The advent of AI has brought out a host of skeptics in Hollywood, from Guillermo del Toro (“Fuck AI”) to the slightly more diplomatic Joseph Gordon-Levitt  (“this new technology could propel a great leap forward in human creativity but only if there’s a system in place that rewards people for their novel creative work”).

On Monday the movement drew a new celebrity endorser. Standing next to an executive from Anthropic, Pope Leo tossed his hat into the AI advocacy ring, releasing a remarkable 42,000-word Encyclical. Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeugarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence urged an emphasis on humanity over efficiency; it implored that equity not be sacrificed on the altar of automation. “I ask everyone to abandon the construction of yet another Tower of Babel and to join forces in building up the common good,” he wrote, in the savvy, sharply worded document.

How much did the Pontiff sound like a Hollywood artist worried about what AI can do to their work? Plenty. Consider lines like “[AI can] encourage excessive reliance and the search for ready-made answers, and weaken personal creativity and judgment.” That actually came from the Pope, and it tracked strongly with lines like “[people would be] cheating themselves if they use AI instead of finding out what they can actually do,” which came from Hollywood anti-AI activist Justine Bateman.

Until now, Hollywood figures have been some of the most vocal AI watchdogs. Now a whole new personality has entered the mix, one who has standing with 1.4 billion people around the world, giving those in the creative community pushing for caution and regulations a new tool in their fight.

So what kind of effect will the Encyclical have on the products being built in Hollywood and beyond? To find out, we talked to David Gibson. A former Vatican journalist and longtime papal expert, Gibson currently serves as director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture. He  helped us understand what was really going on in Conclave last Oscar season and just last week penned an Opinion piece in the New York Times about the changes wrought by this Pope in areas like AI. He had thoughts.

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I’ve been working my way through the Encyclical. I mean, I was tempted to use an AI summary to do that but, well.

You should! Everybody else is.

It seemed wrong to lean on AI for the very document in which the Pope is saying don’t lean on AI.

[Laughs] That’s fair. 

So let’s start with how big a shock it was that a pope would put out this document, which in some ways feels more like something you’d see from a Hollywood guild than one of the most important religious leaders in the world, who’s not really known for opining on Silicon Valley.

For many, many years that was true. But things really changed in 2013 when Pope Francis came on the scene. Suddenly he was not talking as much about sins of the flesh — about sexual sins or masturbation or contraception — but about the landlord who cheats his tenant or the boss who underpays his workers. He said ‘everybody knows where the Church stands on abortion and premarital sex.  But climate change is something we don’t talk about and should.’ Because if you want to be pro-life, well, people are dying from pollution and environmental destruction too.  So this is all coming from that same place.

Do you see anything different here from what Francis would have put out if he was alive? Or is it just a continuation?

I think it’s a continuation, but not just from Francis. This all may be relatively new in the modern era. But Leo took his name from [late-19th-century pope] Leo XIII, who wrote in his own Encyclical, Rerum Novarum, about what the Industrial Revolution was doing to workers, how it created inequality and exploited them. It started a real labor movement among Catholic groups. So this Leo is doubling down on that.  The difference is that Leo XIII was writing in 1891, a long time after the Industrial Revolution had started. But the Vatican has been working on [Silicon Valley research] for almost a decade. They’ve really been out in front.

The grasp of the issues was certainly impressive. This did not come from someone just parroting concerns. When he writes that “ethical discernment cannot be limited to asking whether we are using a system for good or bad purposes; it must also examine…the data and models that guide it” he’s really making a sophisticated point about how the models are being trained. It’s almost like he’s saying ‘I can critique you because I understand you.’

And he did it in English!

Which does not feel like an accident given the language of many tech moguls.

No, it certainly does not. This was in many ways aimed at them — at the five or ten people who control AI. Just like Leo XIII, who was writing to the small handful of robber barons in the United States.

I think the tone of this is interesting too — there’s some sharp wording but it’s not really a condemnation, almost as though he’s conscious of not alienating them. That’s not a restraint a pope might have when he’s, say, addressing those who support contraception or abortion.

