Pope Leo XIV’s moral guidelines for AI: On Musk, OpenAI, and the importance of humanity

(Part 1)

There is a danger that profit-hungry capitalists will predominate in developing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to make it useful to humanity.

The May 9 headline of the Financial Times read “AI spree shreds Big Tech cash flow.” The humongous $725-billion investment in AI of the US’ largest companies — Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, and Meta — has left them with less cash than at any point in the past decade. With such huge investments in this emerging sector (called Industrial Revolution 4.0), there is a real danger that in the not too distant future, these companies will be so hungry for profits to recover their investments that they may act as the rugged capitalists of the First Industrial Revolution (1790 to 1830) which spawned all sorts of industrial crimes again humanity (starvation wages, child labor, long hours of brutal work, the employment of even pregnant women).

The industrial crimes of the First Industrial Revolution prompted Pope Leo XIII to write the first Social Encyclical, entitled Rerum Novarum (Of New Things). Now, 135 years later, Pope Leo XIV has issued his first papal encyclical called Magnifica Humanitas that is the equivalent of Rerum Novarum for the present generation of digital techies.

It may be enlightening to better understand this issue of “rugged capitalism” being applied to the development of AI, by looking at the two sides of an ongoing legal controversy between the richest man in the world — Elon Musk — and some other super-rich capitalists today over how OpenAI evolved from a nonprofit organization to a profit-seeking undertaking.

The issue centers on OpenAI having been founded as a nonprofit organization with Musk being one of the co-founders and early financial backers. OpenAI was originally founded in 2015 as a nonprofit dedicated to developing artificial intelligence “for the benefit of humanity,” rather than for private profit. Musk sued OpenAI and its leaders (notably Sam Altman and Greg Brockman) for having betrayed the organization’s original mission by turning it into a profit-oriented enterprise closely tied to Microsoft. (Musk lost the suit on May 18, with the jury finding Musk waited too long to sue. — Ed.)

The core of Musk’s argument can be summarized as follows: He said that he contributed money and reputation to OpenAI because it was supposed to remain a nonprofit devoted to the common good. He argued that OpenAI’s later establishment of a for-profit arm — and its massive commercial partnership and valuations — amounted to a “bait and switch.” Musk then argued that the company’s leaders enriched themselves and abandoned promises that AI technology would remain openly shared and not dominated by purely commercial motives.

OpenAi’s rejoinder consisted of the following points: Building advanced AI requires enormous amounts of capital, computing power, and investors. The original nonprofit structure could not realistically fund the development of systems such as ChatGPT. It is alleged that Musk knew about and at one time supported the idea of a for-profit structure before leaving the company in 2018.

There was also the touchier issue of Musk’s motivation in pursuing the lawsuit. OpenAI’s leaders asserted that the lawsuit was partly motivated by competition since Musk later founded a rival AI company, xAI.

There were legal (and possibly ethical) questions raised:

1. Can a nonprofit technology organization later become profit-oriented?

2. Do founders and donors have enforceable rights based on the organization’s original mission?

3. How should powerful AI companies balance public benefit against investor returns?

The case became one of the most closely watched legal battles in the AI industry because it touched on the future governance of AI and whether or not organizations founded for the common good can later evolve into highly commercial enterprises. Providentially, this celebrated legal tussle raises a very important moral issue on which Pope Leo XIV has begun to issue principles for reflection, criteria for judgment, and directives for action. Thus, his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas.

Musk, wittingly or unwittingly, raised a very important moral issue: Should a technology that can contribute untold benefits to the common good of society, which, at the same time, can inflict so much social harm, be subject to free market forces? Or should organizations like OpenAI be required to operate as social enterprises.

A social enterprise manufactures a good or renders a service with the primary mission of serving the common good of society and not for the material enrichment of its founder(s). It, however, should generate enough revenues over and above its operating costs in order to continue serving more people and improving its product or service. Its main purpose is to do good to society and not to make its founder(s) rich. The managers and workers of a social enterprise, however, should be paid market-based salaries, wages, and fringe benefits. Whatever profits remain should not accrue to any individuals but should be continuously plowed back to the enterprise in order to improve the product or service and to benefit more people.

The Financial Times’ May 11 report on the trial raised precisely the question of whether the original mission of OpenAI retains precedence over profit.

Already in South Korea, Kim Yong-beom, who is the presidential policy chief, has floated the idea of redistributing some of the soaring profits of the country’s chip makers from the AI boom after the market value of Samsung Electronics exceeded $1 trillion and shares of SK Hynix almost tripled. Some interpreted this suggestion as questioning the basic principles of capitalism. Kim later clarified that he was referring to “excess tax revenue generated by the AI boom, rather than proposing a new tax on corporate profits.”

In whatever way this reasonable suggestion is interpreted, it is clear that the advent of AI and the other new technologies associated with Industrial Revolution 4.0 would require a greater orientation of capitalists towards the common good instead of their obsessing over profit maximization.

AI is such a powerful tool that there should be a common effort to ensure that it really serves humanity. It should not be a surprise, therefore, that the first thing we expect from AI is to preserve the humanity of individual persons. It is not a coincidence that Pope Leo XIV’s first social encyclical, published on May 25, is entitled Magnifica Humanitas — Magnificent Humanity.

Actually, there already was a prelude to this historical papal encyclical (reminiscent of the very first social encyclical written by the 13^th Pope Leo in 1891), in Pope Leo XIV’s message for the 60^th World Day of Social Communications where he wrote that the first thing we must demand of AI is to preserve human voices and faces.

This reminds me of what a close friend of mine, who is very fortunate to be blessed with numerous grandchildren by his married children, did. He sent me two versions of a photo that was taken of him posing with his grandchildren. The first version showed the real, natural faces of the cute lads and lasses. The second was a typical AI production with the faces stylized. He commented that though AI tried to present the children’s faces to look more surreally handsome or pretty, he infinitely preferred the natural looks.

As Pope Leo XIV wrote in his message to the World Day of Social Communications, “Preserving human faces and voices, therefore, means preserving this mark, this indelible reflection of God’s love. We are not a species composed of predefined biochemical formulas. Each of us possesses an irreplaceable and inimitable vocation, that originates from our own lived experience and becomes manifest through interaction with others… If we fail in this task of preservation, digital technology threatens to alter radically some of the fundamental pillars of human civilization that at times are taken for granted. By simulating human voices and faces, wisdom and knowledge, consciousness and responsibility, empathy, and friendship, the systems known as artificial intelligence not only interfere with information ecosystems, but also encroach upon the deepest level of communication, that of human relationships.”

This guideline from Pope Leo XIV will be among many others that we can expect from him about AI.

On May 15, in another sign of the close attention he is paying to the ever-growing importance of AI and the impact it will have on the future of humanity, he approved the establishment of an inter-dicasterial commission at the Vatican on the subject.

(To be continued.)

Bernardo M. Villegas has a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard, is professor emeritus at the University of Asia and the Pacific, and a visiting professor at the IESE Business School in Barcelona, Spain. He was a member of the 1986 Constitutional Commission.

bernardo.villegas@uap.asia