😺 The Pope’s Warning on AI's Babel
The Neuron · Grant Harvey · 2026-05-27
Pope Leo XIV's encyclical 'Magnifica Humanitas' frames AI as a choice between 'Babel' (domination and exclusion) and 'Jerusalem' (shared rebuilding), as U.S. law enforcement simultaneously begins tracking anti-technology activists amid rising data center protests and Goldman Sachs projects $800B in annual AI infrastructure spending by end of 2026.
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Extraction
Topics: ai-ethicsai-politicsdata-centerspapal-encyclicalai-backlash
Claims
- Pope Leo XIV's encyclical 'Magnifica Humanitas' frames AI as either 'Babel'—characterized by uniformity and domination—or 'Jerusalem'—a shared rebuilding where everyone contributes to a common good.
- DHS and FBI have compiled 1,000+ pages tracking 'anti-technology extremists,' raising concerns that the label could expand to cover peaceful data center protesters and skeptics.
- Goldman Sachs projects annual AI infrastructure spending will reach $800 billion by end of 2026, lifting its capex growth forecast from 6.5% to 7.8%.
- The Pope argues that AI systems affecting jobs, credit, or services must provide understandable decisions and appeals, and that data should carry social obligations including job protections and worker participation.
- Data centers have become AI's defining political fault line, concentrating community concerns about land use, power consumption, water, tax deals, noise, air quality, and job displacement.
Key quotes
Technology is 'never neutral,' he writes, because it takes on the traits of those who devise, finance, regulate, and use it.
The test for AI is whether ordinary people believe the future is being built alongside them, and that they own a piece of it.
Anti-tech violence is very real (just look at what happened to Sam Altman), but critics of the term worry the label could widen to peaceful protesters, skeptics, and local residents who don't want a datacenter in their backyard.