The notion of apocalypse has different shades of meaning and nuance, depending on its context. Secular culture has long assumed it is the peculiar foolishness of religious folk to believe in prophecies of a radically different kind of future. And yet it can be those most detached from traditional religious faith who embrace the most nonsensical apocalypses. For example, we have Elon Musk and his promises to \u201coccupy Mars,\u201d despite the place being a death sentence for humans, or fellow entrepreneur Bryan Johnson, who suggests clients can \u201clive forever\u201d through dietary torture and blood transfusions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
No sort of apocalyptic nonsense is quite so pervasive today, however, as what comes from artificial intelligence obsessives\u2014boosters and doomers alike.<\/p>\n
It is worth revisiting these prophecies at this moment, because there is a subtext in Pope Leo XIV\u2019s first encyclical, \u201cMagnifica Humanitas<\/a>,\u201d that confronts Silicon Valley\u2019s dueling false apocalypses, while not dignifying their ideas with too much mention.<\/p>\n Pope Leo does take the time, at least, to rebuke the boosters\u2019 apocalyptic vision: the \u201ctranshumanist\u201d and \u201cposthuman\u201d aspirations of many A.I. boosters, who promise that \u201csuperintelligence\u201d will free us from every problem we can imagine. \u201cThe human desire for fullness of life,\u201d he writes, \u201cis at risk of being misled by deceitful goals, such as the prospect of a technology that promises to free us from all weakness.\u201d<\/p>\n The boosters meanwhile prophesy that the A.I. data centers\u2019 energy and water consumption will be outweighed by their finding the solution to climate change<\/a>, along with a cure for cancer, world peace and the end of the tedium of labor. Some subset of this may be true, in part; the utopian aspirations are ridiculous. To be human is to know limits, and to invent anything is to know unintended consequences.<\/p>\n The other A.I. apocalypse, that of the doomers, may seem harder to dismiss. In Vatican officials\u2019 dialogues with A.I. insiders, especially their conversation partners at Anthropic<\/a>, they surely heard a great deal about \u201cexistential risk.\u201d This is shorthand for \u201cthe A.I.s will kill us all,\u201d by way of synthesizing perfect bioweapons or engineering a nuclear holocaust or turning the planet into paper clips<\/a>. Both OpenAI and Anthropic were founded on the premise of preventing such outcomes. But the encyclical barely gives these scenarios mention.<\/p>\n Both the booster and doomer apocalypses are power plays. They claim that the single-minded pursuit of A.I., or the single-minded anxiety about A.I.\u2019s risks, is more important than anything else. Meanwhile, we are told that actual experiences of A.I. hiring discrimination<\/a> or A.I. carbon emissions<\/a> or A.I. shadow work<\/a> or A.I. layoffs<\/a> should seem comparatively unimportant. The billionaire investor Peter Thiel has lately been on a speaking tour to warn about the Antichrist<\/a>, which may be a convenient way to distance his reputation from the role his A.I. company Palantir is playing in abetting immigrant concentration camps<\/a> and the mass murder of Iranian civilians<\/a>.<\/p>\n Imaginary nightmares enable actual harm. As the pope warns, \u201cwhile some pursue the illusion of unlimited self-assertion, many are deprived of basic necessities.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the encyclical doesn\u2019t use the word apocalypse explicitly, it offers one of a different sort. But this revelation, or unveiling\u2014that\u2019s what the word apocalypse means\u2014isn\u2019t one made out of Babel-esque or Baal-like technologies.<\/p>\n The secularized apocalypse is nothing new<\/p>\n When the previous Pope Leo penned his encyclical \u201cRerum Novarum<\/a>\u201d in 1891, confronting the demons of the Industrial Revolution, secular apocalypses were swirling around as well.<\/p>\n The first was what the economist Joseph Schumpeter would later celebrate as \u201ccreative destruction<\/a>\u201d\u2014the capacity of entrepreneurs to produce value in the world by smashing what came before them. Yes, the factories had broken families and historic ties to land, but aren\u2019t their products wonderful? Allow the process to continue, and capitalism will deliver phenomenal benefits that are worth all the hardship along the way.<\/p>\n On the other side was the promise of a workers\u2019 revolution and the dictatorship of the proletariat. This would usher in a paradise on earth through the proper knowledge of, and action upon, material conditions. Study those conditions, and act when the time is right, and the science of history will take care of the rest.<\/p>\n The philosopher Karl L\u00f6with recognized<\/a> these tales as secularized cribbing of Christian prophecy. They borrow the idea of a new heaven and a new earth but without the parts about God or love\u2014which, in the Christian version, are actually the whole point.<\/p>\n \u201cRerum Novarum\u201d did not mention apocalypse either, but it saw through the secular ones on offer. It also suggested a Christian alternative: the simple and astonishing revelation that all people\u2014including those factory workers\u2014are made in the image of God and deserving of dignity.<\/p>\n Pope Leo\u2019s apocalypse<\/p>\n The present Pope Leo does not speak loudly about the apocalypse, ranting about Antichrists or the Rapture. But apocalypse is in his encyclical, and\u2014as for his predecessor\u2014it lives within the daily work of Christian life, not in some exotic sci-fi to come.<\/p>\n \u201cThe civilization of love,\u201d Leo writes, \u201cwill not arise from a single or spectacular gesture, but from the sum total of small and steadfast acts of fidelity that serve as a bulwark against dehumanization.\u201d The paragraph ends by introducing some of the encyclical\u2019s most powerful language: the call to \u201cdisarm.\u201d This is an apt term: Turning humans into datapoints, and then increasingly arming drones and thugs with those datapoints, is integral to the business model of A.I. companies.<\/p>\n Pope Leo is suggesting something quite significant here: Most Christians and their secular copycats have been misunderstanding apocalypse all along. It is not about one technology, one Antichrist or one revolution, whether against the Roman Empire or against capitalism. It is no particular event or particular anything. He writes, \u201cElevating any single dimension of human existence to an absolute is always a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n The apocalypse of Pope Leo is in fact many apocalypses\u2014akin to what the theologian Catherine Keller has called<\/a> a \u201ccounter-apocalypse.\u201d You think it is coming from the sky, but it is actually right in front of you, in a person or a crisis, an opportunity or a failure. These are the revelations that matter right now; they are the unveiling. They are how Christ comes again, at least for the moment.<\/p>\n