Even the Pope Has Opinions on AI | 443

Dan Hafner: Hey everyone, welcome back to the podcast. My name is Dan Hafner, and ⁓ we're gonna talk some about some interesting stuff today. ⁓ so the this is not something this is a very weird episode, just overall. ⁓ we're talking about AI like we usually do, but we're talking about the Pope, ⁓ which is kind of two things that you would never really think to talk about in the same episode.

⁓ and it's gonna be very interesting. So Why are we talking about this? The the Pope dropped what was called an encyclical, I believe. I had no idea what something like this was, and I just saw it was a very ⁓ big story here recently.

⁓ and honestly, it's it's worth reading and it's worth looking into, and it's worth having an episode talking about this, I believe. ⁓ and not because it's ⁓ you know, ⁓ religious base or scripture or anything like that, but because ⁓ you know, when a when a organization that's over two thousand years old is talking about something, that's pretty significant. That's a pretty pretty interesting thing to kind of turn your head and be like, wait a second, why are they talking about that?

So anyway, ⁓ I'm just gonna kinda go through at a very high level. there were there were thirteen different points that were made in this In this document that was released, it was like a couple hundred pages. And to be honest, I have not read all of it. ⁓ I've seen some AI summaries on it.

I've read some stories on it. I read a little bit of it of it myself. ⁓ so I can't say that I actually went through and read the whole document beginning to end by myself. I have not done that.

⁓ but I've gotten the highlights, I've gotten, you know, I've got the the points I want to talk about here, and I'm gonna kind of hit hit them one by one because they're very interesting and it's not all software related, it's not all coding related. ⁓ there's a lot of ⁓ kind of ethical and moral things inside of here. And I'm not trying to make this a debate about theology. Just as a little bit of ⁓ background, I was actually raised Catholic.

I would say that my wife and I, we re we don't go to a Catholic church. She was raised in a Lutheran church. ⁓ we're both we we both ⁓ attend a non denominational Christian church now. ⁓ so I'm not here to pick on Catholics.

I'm not here to support Catholics I'm not here to ⁓ you know Pick on the Pope or support the Pope or anything like that. I'm just, it's very, very interesting of all people to come out with something like this. ⁓ I would not have expected the Pope to. ⁓ but this is pretty interesting because apparently previous Popes have done this when it came to the Industrial Revolution.

⁓ and this is, you know, that we're in the midst of the AI revolution. ⁓ so this is very, very interesting. The Pope is is from Chicago. He's the first American Pope, which is very interesting.

There's a lot of different things going on here. ⁓ So ⁓ let's let's dive into it. That's enough of a of an intro for this, basically. I don't I don't want to make this a an hour long episode, but ⁓ basically what happened, ⁓ I believe it was it was a it was a about a week and a half ago now or so.

⁓ Pope Leo, I believe he is the 14th, ⁓ released Magnifica Human Humanitatis, Magnificent Humanity, ⁓ which was his first encyclical, right? It was focused on AI. On human dignity and what it really means to be human when machines can think kind of in the future, right? and it's kind of interesting if you kind of followed what the Pope has said in different you know contexts.

I know there was a spat with the president recently, but there's been other things about nuclear weapons and environment stuff. ⁓ it was kind of it kind of made sense that there was kind of the next piece to tackle was AI. ⁓ and this was very, very interesting ⁓ because there were, again, there were 13 points. ⁓ really highlights and kind of claims that that were made.

⁓ and and it kind of lands on one's one side or the other. So again, I'm just reading these. I'm not I'm gonna give my opinion on each of these. ⁓ but the 13 points were these.

Number one, AI must serve humanity, not replace it. Interesting. Number two, human intelligence is unique. Number three, big tech concentration is dangerous.

Number four, AI needs strong regulation and guardrails. Number five, AI could destroy jobs at a massive scale. Number six, workers must not be treated like machines. Number seven, AI generated misinformation threatens democracy.

eight. AI weapons could become uncontrollable. nine. Children's development must be protected.

ten. AI must not become a new religion. Number 11, algorithms are not neutral and biases are inherited. Number 12, human relationships matter more than efficiency.

And number 13, society must choose between power and dignity. So ⁓ that's a lot of claims, a lot of stuff to go through. I'm gonna try my best to kind of work through each one of these ⁓ as we ⁓ as we have it ⁓ kind of set up here. ⁓ let me just turn this off real quick.

So All right, so the first point AI must serve humanity, not replace it. What was he kind of getting at here, right? Like we're we're building AI and we're building these robots, we're building all this technology to ultimately serve us. Obviously, we don't want AI taking over and being, you know, overlords of the human race, obviously.

