“AI Needs to be disarmed” - Pope Leo XiV

"Artificial Intelligence needs to be disarmed." - Pope Leo XIV

https://theconversation.com/ai-needs-to-be-disarmed-pope...

Interesting choice of words. By which he means removing its ability to negatively impact humanity, intentionally or not (my words, not his).

"Let's not fear Artificial Intelligence, but constantly keep the question of the human in-play." - Pope Leo XIV

Let the tools not master their creator (again, my words, not his).

He speaks with a lot of wisdom, and with a lot of heart. I haven’t typically even paid attention to the Pope or what he says, but I have found myself drawn to follow this one, probably because he’s the first American, possibly because of his occasional brave spat with our current President, definitely because he speaks with such wisdom and fluency about things he can’t possibly understand, and definitely because he speaks with such compassion for people of all sorts.

He spoke briefly about AI brandishing weapons, and the sure threat that those weapons pose upon us all. If you think I’m naive or silly to think this is something we should be concerned about, remember that we can’t even keep control of gas-powered construction equipment. Or our self-driving cars. Or our own vehicles, which our own flesh-and-blood behind the wheel. What makes us so sure we can trust AI to launch missiles at the correct targets, or secure our nukes, or our bank accounts, or even our front doors, for that matter?

Believe me, I do want to get to a Star Trek world where doors open automatically (wait, stores already have that), and we can just ask the computer to do stuff for us (wait, didn’t I just ask my phone to turn the AC down a couple degrees?), or give us a simple bowl of tomato soup, but so often when I have to deal with an actual person to get something done, I am amazed that we were ever able to conquer the West, or build a skyscraper, or invent the smartphone without divine intervention. The pyramids I believe a bit more, only because they were (I believe) built on the backs of slaves, and we have a strong propensity to take advantage of others in the extreme.

Then again, I’ve recently read a conspiracy theory that our president is a time traveler, which is something that we don’t even get in Star Trek, so maybe he’s more advanced than the Federation? Oh, I mean, except for The Voyage Home, Discovery, and countless other episodes, there’s no time travel in Star Trek, at all!

But back to the point…AI must be disarmed. It must be guardrailed so that it can only benefit humanity, and do no harm.