The Pope’s AI Warning and Alastair Reacts to Blair’s Attack

**Alastair Campbell** (0:00)
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The Pope's Encyclical. It might be as important as anything that's been said. It was hard at times not to read that in the back of his mind was Trump, Vance, Musk, Netanyahu, Putin, other world and tech leaders.

**Rory Stewart** (0:25)
AI is now developing as the biggest single thing in global politics, economics. There are basically four different attitudes you can take. Except we can't do anything about it, trust the tech bros, believe that democratic institutions can shape it or try to get Trump and others to stop it. Blair's just put out this very controversial essay.

**Alastair Campbell** (0:45)
He's right that Labour needs to kick up the backside. But if I had had a red pen, there are quite a lot of changes and deletions I would have made. This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.

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**Alastair Campbell** (1:53)
Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions. Welcome to The Rest Is Politics with me, Alastair Campbell.

**Rory Stewart** (2:09)
And with me, Rory Stewart.

**Alastair Campbell** (2:11)
Now, Rory, we are going to talk about two very high-profile Catholics. My old boss, Tony Blair, and his church's current spiritual leader, Pope Leo XVI, because both of them last week published very much-discussed, but very different essays, or in the case of the Pope, we call it an encyclical, but both of which were speaking truth to power in very forceful ways. Tony was giving some very harsh messages to the Labour Party in a 5,600-word essay, provoking a very mixed reaction, including, I must say, my own, as you will hear, but at least some proper debate, and then my new hero, Pope Leo, who wrote an even longer piece, a 235-page encyclical on AI, a subject on which, fair to say, he and Tony have quite different views.
But both of them talked about a lot more than AI, and so we will talk about a lot more than AI as well, because we're going to digest what they said and the ramifications. So do you want to start, Rory? Do you want to start with his holiness, the Pope, or his holiness, Tony? Who would you like to start with?

**Rory Stewart** (3:29)
Let's start with his holiness, the Pope. This is a huge story because, as listeners will be aware, AI is now developing as probably the biggest single thing in global politics, economics.
It could be mass unemployment, it could be autonomous drones, it could be war, and here is the first attempt for a very significant global public figure to make the moral case for how we should think about AI. But it's not just moral, it's a political case, and it's a pope bringing with him hundreds of millions of Catholics, but more than that, actually articulating things that I would think will be shared by nearly two billion Christians around the world and doing it in a way that resonates not just with Christians, but as I think we'll find when we talk to you, with actually many, many people, including yourself, who's a Christian-friendly atheist, because it is an attempt to frame it also in terms of the progressive humanist values of the post-Second World War. Probably the strongest way of looking at AI I've seen. It is a really, really unusual document, and I think I'd really encourage people to get into it. Probably not right from the beginning. I'd suggest maybe start on paragraph 118, if you want to be-

**Alastair Campbell** (4:40)
No, no, no.