[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This Reader is about Pope Leon XIV’s recent Encyclic warning us about the dangers of AI. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
—We are moving from an existential ethics to an artificial ethics. (Ivan Appelgren) Or is it that civilization is running out of moral reserves…?
Magnifica Humanitas is probably the most important moral, philosophical, and political analysis written to date on the new global technological power (Mauricio Vega)
1. Magnifica is also one of the harshest critiques of the private concentration of digital power to emerge from an institution with a global reach. The central conflict depicted is no longer just between the Left and the Right in the classical sense, but between two completely different conceptions of the human being. The thesis is that the person possesses intrinsic dignity, inviolable limits and rights that precede the market, the algorithm, and the state.
2. Ponder: The new technological revolution no longer reorganizes only labor. It seeks to reorganize consciousness, perception, information, behavior, security, war, democracy, language and, ultimately, the very definition of humanity. “Humanity is building a Tower of Babel to reach the heavens through its technical power”, i.e., a civilization fascinated with itself: uniform, centralized; obsessed with control.
3. For centuries, power was organized primarily around territories, armies, oil, banks, industries and nation-states. The 21st century is shaping something entirely else. Today, true power lies with those who control data, digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, platforms and predictive systems.
The papal encyclical serves as a warning –not about technology itself, but about a civilization that is slowly beginning to distrust everything
4. So, the problem is not AI. The problem is who owns it. That is crucial to understand. The Encyclica does not propose an anti-technology stance. It questions an entire worldview –a vision of the world where efficiency is valued over dignity, speed over deliberation and control over community.
5. The underlying ideas the Pope questions in no uncertain terms is relatively simple: democracy would be too slow, too emotional and too limited for the level of technological transformation that is approaching. Therefore, the future is being increasingly left in the hands of technological elites capable of managing complex systems better than democratic societies. Silicon Valley seeks to transform human beings into predictive systems; life reduced to computational modeling, coupled with the conviction that societies would function better under highly concentrated technocratic leadership.
For this reason, the papal document ceases to be merely a religious text
6. It becomes a global political challenge and seems written precisely against that fusion of economic power, digital infrastructure, and political capture. It tells us that a society that outsources morality ends up outsourcing humanity. Because the new military-technological complex no longer easily tolerates ethical doubt. The architecture of the new power transforms war into a processing problem. And that is precisely what Léon XIV seeks to prevent. Because when killing becomes an interface in an algorithm, human consciousness begins to vanish from the most extreme act of all: deciding on the life of another human being.
The Colonization of Consciousness
7. For decades we believed that Capitalism wanted mainly our money. Today it wants something much deeper: our attention, our habits, our connections, our fears and our perception of reality. And artificial intelligence is taking this to an unprecedented scale. We are no longer talking only about algorithms that recommend content. We are talking about systems capable of anticipating behavior, emotionally profiling individuals, inducing consumption, organizing outrage and eventually deciding who gains access to rights, opportunities or security. This, because for much of the contemporary technocratic ecosystem, the person is no longer a mystery, a source of dignity, or an irreducible consciousness. Persons are data. A pattern. Predictable behavior. …And when a civilization begins to think this way, the next step always ends up being the same: treating people as resources. The term ‘techno-feudalism’ thus is no rhetorical exaggeration.
8. Classical industrial Capitalism still relied on a certain degree of decentralization. The new Digital Capitalism works exactly the opposite way. It naturally tends toward monopolies, closed platforms, extreme data concentration and technological dependence. It is no longer just about selling products. It is about managing entire ecosystems of existence. That is the true historical shift.
The new tech elites no longer present themselves simply as successful entrepreneurs
9. They present themselves as evolutionary drivers of humanity. Babel has returned… But it is no longer built with stones. It is built with servers, algorithms, artificial intelligence, platforms and the private concentration of human information. The new power no longer needs to impose uniformity through armies. It can do so through algorithmic management, perceptual manipulation, information saturation, and total digital dependence.
Bottom line
10. “Disarming artificial intelligence” was not a phrase the Pope uttered in passing. Nor was it used as a rhetorical device. Leo XIV did not simply call for regulating artificial intelligence. He called for disarming it. Because disarming does not mean destroying computers. It means preventing artificial intelligence from becoming completely intertwined with mass surveillance, automated warfare, behavioral control, and the algorithmic management of collective life. Because the true collapse of civilization does not begin when machines become conscious. It begins when we humans stop defending our own conscience. (M. Vega)
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com
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