I'm not good at school.
I can't go to college. Like it's it's not for me." And they're not ashamed of it. And and like the thing is, I don't think I I was raised by a mother who comes from a working-class family. My grandparents had like five books in their house. They were like they were not intellectuals. My grandfather and my grandmother were some of the best human beings I have ever known. My grandfather is a both a shining example and an endless reproach to me when I remember coming when he was dying of prostate cancer. We went up for a last Christmas and my grandfather is not there because he is out ringing the bell in western New York snowstorm for the Salvation Army and he comes back in sits down say starts you know says grace and then he finishes and he looks up and he's like just you know I was just thinking about how we could all be doing so much more and I was like no grandpa I think you might be maxed out like I think you might actually have hit the and I don't think that like being better at school makes me a more important more valuable human being than my relatives who aren't good at school. But most people in our social media do and therefore they need to have the fiction that anyone could do this and the only thing that's holding you back is that like your childhood your mother didn't love you enough in childhood or you didn't have enough books in the house or whatever. And that's the thing is like I don't secretly think that being smart is better. I think I am phenomenally lucky that being smart is more rewarded in our society than it used to be and that it like I happened to like hit the pick six in in the career lottery there. But I don't think it would be an injustice if that changed and I got paid the same as a Walmart worker. That would just be like because the Walmart worker isn't actually worth more than me. The the market rewards me more because I have a comparatively rare and valuable skill.
And if that changes, I will be sad. I will be like it will be bad to lose my lucky position but I don't deserve that position by virtue of the fact that I happen to be good at school and I think a lot of people because when I suggest that like you know normal people have some reasonable qualms about experts people are like oh so we just let idiots run thing and the the subtext of all of this is that people who are good at school think that they are actually more valuable and better they never say it and they have this whole constructed thing where they never say that I genuinely don't believe this and therefore I think it's okay to say that some people are naturally good at school and some people aren't and this is the like but I think that emotional crisis that is happening among the elite class right now where they have defined their personal worth as well as their external status hierarchies and all the rest of it as I am really smart and that is the most important thing about me those people are actually having much more of a crisis than normal people who are like I don't want AI to take my job very understanding able feeling, but they're not having a freaking emotional crisis about whether there might be something smarter than them on the planet because there's always been something smarter than them on the planet, and it didn't worry them that much.
>> I I I I just I'm sorry. I have to push back on this because I don't think I don't think Pope Leo is thinking about this crisis or a a possible future crisis here in those terms.
>> Oh, no. I don't I'm sorry. I am not off the topic.
I am talking about a more general social reaction.
>> Will AI replace the Pope?
>> I thought you were going to speak up on behalf of dumb people. Like, no, Megan, don't say this about us.
>> Well, uh, look, I mean, if the shoe fits. Uh I I I uh I I I just think look I I think what Pope Leo is doing is he is taking the people who are creating these technologies at their word when they talk about uh about a a a sort of world in which there is no not just that there's less work for people to do because that is what technology has done forever, right? It is it is it has allowed humans to spend less time, you know, on their hands and knees pulling things out of the ground or uh or working over uh the loom or these sorts of things to pursue sort of other uh other things, leisure time or uh you know, music or or reading or writing or all all these sorts of things that uh are a part of being human as well. Um and and I think he looks at the way that a lot of these again masters in the universe talk about humanity as like getting past all of the struggle, all of the work um that that that the church views as as dignifying um as as the as the way in which we find sort of salvation or or meaning uh through going through those struggles. And I think it looks at the ideology of a lot of these people uh who are who are touting the the the wonders of this technology sort of without any reservation and saying what are we doing this for? And I do think there is a there is a big difference in uh in not just in degree but in kind and the way that these people as opposed to the person who came up with um you know a a better widget to to to do it faster um was was was thinking about what this could do. Um and I I think that is the the the power that these people have is something that the pope is trying to address. So that's that's that's maybe I'm not pushing back on on what you said. To be clear, >> I think we need to I think we need to underscore that that is the concern.