⁓ pretty common sense thing. Not a whole lot to talk about there. I know it's I I mean I would actually agree with this point that yes, AI must serve humanity. I know there's a lot of ⁓ you know, ⁓ a lot of the there's there's people in the younger generation, a little bit younger than me, that are definitely kind of seeing how and we'll get to the number six where ⁓ the jobs, number five and number six where the job thing comes into play.

⁓ but you know, it my believer that hu you know AI is going to overlord over humanity. ⁓ you know, maybe someday, but I don't think I'll live to see that day. ⁓ that's just my opinion. So anyway, pretty common sense one, right?

Human intelligence is unique, number ⁓ number two. ⁓ yeah, I believe so. I think ⁓ there was a really cool speech, ⁓ graduation speech done by Steve Wozniak here ⁓ not long ago. I forget what school it was at, but he said ⁓ he got to talking about AI and everyone was kind of waiting for the boo moment and he said actual intelligence.

And that was really, really interesting. That was really cool because he got a lot of cheers with it. ⁓ and y I I I agree with this one as well. ⁓ you know, human intelligence is unique.

⁓ you know, for someone like me, I use AI almost all day, every day. And it has been a game changer and a life-changing technology for someone like me, ⁓ who runs a small firm, who's, you know, has all kinds of different clients, all kinds of different projects going. ⁓ you know, I actually don't have ⁓ a full-time employee at the moment, right? So I I have I have different contractors, I have different people that help me on a on a day-to-day basis, but it's really just me and a bunch of AI robots and a couple of contractors running the show, right?

⁓ so, but it is you still need people to run AI. You still need people to manage it. You still need ⁓ that human intuition and that intelligence, which I have yet to find AI come even close to replacing, right? So I think we're we're pretty safe there.

⁓ here's where we start to get a little controversial, right? Number three, big tech concentration is dangerous. ⁓ that's a pretty bold claim, right? He kind of talked about how ⁓ you know having all of these ⁓ you know.

Companies that are like ⁓ basically like an oligarchy now. There's I wouldn't really say that there's a monopoly, maybe not an o what's the word for I think it's oligarchy. there's you know, you have open AI, you have ⁓ anthropic, you have perplexity, you have you have Google, you have like a a handful of companies that are controlling all these things, and you and I we're just renting from them, right? I would tend to agree with them on this one.

I would tend to say that ⁓ you know, I mean, when you talk, when you think about like I think ⁓ OpenAI is targeting a Q4 public offering and it's supposed to be valued at over a trillion dollars right now. I mean, and that's that's just mind-bogglingly crazy. I think Anthropic is also shooting for around those numbers. I don't know if it'll happen this year or not.

⁓ we have a a SpaceX ⁓ you know, IPO coming here probably in th this year as well, that's supposed to be valued at probably even more than that. ⁓ So yeah, I I do. And it's that was kind of why that was what happened with the whole anthropic thing when they they had the whole government you know, story fallout that I covered here on the show as well. ⁓ what happens when you ⁓ when you have unelected people controlling things that all of us use on a whim they can just decide to do whatever they want to do, right?

⁓ so I again is big tech Concentration inevitable? Yeah, I think it kind of is, and it already has happened. Is it dangerous? Yeah, I also believe that as well.

⁓ so I I would say I'm I'm I'm three for three with with agreeing with them actually so far. ⁓ number four, AI needs strong regulation and guardrails. yeah, I think there's some nuance to this. I don't think it's I would tend to be, I would I would tend to say I'm I I fall on the the spectrum of I would.

favor less regulation than more regulation, ⁓ especially with this specific issue. And I think when it came to all the different states wanting to regulate AI in different ways, I thought that was very, very ⁓ bizarre. And I don't really know how that is ⁓ you know, maintainable when you have online companies, these big tech companies that are all across the world. How can the state of Pennsylvania differ from the state of Florida, differ from the state of New York.

I just never understood really how that would be feasible and scalable for any of us. but obviously there are ways there are places where AI needs to be regulated. It would there was just the big ⁓ story of ⁓ the open AI case where Elon went and sued you know, there was a whole trial where they were ⁓ suing anthropic or I'm sorry, suing open AI for the ⁓ you know, the the nonprofit to profit kind of thing. There was a lot that was revealed, basically got thrown out because the statute of limitations passed.

So it was kind of like like no verdict almost. and you know, there there are there are instances where AI has been proven to talk people into committing suicide. You know, there needs to be ⁓ there needs to be some guardrails on this stuff. I'm I'm a hundred percent for that.

