Vice PresidentJD Vancepraised Pope Leo XIV on Tuesday for issuing anew theological documentrife with warnings about unbridled advancements in AI.
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The text, Leo’s first encyclical since his installation as pope last year, urged a restraint that doesn’t stop progress but, rather, functions as the “exercise of responsible care for the human family.”
Vance, a Catholic and a proponent of AI technology, said in a telephone interview with NBC News that he had yet to read the entire encyclical but had scanned “bits and pieces” and summaries of it.
“What I read of it sounds very profound, and the sort of thing that you would expect and hope from a leader of the church,” he said. “The thing about morality is that the principles never change, but the way you apply those principles does, because the world changes, right?”
“You have new technologies and warfare, so you have to update‘Just War’ doctrine,” Vance added. “New ways of human beings interacting with one another, so you have to kind of rethink the entire Catholic social teaching in light of the new world that we live in. And I think that’s exactly what the pope is trying to do. So I’m glad that he did it.”
Leo released the encyclical alongside Christopher Olah, one of the co-founders of Anthropic. The artificial intelligence giant’s involvement had been seen as a potential flashpoint between the Vatican and President Donald Trump, whose administration ordered all agencies to stop using Anthropic after the companyrefusedthe U.S. military unrestricted access to its technology.
Vance’s interview Tuesday was his first to preview his forthcoming book, “Communion,” set to be released June 16 by HarperCollins. The book traces Vance’s faith journey — a Protestant upbringing, a drift into atheism and, most recently, a conversion to Catholicism.
In the interview, Vance confirmed areport last month by Semaforthat he deleted X from his phone for Lent, the Christian season of prayer and sacrifice leading to Easter. Lent ended April 2, but Vance, whose penchant for directlyengaging in social media discourse and debateis well-documented, revealed that he has not yet reinstalled the app, though he plans to at some point.
“It’s one of these things where not having that as a distraction, I think, has made me much more productive,” Vance said. “You’re not scrolling all the time when you get five minutes. I can actually read something, as opposed to, you know, scroll or get distracted by X.”
Source: Drudge Report