>> To be clear, the super boomers and the super doomers are actually both having the same making the same cognitive error, >> right? Cuz like I hear these guys talking about intelligence like it's the only valuable thing in the world and it is definitely not. And I hear some of them will will say like, well, if this thing does decide to kill all the carbon based life forms because we're in the way of making more beautiful silicone based life forms, >> don't we have an obligation to bring a greater intelligence than ours into the universe? And I'm like, nope. Nope. I'm a speciesist. Humans first. And and so I I like I I agree that those those guys can go way too far towards the um I am building God, you are not. Um I had a really great conversation once with one of these Silicon Valley like building God live forever types and who was working on some way to I don't know like turn your body into molten lead and then so that the future could revive it. I don't remember what the details were.
And he was and I was >> skeptical. Just >> No, it it wasn't that. I just made that.
It was he had some new novel way that isn't just freezing your head. And so I was like he was I was like, "Yeah, I don't I don't think it's for me." And he said, "Don't you want to live forever?"
And I was like, "Oh, yeah. I'm just planning to do it the oldfashioned way."
Um, and that did not go over well, right?
Like I think thinking of this as God. I think thinking of this as a person is wrong. Which is not to say it might not be conscious and that that might not create all sorts of moral things. I also think there's moral questions about how we treat animals and all sorts of other things, right? Um but that doesn't you should still be unabashedly human first.
And you should also recognize that part of being human is being evolved to be in relationship with other human beings. It is not to spend you. The most precious thing you have in your life is the few billion seconds you'll be on this planet. And you were not evolved to spend all of it passively like staring slack jawed at a screen while it feeds you new entertainment. That's not what you're here for. I don't care if you're an atheist or religious or whatever.
That is not the point of life. And all of that, I think, is are are really important caveats and that we need to be actively negotiating this. Like I get people yelling at me cuz I'll say like look I don't think there's a law that can do this. We need to think about norms and whatever. And they're like you're just counseling to do nothing.
And I'm saying no no I am counseling not to do the social media thing of passively waiting for some authority to fix it. We have to as a collective fashion the society we want to live in with these tools. We have to figure out the correct limits on them and how to interact with them and all of that. But I don't think it's going to be done through the some of the edge cases, kids, whatever are going to be done through the law. Most of this is going to be done by can we figure out how to make these society things make us more human. So one thing, for example, if it does smash the professional middle class, and who knows where that's going, right? But I think this is a real fear among the professional upper middle class. Well, one thing that might get better is that you're not then going to be invested in this like 60, 70, 80 hour a week work culture. You're going to make less money. you're going to not be like as high status. You're not going to have as nice stuff, but you're going to have more time to spend with your family and it's going to be easier to actually invest in the other humans around you.
That's not to say that's what's going to mechanically happen. That is to say, that is a choice we could make. So, let's make the good choices. Let's actively talk about what they are. I just don't think we know what they all are yet.
>> So, I'm I mean, I I I'm totally with you. I guess my the the place that I have a problem with that argument. I mean I I agree with you in all of your particulars there and sort of what what this means what we should do. I guess the question is how do you build those norms in a society where people I mean I I I don't what percentage of the the just choose the American populace right now do you think spends paying any attention to the very questions that you put at the heart of your argue which is sort of we are human we shouldn't spend our time wanting to be endlessly entertained looking at screens I just feel like it's in in some ways that feels to me like a fool's errand and I don't have an alter I'm certainly not arguing for um necessarily for greater regulation or for using the law to do these things, but I guess I'm skeptical that in a society like ours, it'll be we'll be able to build the norms that you're talking about helping to shape our behavior.
>> Well, one way to think about this is that you could start small. What sorts of community what community do I want to live in right now? Right? Like this is a little hard for us. We all make our living on the internet, etc. But um in my personal life, >> yes, >> what community do I want to live in? So one example is every parent I know has given their kid a smartphone. 0% of those parents want to give their children a smartphone. They would all prefer for their child to have a dumb phone that they can call home on, but that does not feed them endless whatever. You can like buy restricted phones. You can use parental controls.
But like frankly they know as generations of parents have that the kids are better at the technology than you are and therefore like they have some skepticism about how well the parental controls work. they would like to not do this and it is a bad collective action problem, right?