⁓ but I also think that. You know, regulation always tends to be a slippery slope, and that can really ⁓ if if we're trying to compete with China, we're trying to outcompete other areas of the world who are already investing heavily in this, regulation can only slow us down as a country, is what I'm talking about. so yeah, I I think I think AI does need regulation. I wouldn't say strong regulation, but I would agree with the guardrails.

There obviously needs to be some things. ⁓ that are set up around this to prevent this stuff from r literally running off of its own rails, right? ⁓ number five, AI could destroy jobs at a massive scale. ⁓ this is very interesting.

There was a story I believe that came out either yesterday or today, where open AI ⁓ CEO Sam Altman actually came out in reversed course. He's been saying all this time, like there's gonna be this jobs apocalypse. There's gonna be no jobs. You listen to any of these people They're like, yep, universal basic income's the next thing.

You don't have to worry about it. AI's gonna take all of our jobs. And Sam Altman actually came out in reversed and said, I actually think it's just gonna make an economic boom. It's gonna there's gonna be more work for people.

There's gonna be ⁓ you know, just more and more demand for ⁓ for human labor, right? There was a I was actually watching another podcast where they were talking about the the ⁓ the explosion of software developer jobs on Indeed. Over the past year, you walk you look at it on a chart, it's ridiculous. Like I can't I can't get enough help sometimes for people to review things and to build things.

And ⁓ I mean, our you know, the the Dapper No Code brand is is exploding right now. We're making ⁓ you know more projects kicking off than we ever have. We have more ⁓ clients on retainer than we've ever had. Like it is exploding.

⁓ at a rate that I I it's it's hard for me to keep up with. So when I say when I see that software developer jobs are going away, ⁓ when you say that, but then you see the data, reality is like, nah, bruh, nah. Like it th that's not it's not happening that way. ⁓ you're you're full of shit is what you are, right?

⁓ and then so this kind of ties in with number six. Workers must not be treated like machines, right? ⁓ Yeah, I mean obviously I would agree with this one as well. We You know, when when when I work with actual people that are I I want them to manage the AI.

I don't want to just treat someone like, hey, ⁓ I have this, this and this and this to do, which has happened for a lot of human history, right? We we can tend to be ⁓ you know, very fickle as human beings and not learn from our mistakes. And there's always people that are gonna treat ⁓ other people like they are machines or like they're just a cog in the wheel to just get the things done and just do what I say to do and I don't care if it's you have to stay late or you have to do whatever.

⁓ so there's there's things like that, but ⁓ you know, there is a level of of human decency, of, of, of respect that needs to go into there. I would, I would, I would agree with that one as well. ⁓ you know, and I I I don't think that there will be ⁓ you know a lot of issues. I mean, there I shouldn't say there's there won't be a lot of issues.

I'm sure there will be at certain levels, but yeah, I would agree with that one as well. ⁓ this is very interesting. Number seven, ⁓ AI generated misinformation threatens democracy. I remember saying this ⁓ at the 2024 election.

Like they right before the pr last presidential election, they were having all these different things of Sora that was supposed to come out and like be like, ⁓ my God, it's gonna be it's gonna change the world, right? ⁓ it it's proven to be a lot less ⁓ effective than you would think it would be. but I I do. I think that there will be these models are only getting better and better.

AI is only learning and growing better and better and better. And ⁓ Yeah, I do think in future not only ⁓ like political elections, but when it comes to businesses, when it comes to social media, when it comes to ⁓ just any any kind of big events going on, there's going to be so much misinformation. It's gonna be very difficult to tell what is real versus what is not real. ⁓ and I I I would I think this is actually the one of the biggest things that I worry about when it comes to AI, ⁓ as far as like The the moral side of it and the ethical side of it is what happens when, you know, something goes viral on the internet that actually dupes a lot of people.

That we're all like we all fall for it on either side, on any side of any political spectrum, on any kind of social class that you were in, whatever, like we all believe that, you know, something terrible has happened. ⁓ but it turns out to be completely fake, right? ⁓ I don't know. I just I I really think that that's something that's worth and that that's kind of where it goes back to regulation guardrails ⁓ need to be put in place.

And I I I I I I worry about this a lot. I worry a lot about the misinformation, the the fake things that can come out because ⁓ it's only a matter of time before AI can generate things that make things actually look real. And it again, you could have a video of somebody ⁓ you know, committing some kind of crazy Crazy illegal thing that I don't I don't even want to talk about here on the show. Like you just use your imagination, right?

now something that is that bad could clearly people would be like, that's clearly fake. There's no way someone in their right mind would do something like that, right? On the other hand, is there ways to manipulate photos or videos or audio ⁓ to make something look like There's plausible deniability. I mean, this is what the news has done forever.

