Pope Leo, AI, and the Knicks: Episode 29

For years, artificial intelligence occupied the familiar territory of technological optimism: faster growth, greater efficiency, and the promise that innovation would solve more problems than it created. That era may be ending. This week on Alternate Shots, Richard Haass and John Ellis examine the rapid emergence of AI not simply as a business story, but as a political, strategic, and even theological one. Prompted by a sweeping papal encyclical warning against surrendering human judgment to machines, the conversation explores the widening backlash against Silicon Valley’s concentration of power and the growing fear that societies are drifting into dependence on systems they neither understand nor control. From the possibility of AI regulation and U.S.-China competition to the surprising coalition forming between populists, evangelicals, and labor skeptics, Haass argues that the debate over artificial intelligence is quickly becoming a debate about governance itself. Also: early 2028 political maneuvering, Texas intrigue, and the improbable emotional stability of New York Knicks fans.

Hosted by John Ellis and Richard Haass

News Items on Substack

Home and Away on Substack

Produced by Dale Eisinger 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello and welcome back to Alternate Shots, America's fastest growing podcast. My name is John Ellis. I am the founder and editor of two Substack newsletters. One is called News Items, the other is called Political News Items. You can find them both at news-items.com.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

I'm Richard Haas. I am the author of America's slowest growing newsletter on Substack, Home and Away, and we'll talk more uh about uh what I just wrote about, I expect.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

Yes. So unusually you posted today instead of Friday. You usually do it on Friday, but uh There was a reason.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Can I confess, John?

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Yes, you may.

SPEAKER_01 0:37

I worked on Monday because it was a rainy Memorial Day weekend, and I thought that I therefore owed myself this Friday off in return. So I am going to uh have a golf lesson and then go out and play in the ever uh it's basically the permanent optimism of ever that every golfer must live with.

SPEAKER_00 0:56

Right. So we can edit that part out. What did you say in uh in what when you uh you read the encyclical, the Pope's encyclical? What was your major takeaways? I hate the word, but what'd you take away from the encyclical?

SPEAKER_01 1:12

I did read it. Magnifica humanitas. It's a long document. It's actually very well written, very little jargon. Clearly, the Pope and his, you know, those who worked with him on this see this not as the final word, but as in some ways a uh an opening salvo and uh what will be a prolonged public conversation about this. If I had a cut to the chase, John, and then I'll work back from there. I would say that what the documents essentially argues is that AI is already too important and certainly will be too important for big decisions about it to be made by those who are the engineers and the developers. That the skill set of creating AI is not necessarily the same skill set that has to get into how to employ it or deploy it or whether and how to regulate it. And indeed, they're very worried that this powerful new tool, this new technology, could its role in society could be determined by a relative few. And so I would say to me, the biggest issue of this is governance and accountability. But they essentially don't want to leave the future of AI, its role in our societies, its role in warfare, its role in any and every aspect of human life. They don't want to leave it to a handful of guys in Silicon Valley who grew up reading Ayn Rand and think they've got all the uh answers. So I'd say that's the the bottom line is that we need to think really carefully about this fast-evolving, powerful technology and how we how we, if you will, stay on top of it. That's that's my principal takeaway. In addition, it makes a uh an interesting sort of argument. And by the way, I'm skipping here, John, all probably the first half of the document, which really is less about AI and is more about the history and role of the church and previous popes weighing in on such issues. Essentially, I think what Pope Leo XIV does is he puts himself in the context of centuries of the church. And in particular, interestingly enough, I didn't know this, Pope Leo XIII, who 135 years ago, at the eve of the Industrial Revolution, introduced an encyclical of new things. And what essentially this is, is uh 135 years later, this is the new new thing. And this Pope is weighing in on that. And what he does is he he pushes back against the idea that AI is human. And it's actually some of the best prose on this in the document, whether you agree with it or not. I'll just read you one or two sentences. This power remains entirely tied to data processing. So-called artificial intelligence, do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship, or responsibility mean. You know, my sense is when I read life things like that, it's almost a warning to some of these people who are spending their entire lives on their devices that it can't be a substitute for human interaction on what we've traditionally known as life. As I said, you know, he is a very worried about that uh a few people and a few firms and societies could have outsized impact. And he there's actually an interesting governance point there that we have to start thinking about international governance, not just as countries and governments, but also as firms and individuals. There's chapters or pages on everything about the potential impact of AI on uh education, on climate change and the environment, on relationships, families, a lot of emphasis on uh the potential to replace or to eliminate jobs. Some very interesting language, John, on the dignity of work, which I expect we're gonna hear more of. Worries about the ability to, how would I call it, corrupt public discourse, worried that AI could exacerbate economic inequality. There's stuff about war and a real concern about what you might call automaticity. They don't do they do not want humans out of the loop on making life or death decisions when it comes to matter of conflict. And again, I uh I think the principal takeaway is we individually, as societies, as countries, we we need to act faster. That this is so powerful and is emerging so quickly in all sorts of far-reaching ways that we need to have a serious conversation about AI. And I think again, there's an awareness of the upside, but also the downside. So my my sense is people in Silicon Valley won't like this. There's for them, it'll be too much of a call for regulation. At one point, he even talks about slowing it down. My guess is a lot of people who already are concerned about AI or data centers that are needed to run it will love this and will uh run with it and uh embrace it. Look, it's not it's not the final word, but my own sense is it's uh it's an important word.

