GoKawiilWelcome to CNET's new series of guest columns called Alt View, a forum for a diverse array of experts and luminaries to share their insights into the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence. For more AI coverage, check out CNET's AI Atlas.
The last industrial revolution got its moral framework too late. AI doesn't have to.
Last November, I was fortunate enough to meet Pope Leo XIV at a private audience on child dignity and artificial intelligence. I asked Pope Leo whether he was comfortable with artificial intelligence becoming the operating system for people's lives.
He paused for what seemed like an eternity.
Then he said, simply: no.
On May 15, Pope Leo signed Magnifica Humanitas -- his first encyclical, on artificial intelligence and the protection of human dignity. It will be published next week. He signed it 135 years to the day after his namesake, Leo XIII, published Rerum Novarum -- the document that gave the industrial revolution its moral framework. The parallel is deliberate.
Rerum Novarum arrived decades after the industrial revolution began. By then, communities had already been hollowed out. Workers exploited. Children had already paid the price of progress that was not designed with them in mind. The moral framework came -- but after the damage was done and the architecture was fixed.
What we decide in this window will shape the conditions of human life for generations.
The people building AI are unambiguous about the scale of what is coming. Google's Demis Hassabis -- Nobel laureate, founder of DeepMind, one of the architects of modern artificial intelligence -- has described this moment as 10 times the industrial revolution, at 10 times the speed. Anthropic's Dario Amodei speaks of systems surpassing human capability across almost every domain within a matter of years. OpenAI's Sam Altman has suggested what lies ahead may require a new social contract on the scale of the New Deal.
These are not rhetorical claims. They are the considered assessments of those closest to the technology.
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