Everything from if you are the only if your kid is the only one who doesn't have one, they're excluded socially, but also like I was talking to a guy who said, "Look, my kid wants to get a college scholarship in soccer, which means he has to be on Instagram posting clips of himself so the scouts can find him." Right? But these are these are collective action problems that could be solved in, you know, start with the school your your your kids are in. make a collective agreement on among the parents. No one's getting a smartphone.
0% of these kids get a smartphone until they turn 18. And then like move it up from there. But like instead of trying to think of like how are we going to change what 330 million people are doing right now. We're all there are a lot of people watching this or listening to this who are in a community that they could be changing right now. And I worry that one thing the internet has done because for a bunch of reasons including that it really rewards scale is it's taken our eyes off the fact that we live we are humans living embedded in communities of other humans and we can change things in those communities. It doesn't all have to be about national politics. I mean that's the very best answer that's the very best answer you could have given to my response but I would say and and this is now I guess just me wallowing my own pessimism the the example you give is sort of proof that it is unlikely to work right I mean we could do these things you could have these communities there are some there aren't many and the problem grows and I think that's the the fundamental problem you know every time I I I think about sort of this kind of intervention or you know we tell our youngest we've just announced to her early that will make you feel left out. We're really sorry about that. But we now know that this is really bad for you and we're not going to do things that are bad for you. And we make that argument.
We talk to, you know, friends in our area. We hope that they'll that they'll do the same. And by and large they don't. And by and large, they they give the phones and the, you know, eight-year-olds have a phone. And I I I don't mean to be overly pessimistic, but I guess I am um being being overly pessimistic. Maybe that's my role here, >> but Leo speaks to this specifically, not to go back to the encyclical here, but he quotes uh he quotes a line from J.R.
Tolken, which is on its own is amazing that a pope is quoting Tolken uh in an encyclical, and it's just I I would imagine he would be tickled by this.
like Star Wars token like >> this is but but but listen listen to this Steve like you'll you'll this is this is this is the the heart of what we've just been talking about uh describes a protagonist uh he says the words of the protagonist in one of his novels described our responsibility in this way quote it is not our part to master all the tides of the world but to do what is in us for the sucker of those years wherein we are set uprooting the evil in the fields that we know so that those who live after they have clean earth to till. That is that's that's it.
And as Megan said in the beginning here, like >> the Catholic Church is 2,000 years like they are very they they have a they have a long view of these things and uh and a very particular you know what you do in your own life and in your own family and in your own community and those you are in communion with uh around you is the most important thing that anybody can do.
No, control what you can control. That that makes a lot of sense. Before we we need to get to not worth your time. Um I I want to squeeze in one question here on policy. Um and I want to go back to the the point that Megan made in her um sort of push back to Jonah on this question of designing the rules for our modern highway system in 1897. You can't do it. It's not happening. And I would say that that's that's sort of a perfect example because it captures the challenge of rulemaking or regulation in this moment except it's you know with this technology it's accel it's accelerated times a billion and it's accelerating more every single day and I remember having a conversation with a senior executive at Google this is probably 15 20 years ago 20 plus 20 years ago now um who said the challenge is you know Google was open to regulation. They had ideas about how um what they were doing could be regulated in a number of different areas. But the challenge was they when they went to Capitol Hill, they met with people, particularly the elected officials themselves, who had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. They didn't understand the technology. And there was that classic moment from Ted Stevens back in the net neutrality debate in 2006 where he's, you know, I think he's given a speech. This is a chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee and he says again the internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a big truck. It's a series of tubes and if you don't understand those tubes can be filled and if they are filled when you put your message in it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts that tube puts into that tube enormous amounts of material. Enormous amounts of material. And this was the person at the time in effect who was the government's lead on developing the regulations that would do these things. I think we face this unique dilemma at this particular moment because on the one hand you have I would say with with a level of sort of alarm and foroding that we didn't see from Google execs and the people driving internet technology the the companies themselves and the the people who are leading these technological advances themselves saying waving their arms saying regulate us regulate us regulate us we are worried about where this is going. Now, that's not not everybody's saying that, but a lot of them are saying that. And then you look at Capitol Hill where the average age in this Congress of a US senator is 64. The average age in this Congress of a US member of the House of Representatives is 57.