SPEAKER_00 6:18

It's interesting that the Pope uh is the first and as far as I can tell, the only major world figure who has addressed the perils and promise of AI in a very substantive fashion. And it's also interesting that the day or the day after, I guess, the encyclical was published and posted, Cade Metz of the New York Times, who's probably their premier technology reporter, did some interviews with people in Silicon Valley. And one extraordinary set of paragraphs goes like this This is an increasingly common belief among researchers in Silicon Valley that AI will achieve the outcomes that many religions claim their deities would be able to achieve. They insist that they are on the way to building a more powerful species or even a new god. Quote, people are matter-of-factly saying that they are looking to build a machine god, said Ryan Krishnan, the chief executive of Val's AI, a San Francisco company that tracks the performance of the latest AI technologies. They are not saying that ironically or in jest. They are saying it as a matter of fact. AI researchers are trying to build technologies that have jobs, feel loss and pain, and exhibit all sorts of qualities that match and even exceed the traits that make us human.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Yeah, that's uh why I read that sentence I did. Clearly, the Holy Father here is pushing back on this. You know, if I were if one were to go back to Genesis and the creation narrative, on the on the eighth day, I guess now we've created artificial intelligence. And when I think what the Pope was basically saying, we need to put this in perspective, he was pushing back against the kind of thing you just read. It was almost the primacy he was made the case for for human judgment. And there'll be a big debate in in the conversation you did the other day with Sebastian Malaby, which I I urge people to listen to if they haven't. You know, there's two types of AI, if you will. There's the AI that looks at enormous amounts of data and makes sense of it. There's pattern recognition and so forth. And then there's the AI that essentially uses AI to be creative and is not, if you will, simply reacting to data, but these LLMs take on, if you will, a degree of intelligence, quote unquote, of their own. And I think that's where it gets really controversial, John. And I've now said more than I essentially understand. I'm a consumer of this, I'm not an engineer, I don't claim to understand important aspects of it. But already after I published the uh newsletter, Home and Away, I've got several people arguing with me, say on exactly this point, which is how to understand the dimension or aspect or application of AI that goes beyond data interpretation. And that's increasingly, I think, going to be a controversial area, getting into the issues that you've just uh pointed to.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

So I did a recorded a podcast with Josh uh Tarangal, who was a former editor of Business Week, and uh has written a book called AI for Good, How Real People Are Using Artificial Intelligence to Fix Things That Matter. It's the story of people who are doing just that. It's a great book. And so I said, Did you are you off the book tour? And he said, Yeah, I just got off. And I said, Well, how did it go? And he said, Everybody hates AI. So apparently he did, you know, the the reading and then the Q ⁇ A about the book or whatever. And everybody that went to his uh events vented about how awful AI was and how awful Silicon Valley was and so on and so forth. Which leads to my prediction that AI will be the major political issue in the 2028 election. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

