It might not have meant to be a stamp of approval, but it feels like a stamp of approval from the Vatican.

Yeah, I think the choice was motivated by a, a long history of engagement, and I would hope that Chris's role in the presentation of the encyclical would also inspire other tech companies to engage in these sorts of conversations where agreement and disagreement can be hashed out, sometimes publicly and then sometimes behind closed doors.

It feels uncomfortably close to eugenics.

I, I think there's a real risk that we'll turn to this kind of neo-eugenic movement.

I don't think that we're at all determined to do that.

I think the, the moral voice of the global church is, is strong, and it's, it's a voice that can stand up against forces of mass surveillance, of lethal autonomous weapons, of neo-eugenic trends.

And after condemning all of those abuses, encourage the positive developments.

What follows from taking that idea seriously in these conversations?

Yeah, I think all of us feel the pressure to that optimization, right? We're often bombarded by life hack videos, and we're trying to figure out how to be more productive.

And these tools are really helpful.

As a researcher, I'm able to assemble different resources more easily, more quickly.

I often use AI as an adversarial thought partner to poke and prod the weaknesses of my own writing or help students to do the same.

But we do see some insidious aspects of this kind of constant push to optimization and the way AI is affecting it.

When I was reading number, uh, one seventeen of the encyclical, something very concrete came to mind.

Um, this idea that, that once you're mediated by this particular technology, right, do we lose something, uh, regarding our creativity, regarding what makes us this human?

Can it become a little too late to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem if you don't take a sort of aggressive stand on people practicing the Tower of Babel paradigm?

Yeah, that's an interesting point.

I mean, something came to mind.

I recently saw some footage of...

Noam Chazir, right, this key figure is at Google.

And I think he just transitioned over.

I think it was OpenAI, but I know he made a big shift recently.

What about a focus on the dignity of pleasure rather than on the dignity of work?