Vatican AI encyclical co-authored with Silicon Valley: systemic tensions between human dignity and tech capitalism exposed
Original framing: “Pope Leo to issue text on human dignity and AI with Anthropic co-founder” — The Guardian - Technology
The trickster here is Hermes—messenger of the gods—who embodies the paradox of the encyclical: a document meant to guide humanity, co-authored by a tech firm that profits from humanity’s disorientation. Like Erasmus’ *Praise of Folly*, the narrative mocks itself by celebrating a moral authority that partners with the very systems it condemns. Coyote, the Native American trickster, would expose this as a con game where 'dignity' is the currency of legitimacy for tech capitalism’s latest heist.
The Vatican’s encyclical on AI, co-authored with Anthropic, reveals a paradox where moral authority is weaponized to legitimize techno-capitalism, echoing historical patterns of institutional complicity with extractive systems.
This collaboration exposes the encyclical’s limitations: it frames 'human dignity' as a universal abstraction while ignoring the material conditions of AI’s production—precarious labor, data colonialism, and algorithmic bias—all of which disproportionately harm the Global South. Indigenous and Afro-diasporic epistemologies offer radical alternatives, from data sovereignty to communal knowledge systems, but these are erased in favor of a Eurocentric moralism. The trickster’s lens—Hermes, Coyote—highlights the absurdity of this alliance, where a document meant to guide humanity is co-signed by the very forces eroding it. True systemic change requires dismantling data feudalism through worker cooperatives, Indigenous governance, and decolonial ethics, with the Vatican’s moral authority redirected from legitimizing tech capitalism to challenging it.