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James Valentine meets the pope at the Pearly Gates. This is not the lead-in to a punchline delivered too soon, but a match made in heaven that could help those of us left behind preserve our humanity.
While the wave of grief that followed the Sydney presenter’s passing in April may be slowly subsiding, the brio of his departure has settled deeply with those of us who were part of his vast network of goodwill.
I was lucky to be a small part of this world. For a few years I would run the “people’s poll” for afternoon listeners where we explored everything from our showering habits (58% mornings to 42% evenings) to the opening move in rock-paper-scissors (55% rock).
Like so much of his work, this was not just a frivolous way to pass the time with his audience; what James created with skill and intentionality was a living organism that offered to sustain anyone who chose to join in. This was his gift.
While James was effusively equivocal about religion, I couldn’t help thinking about his earthly contribution as I read the papal encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, released a few weeks ago.
Pope Leo XIV’s letter to the Catholic flock and all people of goodwill is a much-anticipated intervention in the hyper-scaling of so-called artificial intelligence.
It builds on the work of his predecessor, Leo XIII, who he named himself after, whose Rerum Novarum on the Industrial Revolution asserted the dignity of labour, a clarion call for believers to join unions and work collectively to civilise capital.
The first US-born pontiff, who grew up on the South Side of Chicago, has been dubbed the “woke pope” for his willingness to push back on the Trump administration’s ICE raids and reckless warmongering. To be clear, he is no progressive saint; he was politicised opposing female reproductive rights, while the church’s dark history of abuse remains his cross to bear.
These caveats aside, read on its merits, Magnifica Humanitas offers a moral clarity that has been absent from a public AI discourse that vacillates between existential doom and naive faith.
In forensic detail the pope audits the risks of this technology, from the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few, to the automation of state-sponsored killing, to the erasure of cultural diversity and, most pointedly, to the manifest exploitation of those trapped in its production line, particularly those in the global south.
Leo frames the choices we currently face in biblical terms. On one hand a Tower of Babel where humanity is reduced to a brittle uniformity that neutralises difference under the pretence of a single language model. In contrast, he casts the rebuilding of Jerusalem undertaken by Nehemiah as a shared enterprise driven by returning exiles working in communion.
This is the principle of “subsidiarity” where authority is vested in those participating in their community in service of the common good rather than designated up to governments or, more pointedly, corporations.
The idea of distributed power seems counterintuitive coming from the titular head of a unitary religion, but as Dr Michael Walker explains, “subsidiarity” lies at the heart of Catholic social teaching.
Without conscious rebalancing of power, we are left with technology that dehumanises us all by putting the relentless pursuit of the material at the centre of everything.
The alternative? The pope argues we need to get our hands dirty and build together, not as consumers of product but as active makers of the world we want our children to inherit.
In his wonderful tribute in the Sydney Town Hall, Roy Valentine made the point that his father never asked his kids, “What do you want to be?” but rather “How do you want to live?”
This strikes me as more than just an enlightened model of parenting. It is a challenge to all of us to mindfully choose our path at a time when we are told that both anything is possible and resistance is futile.
How do we want to live? In a world where AI agents and companion bots cater to our every whim until we lose the ability to even discern what we actually want? In workplaces where co-pilots erase friction until they can simply fly themselves? In a culture that synthesises the past until there is nothing left to steal? Where we outsource ideation and connection until we are dragged into lonely universes of one, insulated from the friction of other people by an automated layer of a simulated self.
The sense of inevitability around this digital Babel has already taken hold and will take more than a single government or a law or a consumer boycott to change its course. It will take all of us acting in communion to resist these false idols by seeking joy in each other. As the pope writes: “True progress always stems from a heart open to others, an intelligence willing to listen and a will that seeks what unites rather than what separates.” Sounds like someone we know?
How do we want to live? Leo’s encyclical is the invocation to human composition. Now it’s over to us to tap James’ enduring spirit, step in and join the ensemble.