Already emerging as a big issue in 26. You know, there's another Haas, the one who does politics for a living, my son Sam. And he's one of the candidates he's working closely with is uh Alex Boras, I think is his name, in the New York 12 district that Congressman Nadler is is vacating. And Mr. Boras used to work with Palantir, but now he's basically advocating for regulating AI, and it's it's it's the centerpiece of his campaign. So it's it's all happening almost as AI is happening and infiltrating our lives and the economy faster than we thought. It's now infiltrating politics faster than we thought. And you're right, most of the most of the politics as I see it are are negative, or pushback, be it against, you know, be because of the fear of job displacement, a lot of concern there. Data centers also having a uh big role. I think also, tell me what you think of this gun. People don't like that, or the average citizen doesn't like that this new thing that a couple of folks seem to have invented out west is suddenly coming at them. And there's a real resentment of uh the engineers, who, by the way, just because you have an engineering muscle in your body and you're brilliant, doesn't mean you have a political gene or an empathy gene or an economic gene, or you studied, you know, you studied issues of sociology or political science or religion. So that what makes you extraordinary in developing AI does not necessarily position you. And I think this is this is implicit in everything the Pope had to say. It does not position you as someone who ought to judge its application. And so I think we've got a real, there's real friction emerging between those who are producing it who essentially want to, with very few exceptions, be unregulated, be left alone, and the rest of society, which for various reasons is quite fearful.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

Yeah, I mean the power distribution is all one way, right? If you at Putin's famous statement, whoever controls AI will control the world, uh the people who control AI in the United States, I would guess I would guess, I don't know, uh, but number no more than 500,000. And they have more power than the rest of us because they know the code. And so what I see, I mean, uh I imagine that what we're gonna see is something like the Scopes trial, where you have people this is grossly overstated, but you have people who believe in God, and you have people who believe in the machine as God, and there are a lot more people who believe in God than believe that uh the machine is God.

SPEAKER_01 12:50

I also think you're gonna have a big public policy debate at two levels. One is domestically, which will get out of this question of regulation. And and if enough people start caring about it, and this is where the Pope's doc Pope's letter matters, and if par Paris Priest's priests will be instructed to talk about it on Sundays, that will reach Congress. Candidates will run with it. And I think the idea of where do we push back as a society, I think that's going to be an issue. And then internationally, the idea about, you know, nuclear weapons came along at a different point, and that led to arms control negotiations and agreements. Is there potentially an AI equivalent? Who is it? The Secretary of the Treasury talked about putting this on the U.S.-Chinese agenda. Sebastian Mallaby, in that same uh interview you did, talked about the United States and China possibly coming together to see that malicious AI, I guess you'd call it, does not end up in the wrong hands. Easier said than done. I don't think they'll be able to agree on an arms controlled agreement about how they limit their own competition in it. The applications are too, there's too much potential upside for it. It would be too hard to monitor any agreement. But I think both domestically and internationally, this is going to be big. And you could have a situation if if cyber is an example, where the EU, for example, comes up with a heavy regulatory framework and tries to push that, not just within Europe, but get companies that want to do business in Europe to live by it. So I I just think that we we're in the opening almost hours of a real conversation about how to think about and what to do about AI.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Yeah. I also I mean, I also think that this is going to become a huge issue in the evangelical community simply because of the assertion. And I mean, I I would predict that Kate Metz's article in the New York Times will reach every evangelical uh preacher and minister in the United States within the next three days. Because the machine is God is uh it's a perfect issue for the evangelical movement uh as a political, you know, matter. And the abortion issue is sort of on hold for at least for the time being, until you get to the genetic editing of uh babies. So this is a great issue for them to to expound upon and to contribute to the conversation on and to raise money off of.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Yeah, and I expect you and I will be returning to it with growing frequency for the reason you mention, not just its economic importance, but its political salience is only gonna grow. It's also one of those issues that could cut across party lines in really interesting ways. So even if the Democrats might be slightly more inclined to regulate it or slow it if they could. What you just suggested, I I expect people on the Republican side will have issues with it as well. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Steve Bannon, uh who is, you know, whatever he is, strategist uh for the Trump world, is livid at the Trump White House for not taking a quote populist stance, end quote, on the AI issue. Trevor Burrus, Jr. That's a great thing. And of course he's exactly right. If you look at the polling amongst the MAGA folk, they are uh, let's just say they're not happy campers about AI and they want the Trump to do something about it.