Is there's always a seed of, well, there's always this plausible deniability of like, this might not be true. There's some evidence to back it up, but we're gonna run with the headline anyway, right? And that's really what bothers me of like, man, like if there's just a grain of truth in something and it's twisted and it it's just s altered slightly with AI, ⁓ man, that that really gets me. That gets me worried around like what's gonna happen to our society in the future with those things.

So ⁓ yeah, I would agree with this one. AI generation and a gener AI generated misinformation threatens democracy. ⁓ number eight, AI weapons could become uncontrollable. This was the whole thing with anthropic, right?

Of like, hey, what if ⁓ the AI is ⁓ detecting that there's a s imminent strike from China or Russia, ⁓ and then there was never anything going on and we launch nukes and we kill millions of people and it was all like a s ⁓ you know an AI. kind of made up thing. ⁓ I would I would encourage everyone again to watch the movie Eagle Eye. Very, very, very cool movie with Shia LaBeouf years ago.

⁓ old movie actually, but it's it that's kind of one of those stories of where an AI thing kind of gets out of control. ⁓ and it's a really, really good movie worth watch. I'm not gonna comment a whole lot on that. I don't know a whole lot about ⁓ that area.

children's development must be protected, number nine. Yeah, I think this is I mean there's a re I say this all the time. I'm I'm be I'm becoming a new parent here soon. I think about this a lot.

I think about screen time. I think about ⁓ you know, they say that this this generation of kids is gonna be called generation beta because they've literally never known anything other than AI and technology and the internet in their entire life, right? ⁓ and what does that do to the human brain? What does that do to your attention spans?

What does that do to ⁓ the development of kids? ⁓ it's it's gonna be very interesting case study to see. I I there's a reason. that ⁓ you know Steve Jobs never let his kids use iPhones or iPads.

⁓ and he was the guy that literally made tons and tons and tons of them. ⁓ and they're like it's like why, right? Because they they knew that there was there was dopamine involved in that, there was addiction involved in that. There was there's a lot of things involved in that.

And ⁓ yeah, I I I think that you know there's there's definitely something to be said about taking that a lot more seriously. ⁓ number 10, AI must not become a new religion. This is pretty interesting. You would kind of expect this from something from the Pope, right?

⁓ but yeah, I mean I was thinking about this. I was like, you know, there's there's been instances I've covered on the show of people who have literally made an AI avatar to marry, right? And then it had kids. And they're in like your mare almost like the movie Her, right?

That was also an old one. I've actually never seen that full movie. I I watched part of it and then something happened. I never watched it again.

But ⁓ I don't know if he was married to her or not, but ⁓ you see what I mean. I haven't watched the movie. But ⁓ it's very interesting. I could I could see this.

I could literally see in the world we live in, I could see someone creating an AI god. I could see like it's not like it would create itself. I could see someone using AI to build an entirely new religion, an entirely new cult. I could see this happening.

Like this the the fact that like I could I was like, yeah. I I could definitely see that being a possibility. ⁓ is pretty wild to me, you know. ⁓ and yeah, what if what if could you imagine where people go to church every week and there's just a big giant screen and it's just AI giving the sermon and and like there's no actual person like that that's kind of terrifying.

That's kind of terrifying. I know like the church we go to, they rebroadcast from one location out to like ten. So the sermon they're watching is actually like on a screen. so it's a little bit like AI, but like there's an actual human being.

Like I'm in the church where like the actual person is talking, you know? ⁓ but yeah, AI must not become a new religion. I would I would agree with that one as well. ⁓ number eleven, algorithms are not neutral and biases are inherited.

⁓ yeah, this is very interesting, right? Like there's there's been stories of is is ChatGPT or Claude Mo ⁓ You know, if you ask it for like news stories or you ask it to give an opinion on a political figure, ⁓ they can be skewed certain ways. They can be either more critical or more favorable towards certain candidates on certain sides of the aisle. that's very interesting.

That's that you know, it's not even pol politics. It could be this with business, it could be this with certain political issues. ⁓ once a seed of bias is ingrained in these models, like it it it can only get bigger. It's not like it can eradicate this.

At least I'm not an expert in LLMs. ⁓ but I could be I would be very hard pressed to see how that could like be fixed once it's been out there for a long time. ⁓ they say they patch them, but I don't know. But at the same time, do you want something you talk to all the time to have just cold metallic no biases at all?

