Pope Leo’s thoughts on AI (below) have led to invocations of the scifi novel Dune’s concept of the Orange Catholic Bible, a future religious text where humanity decides to make a moral prohibition against thinking machines. Dune’s author, Frank Herbert, lays out the O.C. Bible in a few short asides. (Indeed, they are so brief that they have been left out of Villeneuve’s amazing movies. The prequel TV show engages with it, albeit undermined by my postscript below.) No computers are allowed in Dune; humans hone their minds (and use spice!) to do complex calculations, including folding space (fast interstellar travel). How did this ethical prohibition against AI happen? Dune begins by referencing an old war - the Butlerian Jihad - where humanity fought against thinking machines. The Bene Gesserit leader Mohiam elaborates with protagonist Paul: QUOTE: Paul: "Why do you test for humans?" Mohiam: "To set you free." Paul:"Free?" M: "Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."  P: ''Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind."" Paul quoted. M: "Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible...But what the O.C. Bible should've said is: "Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.'... The Great Revolt took away a crutch...It forced human minds to develop. Schools were started to train human talents." END The AI invoked in Dune does not relate to common scifi metaphors like Terminator’s Skynet, that seeks to end humanity. Rather, in the distant past, many people allowed machines to do their thinking for them, and Mohiam says some bad human actors used this to enslave the unthinking. Mohiam’s warning is about humans using machines to oppress other humans. It’s implied that to be free as a human, we must think for ourselves with a higher good for collective humanity in mind. How does this compare to Pope Leo now? Thankfully there has been no great AI war. Leo is engaging on the nature of AI - and if it is conscious and what value it brings to the world. Mohiam’s warning doesn’t touch on that. Elizabeth Dias’s recent New York Times article about how Anthropic worked with the Vatican is very suggestive on these terms. But Leo is similar in warning against concentration of human power too. Instead, the ethics of technology in Dune is more reactive to the AI war. Dune’s glossary hints at a process of how the religions of the world came together after the war to create a new ethics. The OC Bible is said to be the “religious text produced by the Council of Ecumenical Translators. It contains elements of most ancient religions, including the Maometh Saari, Mahayana Christianity, Zensunni Catholicism, and Buddislamic traditions. Its supreme commandment is considered to be: “Thou shalt not disfigure the soul.”’ Ok, that’s a lot of fun scifi jargon! But I read this as implying that post-war, the religions of the world came together to create a new set of ethics and principles for humanity. Specifically, they wanted to make sure that humans never gave up to AI their freedom and ability to think and live for themselves. And they chose to create ethical frameworks to help humans live more safely - and freely- in the future. What would it be like for us to be deliberate in our ethics for technology writ large? In the broader chapter, I explore how engineering ethics literature advocates we similarly make ethical choices today to enable these futures, in AI and beyond. That’s it for now. If you want to dig in, a free preprint. philosophyengineering.com/du…… -Zachary Gallagher Pirtle @zpirtle Postscript: the Dune: Prophecy prequel TV series follows the prequel books cowritten by Herbert’s son, Brian Herbert. As I discuss in footnotes 18 and 21, Brian recenters Dune against a skynet-like evil AI. This seems not to match Dune’s original intent and I do not treat it as canon.

In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.