SPEAKER_01 16:03

So you've just given me a segue. You mentioned polling, and uh this is your world. The uh the Emerson poll, which is some of the early, early, early 28 polling on both sides of the aisle. And I thought there were one or two interesting things in there, even though I I fully recognize that this is crazy early and we haven't even got we're still six months away from the midterms, or whatever. But I thought it was interesting that Marco Rubio has essentially caught up with fully with J.D. Vance, which I think if I were J.D. Vance, I would worry about his growing unpopularity. And Rubio has kind of emerged as a much more likable politician. When you elect a president, it's someone you have to invite into your home for four years, and Rubio is just a much more comfort comfortable person to have in your living room than J.D. Vance, particularly after uh Trump. So I thought that was kind of interesting. And the fact that the governor of California, at least in this poll, again, you can judge better than I was no longer in the lead and had been passed by one Pete Buttigudge. And I thought that was kind of curious, just as kind of data points.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

Aaron Ross Powell The two data points that you point out, I think, are the most interesting, right? Vance uh going downhill rather than staying steady or going uphill, given all the exposure he has. Apparently the more exposure he gets, the less good it is for him. And Newsom, I don't really understand, but he too is sort of marching down the stairs of primary uh support amongst Democratic primary voters. And so that is interesting. And given his access to money and so on and so forth, can he turn that around with paid messaging, et cetera? I I'm not confident that. But on the Democratic side, if you want to think about the Democratic presidential nomination, you have to think about the average Democratic primary voter, which is a black woman who is 55 years old and she goes to church, and her politics are not AOC's politics. They're more in line with, you know, Joe Biden or Barack Obama or whatever. And they dominate those women, uh obviously they're men as well, but black women are the key to winning the primaries in the South.

SPEAKER_01 18:08

And that South Carolina primary, if I remember correctly, the Democrats changed the order. So I assume South Carolina, again, which saved Joe Biden, will probably be disproportionately important.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Yeah. And, you know, and John Ossoff, the senator from from Georgia, is touted as a future presidential candidate. And the reason people do that, the reason people think he has a lot of potential, is because in the 2020 election, he attached himself to Senate now Senator Warnock, a black minister in from Atlanta, and built up a strong relationship with the black community in Georgia. He's done the same thing this time with a black candidate for governor in Georgia. And, you know, if he becomes the favored white guy of the black community in the Democratic Party, then he, you know, he's uh he's top two, you know.

SPEAKER_01 19:01

So John, one other thing. Let's I don't think we can talk about politics and not have you say something about the great state of Texas.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

Well, I you know, the narrative has been that Trump delivered for Ken Paxton. The truth of the matter is that Ken Paxton was leading going into the runoff primary date. And I think Trump didn't have a choice but to endorse him, because had he endorsed Cornyn, I think Paxton would have won anyway. And so that would have made Trump look bad. So I think that's the reason Trump endorsed Paxton. The most interesting thing to me was the total vote for Paxton, which in the first primary, the two primaries, because if nobody gets 50% in the first one, then there's a runoff. In the first primary, Paxton finished second to Cornyn with 880,000 votes. In the runoff primary, he got exactly the same number of votes, not exactly 885,000 votes. So Trump's endorsement, uh, you could say added 5,000 votes in a sort of a meaningless way. But what really happened was the Cornyn vote stayed home. Cornyn got 475 or 4500,000 votes. So all those people stayed home, which is bad news if if they are not going to come out for Mr. Paxton in November, because you know, if the Rhinos, quote unquote Trump's definition of rhino being sort of all inclusive, if the rhinos stay home in Texas, then Tel Rico has a real shot to win.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

Yeah, I'll believe that when I see it. But um because always always gonna be in play for the Democrats, but we'll we'll see.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

No, no, I mean it let's just put it this way vegan doesn't really sell in Texas.

