Who is the Antichrist Today?

Pope Francis has issued his first encyclical, 'Magnifica Humanitas,' directly addressing the perils of the artificial intelligence era and emphasizing the need to protect human dignity. The Pope asserts that technology is never neutral, reflecting the biases and intentions of its creators and funders. He critiques the emergence of a new elite and stresses society's collective responsibility in managing AI, warning against leaving its development to market forces.

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Technology is never neutral; it reflects the characteristics of those who design it, fund it, and regulate it.

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek draws a parallel between the Pope's warnings and the figure of the 'antichrist,' identifying tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel as a prime example. Thiel, founder of Palantir, criticizes international organizations and regulations as 'antichristian' while simultaneously advocating for an AI-centric political order controlled by tech elites. This system, Žižek argues, offers economic freedom to powerful corporations but imposes social order through religion and ideology, subtly manipulating behavior via algorithms and digital surveillance, thus turning AI into a tool of domination rather than liberation.

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The answer lies in the role of failure and limitation that constitute human existence.

The article contrasts this vision with the Pope's call for AI to be placed under human responsibility. Pope Francis elevates the discussion to a philosophical level, questioning whether a core aspect of humanity exists beyond algorithmic optimization. He finds the answer in human fallibility, limitations, and imperfections. While algorithms must correct errors, human mistakes can lead to profound change. The Pope suggests that it is through these very limitations, incompetence, illness, aging, suffering, and vulnerability, that humans truly flourish, not by overcoming them.

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The person who most closely resembles the Antichrist warned of by the Pope is none other than the one who attacks all those who oppose him.

Human greatness, the text posits, arises from the existence of limits such as death, sexuality, and imperfection. The desire to eliminate all limits through technology imagines a flawless human, but such an individual would be entirely subsumed by AI, stripped of the conditions for a meaningful spiritual life. Human subjectivity is formed precisely by confronting an irresolvable 'otherness' and endless questioning. Limits are not obstacles but the very space that enables transcendence. This insight extends even to the divine, as Christianity portrays God becoming finite and vulnerable in Christ to achieve full divinity, suggesting that divinity is realized through striving within a flawed world.

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Incompetence, illness, aging, suffering, and vulnerability are seen as defects to be corrected, but humans flourish not in spite of these limits, but precisely through them.