Can Humanity Be Protected from Artificial Intelligence?

The Dispatch Podcast

The Dispatch

News, Politics

4.6 • 3.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 May 2026

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Steve Hayes is joined by Jonah Goldberg, Megan McArdle, and Mike Warren to discuss Pope Leo’s encyclical on artificial intelligence and explain Jonah’s looksmaxxing routine. The Agenda: —The encyclical —Can AI write good narratives? —AI disclosure laws —Creative destruction —Regulating AI —NWYT: Clavicular's take on books Show notes: —Ben Sasse at the Manhattan Institute —Klon Kitchen on the AI threat The Dispatch Podcast is a production of ⁠The Dispatch⁠, a digital media company covering politics, policy, and culture from a nonpartisan perspective. To access all of The Dispatch’s offerings—including audio versions of all our articles and newsletters—⁠click here⁠. If you’d like to remove all ads from your podcast experience, consider becoming a premium Dispatch member ⁠by clicking here⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Dispatch Podcast. I'm Steve Hayes. On today's roundtable, a deep dive on AI.
0:14.3	We'll discuss the Pope's encyclical on artificial intelligence and technology, the risks of losing our humanity, the upsides of great
0:22.6	innovation, and the challenges of building norms and making laws around technology that's moving
0:28.0	so quickly.
0:29.4	And then, not worth your time, clavicular Jonah's looks maxing community and books.
0:36.3	I'm joined today by my dispatch colleagues,
0:38.3	Jonah Goldberg and Mike Warren,
0:40.0	as well as dispatch contributor, Megan McArdle.
0:43.0	Let's dive right in.
1:08.1	Pope Leo this week released an encyclical called Magnificaumanitas, and at 42,000 words, it came in slightly longer than most Friday G-Files.
1:13.0	Its focus was on human flourishing and technology, and the Pope had a lot to say about artificial intelligence. Mike, our resident Catholic. What's an encyclical? Why did the Pope weigh in on
1:21.4	AI? What are we doing here? Listen, I am a cradle Catholic from birth, and so I was told there would be
1:29.5	no math and no theology. So, all right, an encyclical for a layman Catholic in my terms is
1:35.8	essentially a statement of importance on some issue of importance. It is essentially kind of essay, a long essay written by popes.
1:47.8	And in fact, if you read this particular encyclical,
1:51.4	you will get a kind of crash course in the history,
1:54.1	the recent history of papal encyclicals,
1:56.6	which is very useful and also sort of provides the foundation
1:59.2	that Pope Leo sort of builds his
2:02.9	essay on. You know, an argument that he is making constantly in the top half of this encyclical
2:09.9	is that this is something, you know, the commentary on what's happening in the world, particularly
2:15.6	on technology,
	...

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