SPEAKER_01 20:43

It's kind of hard to go to a barbecue. I agree. It's gotta it works it works against it.

SPEAKER_00 20:47

All right. Well, we have to get to our favorite part of the podcast, which is the delusional thinking of New York uh sports fans. And so there's tremendous excitement and enormously expensive tickets regarding the New York Knicks. They slaughtered the Cleveland Cavaliers, four games to nothing. The last game was a complete embarrassment for the Cavs and a triumph for the Knicks. So, how how are you feeling about the finals?

SPEAKER_01 21:16

I mean, the Knicks have won now 11 games in a row. They were down two to one in the first round. They won three games, then they swept the the next two rounds against the 76ers and the hapless Cleveland Cavaliers, who really folded. I've rarely seen a professional team almost give up the way they did. I'm uneasy, but look, my default option is pessimism, John. That's why I do what I do for a living. I do foreign policy and things like that. I'm uh basically uh a pessimist. I'm concerned. So then, you know, if the Knicks go up against Oklahoma City, it's a hard matchup. They lost when they played during the regular season. They're tough. Oklahoma City is arguably the best professional team right now. The Knicks, though, are playing the best. And whether they're playing Oklahoma City, Or San Antonio Spurs, I would say the Knicks have a better shot than I would have thought on paper against either of those teams simply because the last 11 games, the Knicks have clicked. It's actually to watch them play it. There's an element, you may be surprised by what I'm going to say, but there's an element of joy. The way they are playing defense, getting stops, passing the ball out, getting it down court with fast breaks, bringing everybody in, having a half dozen guys in virtually every game and double figures. It is, it is uh a team effort. And whether that can continue against particularly Oklahoma City, I don't know, just given how good they are. But look, uh, I'm excited. Look, John, it's uh I was in college when the Knicks last won the championship, just to date things, going back to the early 70s. So uh it's we're due. We're due. I uh uh so uh let me just put it that way. If there if if there is a God and whether, you know, whatever the role of AI is in religion these days, the Knicks will win.

SPEAKER_00 23:00

Well, one thing that is certainly true is that the entire city of New York is pulling for the Knicks. And if there's such a thing as positive energy that, you know, is actually you know can power data centers, then it's then it's Madison Square Garden. I mean, that play if the Knicks get ahead, that place will be uh truly electric.

SPEAKER_01 23:20

So Yeah, the first two games will be in the team of the home of the Western champion. Yeah, I mean, tickets going in Madison Garden, you could probably retire the national debt with uh the the the cost of some of these tickets. It is crazy. Clearly, uh some people in the in financial world are doing just fine. I expect the mayor of New York, the the mayor of the People's Democratic Republic of New York City, will use this as an argument to uh raise the pay to terror tax or introduce the wealth tax or something.

SPEAKER_00 23:51

The ticket tax.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

The ticket tax. That'll be uh that'll be uh next. But the uh yeah, it's it's nice to see you know these spontaneous almost block parties of people watching the games, bars are full. It's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_00 24:05

So you sent me a note about Justin Dart, uh the No Jackson Dart. Excuse me, Jackson Dart, the rising star quarterback for the New York Giants, and I didn't really understand what he had done, but apparently he'd done something to upset you. Can you inform us of what that is?