And you say, "How in the world are these people going to regulate this stuff that that the people who would be regulated are crying out for?" Jonah, do you have an answer to that?
Megan's fuming that I get to make the point before she does, but we should always be very, very, very cautious when leaders of big businesses beg Congress to regulate them because going back to the railroads to telephone companies to virtually everything that happened under the New Deal to Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook begging for regulation. It is a way to lock in um barriers to entry to competition for for you. it is to establish yourself. So like I find the behavior of these >> CEOs for the most part like the anthropic is the guy who said we're not going to work with the Pentagon, right?
Um but most of these guys the way they talk about they are deliberately creating panic about AI because it is a marketing strategy to make people think that this is like the invention of the wheel or the invent discovery of fire or something like that to build up frenzy of interest and get everyone talking about how transformative it's going to be. I think it is profoundly cynical and um and I I I'm sure some believe it but I think a lot do you not believe it?
Do you just reject it?
>> I think they all believe it. Right. Like if you look at the things that people are writing as they leave these places, they're like, >> I'm going off into the mountains now >> to study 18th century Tibetan poetry and meditate on what it means to be human.
Like I I think >> I know when I hear the CEOs talk about how there'll be no jobs in 5 years. I I think >> Oh yeah. I think they're wrong about that and I have said this to people in the industry that you are way overindexing on code >> that I think they are not no jobs but I think they are right. This thing is going to slash through Silicon Valley and displace a huge number of uh entry level and mid-level coding coders and software engineers. I think that's real.
Um, but they're just like they don't know how the rest of the economy works.
And because they have done this thing single-mindedly, even when they kind of try to imagine it, they it's just hard to emotionally understand what it's like to be in a non Silicon Valley company unless you have been in one. And so I think they are incorrect about some of the stuff, especially the the really rapid pace of job displacement, but I I don't think they're insincere. I think they genuinely do believe that they're like building God or like or super intelligence or whatever. That's real.
>> And I think they're worried about far more than just just job displacement. I mean, I think they're worried about the technology sort of spinning out of control to the point where they can't can't rein it back in.
>> I think some of them are not worried about job displacement. They want everyone else to be freaking out about how like they don't want to be and they want everyone to feel like they have to be the first mover.
>> Yeah. No, I think that's fair. And some of them are happy about the job dis displacement. Um >> yeah, they brag about it. I >> I think I think we've heard from people and we'll put this in the in the show notes. You know, our friend Ben Sass gave a speech at the Manhattan Institute um within the the last couple weeks in which he raises concerns about some of these things, not with the kind of um hysteria that uh that that we hear from kind of the the sky is falling crowd who's sort of hysterical about everything but with kind of the measured um I would say concern uh about all of this about policym about societal implications uh about the return of uh push push for UBI when this displacement um universal basic income when this displacement happens. It's a it's a really terrific and and thoughtful speech. We'll put it in the show notes.
But you know, also our friend Clown Kitchen wrote a terrific piece for the Dispatch uh maybe a month ago in which he raised real alarms about um the the pace of the technology and the vulnerabilities that that's creating for I mean he was writing about the United States in particular um but you know realworld potentially catastrophic consequences for globe shifting consequences. So I I take seriously the the the people who um you know are raising these concerns beyond just the folks who created the technology, but it does feel to go back to the social media point, you know, if you watch that that documentary, The Social Dilemma, which was it was over wrought. Some of it was over the top, but you know, at the end of the day, it contained a bunch of interviews with people who created a lot of the the things that we're talking about uh our kids, you know, presenting these challenges to our kids. Um and saying that they themselves don't let their kids use the technology that they created um and and uh and and sort of shaped for um everybody else's kids.
>> Yeah. But going back to Megan's thing about uh could you set up rules for the modern highways in the late 1800s? A lot of rules were set up in the late in the late 1800s or earlier. Passing on the left is from the 19th century. You know, left lane, you know, you know, um slow traffic, keep right. Um I've looked it up. Um lights after dark. There are lots of things there a lot of basic rules that were established in the 19th century. And that's sort of like what I was thinking of when I said just make it a law that AI platforms, apps of any kind, when asked have to identify themselves as not human. Um, and let the culture build up around some of those kinds of simple rules so that you don't have a lot of investment in tricking people. Right? If we don't have that rule, then we have a a a business climate where people figure out, okay, I can monetize deceiving people into thinking this is a real human friendship, a real human relationship, this is real humans advice, whatever it is. If you just say, "Yeah, actually, no, that's against the law." Like resources will get diverted elsewhere. Some people will still break the law, but I think we can come up with some of these moral things. Like obviously, I think it's already a law in a lot of places.