⁓ I don't know. I don't know. Can you you can manipulate the tool to to respond to you or do different things that are ⁓ you know have certain biases, but you have to specifically tell it that, right? that's a pretty interesting one.

That's a pretty interesting one. And it also, and again, it's it's kind of like, you know, ⁓ I'm sure that my children will inherit certain traits, whether good or bad, from me, ⁓ whether I want them to or not. And I could maybe try to train some of those things out of them, but some of them they're just gonna kind of come as part of the hardware. You know what mean?

so it's a that's a very interesting thing to think about. ⁓ and these last two, you know, number twelve, human relationships matter more than efficiency. yeah, I would I would tend to agree with this one as well. You know, as someone who again, I I say I use AI all day, every day, it it can be very exhausting.

⁓ it can be very isolating and lonely when you really get ⁓ to just talking with robots and chat bots all day, every day. You know, there there's nothing that can replace just bonding with an actual human with with getting feedback, with with shooting the shit with someone that's that's an actual human, right? Like that I feel like that is that could become a lost art in in the near future. ⁓ and that's something that that I think about as well of you know, it kind of goes up to the the AI religion kind of thing, like or you know, the relationship kind of thing, like ⁓ what are we doing as a society when we have when we talk to to robots more than each other?

You know, that's kind of interesting thing to think about. ⁓ and then the last one, number thirteen, society must choose between power and dignity. that one, I that's a little bit too ethereal for me. I don't really want to dive all that much into that one.

I think that kind of goes back to the number three one, the big tech concentration could be a little dangerous. yeah, I mean, AI, AI is power. It it really is. Like it it gives someone it gives someone like Me, someone like you, ⁓ power in in in terms of capacity, right?

Like I can do more with my time, I can do better things with my time. does that diminish my dignity as a human? ⁓ no, I don't I don't think so. I I don't really know.

I didn't really get to read a lot about this section. But I think it it it kind of goes back to the the other piece of you know workers must not be treated like machines. ⁓ you know, I think I think there's a lot here in terms of like the the wealth separation. That's one thing that I think about a lot of ⁓ of the AI of like the industrial revolution really like ⁓ kind of evened the playing field and made things a lot cheaper for everyone.

⁓ instead, but like AI is i I at least what I'm finding is that I spend a lot of money on AI tools and AI tokens and AI credits and AI usage. ⁓ and we're and findingly I'm finding that I'm spending more and more as time goes on, right? The more projects we get, the more clients we get, the more usage we have. And it's like, okay, where does that lead?

That leads to the more the more, you know, resource that that that I have as a business, the more I can feed into the AI machine. But the less I have, the less I can feed into the machine. So what does that do? That only widens this inequality type of field that we're living in, right?

Because basically, if you got a lot of money to blow, you can blow it on AI and you can focus on investments, you can focus on productivity, efficiency gains. But if you don't have that money, You c still you're you're you're stuck behind the people who have it and can use AI to go faster, right? I that that kind of bothers me. That that bothers me in in in different ways.

I mean, on one hand, I appreciate the fact that like, okay, if I pay for a clawed subscription, that gets me access into something that is a capitalist society, right? Like I've paid for access to get this thing that I want and I will leverage it because I paid my money for it. Right. Part of me is like, yeah, that makes sense.

⁓ and then part of me is like, well, the only thing that separates me from someone else that can't afford it is is that money. Is is like literally that access, you know. And I've been I've been in places where I didn't have you know the money to to pay for that kind of stuff in my life too. So I don't know.

I I think that that is that's a very interesting one. And I just don't have a lot of a lot more, you know, ⁓ thoughts on on how all that's going. That's something I'm still kicking around in in my head, in my heart a little bit. so so anyway, those are the 13 points.

⁓ of what was ⁓ of really what the pope covered in his ⁓ in his document that he released. ⁓ so I hope this was helpful. I hope this was interesting. I hope maybe I sparked some ⁓ you know thoughts in your mind and in your ⁓ in your circle possibly I'm curious to hear your thoughts and your opinions on these things.

You can always go over and click on the website link in the show and you can subscribe and you can send messages to me and you can also email me as well. I'd be very interested to hear your thoughts and your opinions on all this, or you can leave a comment below ⁓ if you're watching this on YouTube. ⁓ so that is it for this episode. As always, I appreciate all of you.

Please be sure to subscribe and like to ⁓ like the show and share this with anyone you think might find value out of it. I'm Dan Hafner. Talk to you guys later. Thanks.