It’s interesting. There are some conservative Catholics, like Matthew Walther, who feel the Pope didn’t go far enough, that he should have “excommunicated” AI. But I don’t think that’s what Leo wanted. He wanted this to be engagement — invitation, not condemnation. That’s why he had [Anthropic co-founder] Christopher Olah up there with him at the presentation.

Some would say that makes the whole thing smack of — for lack of a better term — Popewashing. That if a Silicon Valley executive is there while the Pope is talking about regulating AI, the Church is just being used to launder their agenda. 

Leo has definitely engaged with Silicon Valley a lot, met with their executives, and some people have criticized that. But it’s not this Pope’s style to condemn someone running a business. He also knows that these moguls can just ignore him. Engaging with them makes it harder to do that.

Let’s talk about the audience — how does this Encyclical play with the 1.4 billion Catholics around the world?

You know, it’s the kind of thing might resonate as ‘woke’ in the United States, talking about protecting people from big companies. But American Catholics are only five percent of global Catholicism, and to almost everyone else among the world’s Catholics it doesn’t resonate that way. For people in the Southern hemisphere, this is manna from heaven — a lifeline. It’s what they talk about. I don’t think this is really shocking for them. They will agree with a lot of it because they’ve heard it before.

And what about Catholics or even non-Catholics in the U.S.? We haven’t really had a leader talk this way about AI. Some celebrities, but they can be polarizing. Politicians too. The humanist movement has needed a voice in America, and it seems the Pope just provided one.

There’s no doubt that in the case of AI everybody feels like a tsumani is hitting them but no one is really articulating why. And finally we have a world leader who’s articulating it in a powerfully coherent way. Who’s taking a lot about what’s turning over in our minds — about the threat of jobs lost, about creative destruction, about the destruction of the environment thanks to data centers. People have already been feeling the loss of community and institutions thanks to tech. This is a rallying point for all of that. People don’t need to become Catholic, the Pope ie saying. But they do need to come together. It’s almost a throwback to the Greatest Generation — about making America great again, but in a real way, not a MAGA way.

Do you think the Pope can achieve that given the, well, fragmentation? The comparison to the labor movements of the late-19th and early-20th century — we are so far removed from that spiritually.

We are, but yes, I do. People are hungry for action, for leadership, for a return to community and humanity. And not just Catholics. Joyce Carol Oates is out there singing the Pope’s praises on Twitter [she called the Encyclical “a thoughtful, nuanced response to AI”]. Joyce Carol Oates! That tells me how much we need this.

Let’s not forget Hollywood, speaking of strange bedfellows. You have Guillermo del Toro condemning AI, Scarlett Johansson speaking out against it, Matthew McConaughey trademarking his likeness to fight it. And now this.

I definitely wouldn’t have had Matthew McConaughey and the Pope on the same bingo card (laughs). But seriously, this will help the people you mention and their cause. The power of Hollywood celebrities can be superficial — “I like you, but don’t tell me to drive an electric car.” People feel differently about the Pope. Look, you have a lot of disparate folks who would not be on the same page — Liz Shuler at the AFL-CIO was high-fiving over this but also some Republican politicians will too. We’re in a different era. And Leo is the common denominator. Not the lowest common denominator — the highest, who speaks about our humanity and dignity and creativity. That’s what much of Hollywood wants, and that’s what he talks about.

They’ll just all be up against something very powerful.

Definitely. Silicon Valley can be like a religion unto itself. They have their own infallibilities, or at least they believe they are infallible. But a lot can change too. Let’s see about the midterms, let’s see about the economy, let’s see about workers forming grassroots unions. And now with Pope Leo on board calling it out. It all might make Silicon Valley sing a different tune. I mean, it’s a gamble. But that’s what I like about Leo. He says ‘maybe something is a good idea, maybe it’s not, but I’m willing to try.’ So yes, maybe this will read like Popewashing and he’ll look worse for it. Or maybe he’ll show that there’s a better way to do business, that you can do good and do well.

So you believe this document could help bring about Silicon Valley guardrails and deceleration.

Well, if there’s one thing the Catholic Church believes in it’s conversion…