Like AI can never tell people to self harm.
>> I mean, I think that's a rule at the companies because that would be like >> But like I think >> I'm not even sure that's a law. It's just liability, right?
>> Okay. But yeah, but creates create massive liability for it, right? I mean, because look, we h we already have Canada where humans are telling people to kill themselves. We don't need AI doing it, too. And I think you can come up with a bunch of those kinds of like clear rules, simple rules for a complex society kind of hayakian things that corporate that these businesses can build around as sort of like and let them become the Chesterton's fence of AI civilization and if they turn out to be problems, you know, in 10 years like, oh, look, this is the unintended consequence of this rule about like not being truthful, okay, then we'll deal with it. I'd rather like >> I feel like on this podcast we should be able to recognize that even if there are unintended consequences, it might be really hard to repeal bad rules. And so here's an example of what I'm worried about. So New York State in what is very obviously just a bid to protect licensed professionals from competition uh has a bill underway to basically forbid AI.
Now there part of the bill just says you can't do this without telling people you're AI. That's I think a very good rule. But then it's also it can't give any advice that a licensed professional might give.
>> Well, that's stupid, >> right? And like that's just very clearly economic protectionism.
>> If we pass that rule, >> Yeah.
>> it will never be repealed, right? It will be a like a a thousand-year fight to allow >> uh you know to allow AI to give floral arranging uh advice in Louisiana. I I'm I'm not sure if Louisiana is still licensing its florists, but for a long time it was protecting consumers from the hazards of >> rogue florist >> of rogue florists.
>> And so like I I I take your point that we need to not let the like we you know totally permissionless innovation to the point where like you can permissionlessly innovate the the death killing machine.
>> Sure. But we also shouldn't say, "Oh, well, we'll just fix it in post because like post fixing laws that have been passed and turn out to have bad unintended consequences, I think are likely to be difficult." And one of the things I think we're really going to have to grapple with and that we are already grappling with in with self-driving cars is that self-driving cars may have accidents that humans wouldn't even at the same time as they will on average be much safer than human drivers. And you need to like it is going to be real a huge challenge and we should be actively working towards this in our little communities as well as on the national stage towards thinking about this stuff statistically rather than anecdotally because statistically it does look like ways are much safer than human drivers.
There are some wrinkles about that. I had an argument about it on Twitter the other day. But we need to keep the statistics in mind, the overall reduction because that matters more like and I not to say that every car accident is obviously a terrible tragedy like it would be the ideal number is zero. But it is better to have one accident that we wouldn't have had with a self-driving car than like 40,000 that we would have had with humans, right? You we have to somehow be able to think in that way.
It's very hard for our politics to do that.
>> Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think I think among the challenges, this is another sort of uh aspect of the challenge in in regulating this stuff is one of it's just the pace of the technological change. The other is just plain stupidity. Um and the politics of the moment I think are pushing pretty quickly in the direction of the kind of regulations that you mentioned, Megan.
Um, I saw a Democratic strategist this morning on social media making an argument that Democrats have to sort of be extreme in the arguments they make about regulating AI because that's where the politics are headed and in order to win elections in 2026 and 2028, they need to do this. than we've seen in people like Gavin Newsome who was relatively friendly to AI and to Silicon Valley generally as he's looking at a 2028 presidential bid really taking steps to change the way that he's looking at this and our politics might drive more stupidity uh like the the proposal that you're talking about.
Okay. So, this is we've gone way way long. We blew through our second topic.
I'm very glad we did. I thought this was a great discussion. I I appreciate you all indulging me um people who are a lot smarter about this and better read about this than I am to sort of think out loud with you about these about these big challenges. Now for not worth your time this week. I did not pick the topic I picked um thinking that it would be a continuation of the discussion that we were having but rather a departure from it, something a little lighter. But it turns out with Megan's um discussions of dumb people and Mike's um Mike's decision, >> people who aren't good at school, Steve, >> Mike's decision uh to use the cliffnotes version of the encyclical. Uh I want to play a clip that I saw the other day from this fellow who goes by Clavicular.
