Elon Musk is well known for insisting on managing from first principles. Turns out that Pope Leo manages from first principles too. The difference is his first principles are eternal.
That was the conclusion I came to yesterday when I spent most of the afternoon reading through the Pope’s just released encyclical on artificial intelligence, Magnifica Humanitas or Magnificent Humanity.
In opening his critique of AI, Pope Leo asks three “crucial questions”:
Where are we going?
Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves?
What direction should we choose as a people and a human community?
He then begins to give his own answers with his comparison of AI’s current developmental path to building the Tower of Babel when what we need instead is an approach that mirrors the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Here’s how he describes it:
“Babel thus reveals the limits of any effort that, however grandiose, arises from self-affirmation (and) sacrifices human dignity for efficiency…”
In contrast, as the Pope relays, Nehemiah, in returning to a Jerusalem in ruins:
“… examined the destroyed areas in silence. He did not impose solutions from above. He convened the families, assigned each of them a section of the wall to rebuild, listened to their concerns, coordinated their efforts and addressed any opposition. The narrative shows how the city is reborn, not through the initiative of one man, but through the shared responsibility of all: men, women, priests, artisans, heads of households and young people all play a part.”
Those passages set the tone for what follows in Magnificent Humanity. The Pope is operating from the first principles that humans are sacred, have the right to agency and inclusion, and are not means to an end, but ends in themselves.
For the past several years, I’ve been promoting the idea that to lead better, one must live better. A key component of living better, I believe, is to take the time to think deeply about one’s values and first principles so that they can be applied to creating positive outcomes for the greatest number of people. Yes, that includes but is not limited to shareholders – great leadership considers the good of all stakeholders.
By that definition, Pope Leo is a great leader. In his encyclical he asserts that the course of a world changing technology like AI should not be in the hands of a few but guided by the interests and participation of the many. In reading the encyclical, I considered this passage to represent the crux of his argument:
“In the digital age, a just social order guarantees everyone equal access to opportunities, protects the youngest and weakest members of society, combats hate and misinformation and subjects the use of data and technology to public oversight, so that the guiding principle is not solely profit but the dignity of every person and the common good of all people.”
Over the past few weeks, we’ve seen videos of college commencement speakers being roundly and loudly booed by graduates when they’ve brought up the promise and inevitability of AI. My guess is that Pope Leo would receive a sustained standing ovation in raising the topic. As represented in this passage, he’s arguing against the big decisions being made for all by a few and for governments to step in to represent the best interests of the many:
“… in the context of the digital revolution… the highest level is not the State, but rather major economic and technological actors that exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life…States and transnational institutions are called to ensure fair rules and effective safeguards, so that local communities… have a voice and can contribute to the discernment of choices that affect people’s daily lives, such as employment, access to services, data management and digital environments.”
I’ve learned today that, unlike AI, it’s difficult for a human to fully summarize an 82-page document in a few hours of reading and writing. Claude could do it in a few minutes, but it wouldn’t be doing it with heart. So, in the interest of giving you a bit more of a summary, let me offer this “supercut” of passages from Magnificent Humanity that I think address the heart of the matter:
… technology is not simply a tool. When it becomes the standard by which everything is judged, it begins to dictate what matters and what can be discarded, reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency…
… If technological development advances without a corresponding ethical and social progress, the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity: “having more” without “being more” …
…The quality of a civilization is measured not by the power of its means, but by the care it is able to offer, by its ability to recognize the other as a face not merely as a function.”
Thus far, our AI journey has been a triumph of having more over being more; function over face; the head over the heart. To close with one last passage from Pope Leo, I would argue that we need more of the latter in each of those three cases:
“Questioning this alternative path of progress and how we interpret and live it is ultimately a matter of examining our own hearts. The way we understand and shape relationships, work and institutions, in practice reveals our fundamental values. In the end, it all stems from what we hold most dear.”
That last passage is one last illustration of Pope Leo leading from a first principle: use the moral authority of the papacy to thoughtfully, thoroughly, and forcefully speak out on what is, ultimately, an issue of morality.
That’s leadership, folks.
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