Magnifica Humanitas
We dive deep into Pope Leo’s XIV’s encyclical with Dr Michael Walker from the Justice and Peace Office at the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney
Latest episode here:
The much-awaited papal encyclical ‘Magnifica Humanitas – On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence’ was released over the week outlining the Church’s approach to the emerging technology. As a practising agnostic who gets overly excited about new ideas I found it a breathtaking read, with a moral clarity around power, erasure and humanity I have really encountered in this field.
It was great to have Michael join us to explain how encyclicals are developed and bought to life. While the Catholic Church has many things to answer for, the potential to organise communities around the principles of ‘subsidiarity’ appear to me to be compelling and urgent. For those who want to dig deeper:
This resource has annotated the full 42,000 words and anyone thinking deeply about AI should bookmark it.
This piece in the always excellent Tech Policy Press canvasses how the teaching could impact AI governance
Of all the commentary I found this (paywalled) piece by Randy Boyagoda in The Atlantic among the most thoughtful.
This week’s show also dug into:
AI’s Trust Deficit – Cam reported back from the AFR AI Summit where the issue du jour was the flagging levels of trust in the technology (was it a room of papists?)
Here’s a link to AI Minister Andrew Charlton’s speech where he frames trust as a critical input rather than output of the technology - it is more nuanced than you’d expect and worth a read.
Here’s a link (paywalled) to the latest contribution of Tech Council’s cultural wrecking-ball Scott Farquhar who still hasn’t got the memo on how it’s not cool to steal the work of creators.
And here is a broader reflective piece from Cam that links the encyclical to the trust issues raised by the Minister.
Unlawful by Design – Lizzie took us though a new report from Amnesty International running the human rights lens over AI’s standard practise of illegally scraping the web. Here’s a link to the report that finds the “generative AI models rely on mass invasions of privacy by design and are fundamentally incompatible with International Human Rights.
Energy Vampires – after sitting out the data centre debate to date (which may or may not be due to the ubiquitous funding of the movement by Atlassian’s Boundless philanthropic fund) I look at a slew of new reports from green groups on the energy consumption of data centres:
Here is a link to the Greenpeace report which focuses on projected increases in electricity and power demand.
Not to be outdone, the Climate Council has released a report looking at the impact on energy prices if data centres draw down on the existing energy grid.
Meanwhile, this report form le Monde shows how the hyperscalers are blocking the release of information about the environmental impact of data centres.
Finally, this SMH piece about a Uni of Western Sydney academic who used AI to analyse her own work to write an oped defending the use of AI in universities is peak hamster wheel.
Have a great week.