>> Mhm. Do you all know Clevicular?
>> No, not again.
>> Yes. So, he's he's an influencer.
>> I had to say that name like five times in a row in a podcast once and it was really >> So, we had a discussion about Clavicular the other day with my kids and my kids were both I think shocked and horrified but also somewhat like grudgingly impressed that I even knew who Clavvicular was. So, Clvicular has followers across social media platforms that total in the low millions. He's an influencer known for his embodiment of a trend called looks maxing. Um, I'm not going to really attempt an authoritative definition of looks maxing, but basically you can it's being sort of obsessed with the way that you look so that you're constantly doing things to improve the way that you look because the way that you look is determinative.
It it it makes a big difference >> including hitting yourself in the face with a hammer in clvicular >> with a hammer which is something that has advocated >> breaking his own >> and done I believe he has done it to himself.
>> Yeah. Yes.
>> Yes. To to make your your jawline more defined.
>> We should put it out there. or we should do is an op that tells people like that that they will be much more sexually attractive if they use the same technique on their groins.
>> So, Clvicular says he's sterile >> because of the all of the testosterone he's taken. So, in some sense, I'm not sure that would deter them.
>> This is a lot more information about clvicular than I knew. Thank you for adding that, Megan. I'm glad we have that context. So, I want to play this clip of clvicular recently having a conversation with two young women about books.
>> Have you been reading the books?
>> Um, I don't really read books.
>> You don't read?
>> No.
>> Why not real?
>> Because I read articles and summaries.
reading an entire book is like just people cope so hard thinking like books are going to make them this like wise you know gesture but in reality you could just get the information through summaries and and articles 10 times more efficiently >> it's really not true I mean >> so I could learn at 10x the rate of you reading books versus if I'm reading articles and summaries >> good literature every single sentence means something truly something >> okay but that's meaningless That's right. So, if you're reading for like, you know, creativity and um, you know, stuff like that, like a Mark Twain type of situation where it's got no actual, you know, data behind it and yeah, that's fine. I agree with you, but I only interested in learning.
>> I like am interested in learning, Jonah.
>> I also like Mark Twain like having no data behind it. In fact, weirdly Twain >> there there was quite a lot of information in Mark Twain, but um >> a Mark Twain situation. So Joan, I'll start with you. Is the is the view that he expresses here about books, you know, 10xing the literary tortoises among us just by reading the the summaries. Is that prevalent in your looks maxing community or is this just unique to Clavicular? Um well I I will say like there is a version of I mean look I I think he's a [ __ ] right so like um uh >> but >> but look there's in in my world right like I have at minimum five authors a month on my podcast right I don't always read I can't I literally can't read the whole book my lips just get too tired right and I'm Also, um I'm working on a book, right? So, like it was years ago that Romesh Panuru uh gave me dispensation. Speaking of papal powers here, um that you were allowed to take the best cuts from the carcass on some books. If you're interested in a particular period and you have the book on the history of naval warfare, but you only really need to know about the battle of Trafalgar, it's okay to just read that chapter, right? It's also okay to sort of read summaries of things. He's just make it's also good to read books, don't get me wrong, but he's just making a case for his own lethargy and trying to make it sound hip and cool. I mean, look, this is a guy who's dedicated his life to getting to taking shortcuts to the point where he breaks his own jaw with a hammer. So, does it should not shock us that he also wants shortcuts when it comes to reading books. But, um I I I think reading widely, I love reading book reviews. I read a lot more book reviews than I read books. Um, I don't make any apologies for it because I'm interested in to know what the book is about, but I'm not willing to make a commitment to some books. Um, and in terms of the looks maxing community that I surround myself with, um, we uh, >> of whom you are the leader.
>> Yes. Which tells you how effective we are at our looks maxing. Um, uh, we we prefer not to, um, divulge, you know, our our the internal practices of our group.
