Faith and governance in the age of thinking machines
Tony Blair has met several popes, but has not yet had the pleasure of meeting Pope Leo XIV. Nevertheless, the two men have a lot in common. Both are Catholic baby boomers. Both were in their late 30s when the World Wide Web was opened to the public in 1991 (Blair, perhaps surprisingly, is two years older). Both have lived through the subsequent upheaval. And this week, both published essays outlining how to respond to it.
In his first encyclical, the Pope said that humans are “called to reflect on the great ‘construction sites’ of our era and ask: What are we building?” and recommended protecting people caught up in disruption caused by the technology.
Blair, though he talked about the Labour Party leadership, international relations and energy among other things, tied it all back to his idea for a philosophy of leadership. “The Radical Centre starts from the proposition that governing in the age of AI will be the principal challenge. And opportunity. The route to economic prosperity and social justice.”
Why are these public figures intervening now? It has been evident for several years that the implications of AI could be earth-shattering. What has made the conditions right for them to put out their own visions? By examining the timing, it becomes clear that both are concerned many of us are going to be losers, and that there is limited time to help avoid this fate.
The most obvious explanation for the epochal language used in these two documents is the power of the technology itself. While it has been hailed as revolutionary since it went mainstream, it is the rapid rate of progress in frontier models that makes this moment feel urgent.
It would be tempting, for those in the know, to peg the exact timing to a specific development. Perhaps on the creation of Mythos, Anthropic’s model that is allegedly so powerful it is unfit for public consumption. But that might be premature. Previous threats and breakthroughs have been hyped before being forgotten – remember DeepSeek? Or the week everyone thought agents were going to launch a coup from Moltbook?
More likely, the reshaping of the economy that has begun to take place around AI serves as the impetus here. Trillions of dollars are being ploughed into the businesses and the infrastructure buildouts that support them. This year, SpaceX (which owns xAI), OpenAI and Anthropic are expected to list their shares on the stock market, a move that will likely entrench their role as the “superstar firms” of this economy. These IPOs will also create tens of thousands of millionaires, largely drawn from the investors and staff of these firms.
This contributes to another reason why we are getting these missives from on high about AI. It’s a nebulous reason, a public mood, best expressed by a Silicon Valley meme about the “permanent underclass”. Half-joking, half-serious, this term describes the idea that AI brings about an end to social mobility by replacing all human labour, and that there are only a few years left in which to accumulate wealth before that happens. Those AI shareholders will be fine. For the rest of us, it’s anyone’s guess.
This is an extreme scenario, but taps into a feeling that we might get left behind. More than generalised anxiety about inequality, this is a fear that the new wave of wealth and superintelligence will end everything about life as we know it. It is a feeling intermingled with disappointment over stagnant wages, the cost of living, the state of politics, the environmental crisis, the slow loss of newspapers/Saturday jobs/bank branches/whatever it was that made life feel real to you. Bo Burnham might call it “that funny feeling”.
This was all happening before and without AI. But now there is the added fear that the very top layer of society is going to further seal itself off from the problems the rest of us face, and leave us no way out.
The Pope warns that, “[a]ll too often, we place our hope in unlimited “upgrades,” in forms of progress that exacerbate inequalities”. Like everyone else, he is worried about how AI might accelerate the gaps between people.
Even more concerning, the drivers of this change are “private, often transnational, parties that are endowed with resources and the capacity to intervene that surpass those of many Governments”. This predominantly private aspect of technological power will make it even harder to direct it toward the “common good”, he says.
The relative powerlessness of governments opens up a power vacuum into which someone like the Pontifex can provide non-state guidance, some moral gravitas with which to at least try to hold multinational private companies to account. But he also urges states and trans-national institutions to put in fair rules.
Blair comes to a similar conclusion, but with a different focus. He, too, thinks states should step up and embrace AI, rather than only regulating it. In this way they will cope better with issues which are fast outpacing its capabilities. In Blair’s telling, it is not just an echelon of individuals who end up in the permanent underclass but entire countries. “All governments for the foreseeable future will govern in the age of AI. Those which understand it will see their countries prosper; those which don’t, won’t.”
We should be sceptical of interventions like these – yes, even when they come direct from the Vatican. AI is becoming an effective rhetorical tool that leaders can use to justify something they wanted to say anyway, be that reiterating the importance of “love thy neighbour” or meddling in the Labour Party leadership. But cynicism shouldn’t make us unable to consider the possibility that they are sincere.
In the many reactions to Blair’s piece there is a persistent misreading. Critics say the former Prime Minister is touting AI as “the answer”, as the solution to all of Britain and the world’s challenges. Not quite. He is looking to AI itself as being the biggest challenge, one that can’t be avoided. “There is no point in debating whether this technological revolution is a good or bad thing. Just know it is a ‘thing’. In fact, it is ‘the thing’.”
Blair has extensive connections to the AI ecosystem, from his son Euan’s company, Multiverse, to his daughter-in-law’s recent appointment as the managing partner of the UK’s Sovereign AI Fund. The commercial strategy of his own consultancy is wrapped up in the technology and shaped by money from tech billionaire Larry Ellison.
Questioning his motives is right. But the very actions of the Blair ecosystem suggest a conviction behind what he is saying. He and his circle have already begun building their ark. So how do we avoid some financial equivalent of the Great Flood? According to the Pope, we must think deliberately and long-term, and avoid becoming reactive. “If we focus only on contingencies, we risk letting the succession of emergencies dictate the direction of our path.”
Yet the weighing-in of these global figures is in itself a way to generate an emergency; to produce that great headline fodder phrase, “issues stark warning”. To declare an emergency is to open up a space for rapid, unwavering decisions. They might not always be the right ones but, as the pandemic demonstrated, actions can be taken quickly when the conditions are right.
Until now, attempts to make AI and its effects feel urgent have been more reminiscent of climate predictions. In both cases, certain groups become convinced of an imminent risk and pushed for immediate action, but many others – even if they believe the warnings – are passive. As the Pope writes on AI, “while some are vying for the future of new technologies and others dedicate themselves to reflecting on the matter – most people are watching and waiting, observing from afar and merely hoping for the best”.
This year does feel different though. Even if the impact of AI on the labour market is overblown, the technology frequently gets the blame for youth unemployment and mass layoffs. Those still in jobs might have targets for using it. Relatives and friends and managers are becoming accustomed to outsourcing every decision to chatbots. Output from AI tools can now be found in published books, at the Cannes Film Festival, and all over the internet. To most of us, it now feels a lot more tangible. This might be the moment to intervene if one truly believes that the course of history needs to be shaped.
What Blair and Pope Leo have in common is that they are trying to intercede while there is still time left to do something about what’s coming.
[Further reading: It’s so much worse than Tony Blair thinks]