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Aaron Powell Yeah, Jackson Dart, who had a very promising rooking s rookie season and shows all you know, whether he'll be another Patrick Mahomes, I don't know, but he's showing a lot of promise. Decided the other day to introduce Donald Trump at a political event that didn't sit well with some of his team with teammates whose enthusiasm for Donald Trump is, shall we say, finite. One of those teammates, Abdel Carter, posted on X about it, essentially questioning why in the world Dart was uh doing this uh sort of thing. And then, yeah, yesterday I think it was there was a team meeting which supposedly dealt with it. There were subsequent tweets that dealt with it. Uh, I would just say that it's an interesting issue, which is uh athletes, and they don't give up their First Amendment rights of free speech just because they're successful athletes, but particularly when they're in team sports, it seems to me that they ought to show a little bit of sensibility or sensitivity about their teammates. And I would say, so there's that, but also in the case of Mr. Dark, you know, he Giants have only won four games since he became a professional football player. Someone might have advised him before you become, you know, do the Kentucky Derby thing, before you start introducing the president in the United States, before you start acting like Joe Namath, maybe you ought to win your Super Bowl and just cool it a little bit, focus on football, pay your dues, and then, if and when you're successful, then you can segue to being a full-fledged celebrity. It just seems to me the celebrity has gotten a little bit out in front of the record. And I just worry about the distraction. Plus, you know, I've made a bet that the Giants can get into the playoffs, John. So I've got a stake here. And what I don't want is for young Mr. Dart to do things that cause friction on the team. There's already a number of injuries that don't seem to be healing fast enough. And I'd rather not lose my bet to Mr. October that I made in in um Las Vegas. So I I I admit I've got uh a little bit of a conflict of interest here, but I am concerned.

SPEAKER_00 26:24

So one last thing, my daughter always uh wants to know what your latest take is on uh the war in Iran and the quote peace negotiations, end quote. No, I'm serious. She does. Really? Yeah. She she won, you know, what is it?

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Well, that's that's really interesting parenting. I just want to say that for the record.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Excellent parenting. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 26:43

It's really you just you deserve tremendous credit, I think. Though I am tempted to tell her to go out and have some fun.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Look, the latest I don't think that's a problem.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

That department's taken care of. Look, the latest news is there seems to be some type of uh quote unquote agreement between the United States and Iran, as we've talked about several times now. It is uh a straight's the emphasis on the straight, on having some sort of a ceasefire that that extends most of the nuclear issues or kicked down the road to to be uh negotiated. There seems to be virtually nothing on uh Iranian support for proxies or uh Iranian conventional equipment like ballistic missiles or or drones. There'd be some type of at some point sanctions relief. Uh I've not seen any text. I've seen the reports that there's something. Look, for the president, though, he's been uneasy with this. He he's caught John. He doesn't want to resume military hostilities or listen to the finish the job gang, because he knows the risk there is this war can very quickly get out of hand. On the other hand, any agreement he would accept would raise the question of why it, why is it exactly we went to war? What is it about this leaves us better off than we were three months ago? So he is caught between which is why he keeps shuttlecocking or toggling or whatever metaphor you want to use. One hour he talks about peace being at hand, and the next hour he's you know talking about he's threatening this or that country or attack or shooting off some systems against Iran. And I think he simply doesn't like the reality of escalating, what that could mean, and he doesn't like having to sign on to an agreement that exposes him to criticism that looks like Iran got the better of us. So that's where he he's he he sits uneasily with those choices. That said, my guess is it's a question of when and not if we get this imperfect agreement. The strait will reopen. At some point, there's questions of fee charging. There's the question of whether it stays open. There will be a nuclear agreement. Then the question is to what happens to the existing enriched material? Does it get diluted or shipped out? More important, you know, Iran will not be removed from the nuclear game, so to speak. There'll be a ceiling on it. There'll be some kind of a moratorium. So it won't solve the problem, it won't eliminate the uh problem. So again, and then the president will have to defend an agreement that looks a little bit like his version of uh Mr. Obama's agreement. So all of this is incredibly awkward. But I just don't think, quite honestly, John, the reason I think we'll get an agreement sooner rather than later is neither country is well positioned to live with a block straight. The Iranian economy, which hasn't had the internet on for months, is a mess. We're gonna see, as you know, people take to the road for the summer, we're gonna see all the economic costs, direct and direct, of high energy prices. So I actually think both countries are going to come to some kind of uh some kind of an agreement. And my bet is it happens, you know, if it doesn't happen this week, it'll happen within a week or two.

SPEAKER_00 29:47

All right. We'll wrap it there. We've reached uh a little bit over the time limit, but we can do some editing and bring it down to our traditional thirty minute promise. Richard, I will talk to you next time and thank you, Dale, for as always, for your work producing this.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

Thank you both.