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Pope Leo Schooled the Tech Bros on Tolkien

Pope Leo XIV used a meeting with tech executives to discuss J.R.R. Tolkien's works, urging them to look beyond efficiency and profit to embrace deeper moral and humanistic values found in literature like "The Lord of the Rings."

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  • Simon Willison's notes on Pope Leo XIV's encyclical "Magnifica Humanitas" on AI, which addresses ethical challenges around interpretability, cultural biases, environmental impact, algorithmic decision-making, accountability, and data ownership. Willison also highlights his earlier prediction that the Pope would weigh in on AI's economic impact, which came true with the document's release.

  • Corey Quinn commented that getting the Pope to frame a company's technical limitations as a spiritual treatise is an unprecedented act of vendor lobbying, referencing Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah's influence on the papal encyclical *Magnifica Humanitas*.