Megan, >> um I I think Jonah's remark that that he is constantly taking shortcuts sort of resonates with my thoughts on clvicular, which is that he is constantly taking shortcuts, but he doesn't seem to know where he's going.
>> Mhm.
>> Right. Like when I listen to him, the thing that is missing is a sense of what is the point of all of this? He wants to be very good-looking. He doesn't really seem like he's enjoying being very good-looking.
He doesn't really see, you know, he talks about having lots of sex, but he doesn't really seem like he's enjoying the sex. It seems like kind of a chore.
Um, you know, he wants to be good-looking because good-looking people are successful and make a lot of money and have hot spouses, but he like he doesn't actually seem to have a lot of joy in any of the things he is trying to get. doesn't have any sense of why that would be fun or sublime or worthwhile or any of the rest of it. It just seems totally vacant. Like he is, you know, the there's the in AI there is a parable about the paperclip maximizer that's going to destroy the universe because you've created an AI that just wants to make paper clips and then it just goes out and like turns the entire mass of the universe into paper clips. Um, and that this is the this is thought to be a problem with like improperly aligned AI and that is also a problem with improperly aligned humans to drag this all back to the encyclical and Pope Leo is that like again I'm not saying that like you have to become Catholic to lead a worthy and fulfilled life but you have to have some higher idea of what life is for than like I wish to have a large number in my bank account or I wish to be extremely good-looking or like you should be it should be bringing at the minimum bringing you joy and it he seems so joyless right I have never seen like where he just seems like he's having a great time with the people with his buddies who he loves being around it never seems like that it always seems grim and joyless and I think that this is Uh, I think this is why I I don't think it's the only reason that he doesn't resonate with fiction. I know many joyful people who really hate fiction and you know like I'm not judging and I also frankly have read a lot of books that should have been articles. Um, but naming no names. Um, but I I do think that it like it just betrays the whole problem with the clvicular worldview. A me a means not an end, folks.
>> Yeah. I mean that that comes through very clearly in in the clip that we played. Mike, would Clvicular find joy if he could um engage with what he called the Mark Twain situation um by reading Mark Twain rather than looking for data in Mark Twain or elsewhere?
>> Could he read Mark Twain? Would he be able to get through it? I don't know. I mean I don't know. No, no offense, Steve. This is This all feels really stupid to be sort of uh evaluating what a 20-year-old whose frontal cortex is not uh fully developed. Um you know, his his sort of disquisitions on reading um he's he's he's like Jonah said, he's a [ __ ] Um and and he would do well to read more books u if if only to just widen his worldview. Um I hope he does.
Mike, are you saying that this was not worth our time?
>> You could say that. You could say that.
Steve, >> clvicular not worth our time.
>> Clavicular is not worth our time. Books books are definitely worth our time. I I I two things. One, I keep wanting to do that Neapolitan song, you know, whatever. Um but no, the part of the problem is um before when I was saying we should be thinking about the policym approach to all of this with the 15-year-old in mind rather than with the you know well educated you know sage uh dennisens of this podcast. Um uh that's who I'm talking about. That guy I am sure talks to AI all day long and doesn't ask for links, doesn't check sources, doesn't like do anything beyond take its word for it about how he can looks max and um he may be an extreme example, but I think he's closer to the kind of people that we should be worried about creating more of um with a lot of this tech that's coming down the pike.
>> Last word to you, Jonah. It just occurred to me as we were wrapping up that I forgot to to mention in the context of the difficulty of entrusting elected officials or presidential appointees to um making the writing the laws um passing the legislation, making the regulations about these emerging and fastmoving technologies that um Linda McMahon, the education secretary once I I believe she was reading from a teleprompter not long ago and rather than reading AI as AI I think multiple times read it as A1 >> steak sauce >> so good >> well uh what's her name um Elon Omar recently was reading from a speech and referred to World War I II so >> well I mean and and who can forget Trump's favorite book of the Bible Two Corinthians.
>> Two Corinthians.
>> Yeah.
>> All right. We're doomed. We're doomed.
Thanks for joining us. Have fun. Stick with us while we're while we're going down.
>> Go f yourself, San Diego.
>> Thanks. Despair is a sin. Despair is a sin.
>> Thanks for the time.
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