Pope Leo Schooled the Tech Bros on Tolkien

教皇利奥给科技大佬们上了一堂托尔金课

Nobody was surprised that Pope Leo XIV cited well-known saints and previous pontiffs in his first encyclical, or papal letter of spiritual guidance, “Magnifica humanitas,” released Monday. 教皇利奥十四世周一发布了他的首份通谕（即教皇的精神指导信函）《Magnifica humanitas》。他在文中引用了著名的圣徒和前任教皇的言论，对此人们并不感到意外。

But the name that immediately jumped out to many readers is one synonymous with high fantasy literature: J.R.R. Tolkien, the Catholic author of The Lord of the Rings. 但有一个名字立刻引起了许多读者的注意，它几乎是奇幻文学的代名词：J.R.R. 托尔金，《指环王》的天主教作者。

Leo’s letter is concerned with “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence,” a major theme of his first year as leader of the Catholic Church. Drawing from his predecessor, Pope Francis, he warns of “the growing dominance of a technocratic paradigm,” one capable of “reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.” He again compares the rise of AI to the Industrial Revolution that spanned from the mid-18th century to the beginning of the 20th, alluding to the teachings of his namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who in his own 1891 encyclical asserted the importance of workers’ rights and dignity during a time of technological upheaval and burgeoning capitalist empire. 利奥的信函关注的是“在人工智能时代守护人类个体”，这也是他担任天主教会领袖第一年的主要议题。他借鉴了前任教皇方济各的观点，警告称“技术官僚范式的日益主导”正将“造物还原为剥削对象，将人类还原为追求更高效率系统中的齿轮”。他再次将人工智能的兴起与从18世纪中叶持续到20世纪初的工业革命相提并论，并援引了其同名教皇利奥十三世的教导。利奥十三世曾在1891年的通谕中强调，在技术动荡和资本主义帝国兴起的时代，工人的权利与尊严至关重要。

The lengthy text further solidifies Leo’s stance as an AI skeptic. But the Tolkien nod is particularly salient given some backward interpretations of Middle-earth mythology by right-wing billionaires like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, which have long been ridiculed by other Lord of the Rings fans. One might even think Leo is trolling. (The Vatican did not immediately return a request for comment.) 这篇长文进一步巩固了利奥作为人工智能怀疑论者的立场。考虑到彼得·蒂尔（Peter Thiel）和埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）等右翼亿万富翁对中土世界神话的一些倒退性解读（这些解读长期以来一直被其他《指环王》粉丝嘲笑），利奥对托尔金的提及显得尤为突出。人们甚至可能会认为利奥是在“钓鱼”讽刺。（梵蒂冈未立即回复置评请求。）

Clearly, the pope is somewhat concerned about the motives of tech oligarchs racing to develop artificial general intelligence that surpasses human capabilities. Do they really dream of using this tool to cure diseases and solve climate change, or are they building engines of limitless profit and cultural dominance? It’s when he addresses our personal responsibility in challenging such dark forces that Leo borrows an insight from Tolkien’s famous wizard, Gandalf: “It is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.” 显然，教皇对那些竞相开发超越人类能力的通用人工智能的科技寡头们的动机感到担忧。他们是真的梦想利用这种工具来治愈疾病和解决气候变化，还是在构建无限利润和文化霸权的引擎？当利奥谈到我们在挑战这些黑暗势力时的个人责任时，他借用了托尔金笔下著名巫师甘道夫的洞见：“我们无法掌控世间所有的潮汐，但我们能做的，是尽己所能去救助我们所处的时代，铲除我们所知领域内的邪恶，好让后人能有一片净土可以耕耘。”

That lesson is miles away from what Musk and Thiel apparently see in Tolkien’s masterpiece. 这一教诲与马斯克和蒂尔在托尔金杰作中所看到的意图相去甚远。

Thiel named his data analytics firm Palantir, after the crystal ball used as a spying device by the traitorous wizard Saruman in the saga; he reportedly calls his venture capital firm, the Founders Fund, “the precious,” which is what the twisted and covetous character Gollum calls the One Ring, a magical means of totalitarian power. Almost anyone who encounters Tolkien (or adaptations of his work) can see that he was writing about the corrupting effect of such power—in the novels, the temptation to rule inevitably undoes anyone who succumbs to it—yet Thiel seems to revel in the same possibilities of authoritarian control and omniscience as the villains. 蒂尔将他的数据分析公司命名为“Palantir”（真知晶球），取自书中叛徒巫师萨鲁曼用来监视的工具；据报道，他称自己的风险投资公司“创始人基金”为“宝贝”（the precious），这正是扭曲且贪婪的角色咕噜对“至尊魔戒”的称呼——那是一种极权统治的魔法手段。几乎任何接触过托尔金作品（或其改编作品）的人都能看出，他是在描写这种权力的腐蚀性——在小说中，统治的诱惑不可避免地会摧毁任何屈服于它的人——然而，蒂尔似乎沉迷于反派们所追求的那种威权控制和全知全能的可能性。

Musk, for his part, has suggested that Tolkien’s epic can be read as an anti-immigration, build-the-wall parable: “When Tolkien wrote about the hobbits, he was referring to the gentlefolk of the English shires, who don’t realize the horrors that take place far away,” he posted on X in October. “They were able to live their lives in peace and tranquility, but only because they were protected by the hard men of Gondor.” He offered this simply inaccurate recollection of Lord of the Rings as a defense of Islamophobic far-right UK agitator Tommy Robinson. 马斯克则暗示，托尔金的史诗可以被解读为反移民、筑墙的寓言。他在十月份于 X 上发帖称：“当托尔金描写霍比特人时，他指的是英国郡县的绅士们，他们没有意识到远方发生的恐怖。他们之所以能过上平静安宁的生活，是因为有刚铎的硬汉们在保护他们。”他提出了这种对《指环王》极其不准确的回忆，以此为英国伊斯兰恐惧症极右翼煽动者汤米·罗宾逊（Tommy Robinson）辩护。

In fact, Tolkien’s depictions of marauding armies pillaging the land were inspired by the horrors of militarization and industrialization—two phenomena that the English of Tolkien’s generation were more than familiar with. His experience of mechanized horrors in World War I is widely understood as crucial inspiration for Saruman’s campaign of death, which relied upon the destruction of an ancient forest for fuel and the slave labor of brutalized orcs. 事实上，托尔金对掠夺土地的侵略军队的描写，灵感来自于军事化和工业化的恐怖——这是托尔金那一代英国人再熟悉不过的两种现象。他第一次世界大战中经历的机械化恐怖，被广泛认为是萨鲁曼死亡战役的关键灵感来源，那场战役依赖于砍伐古老森林作为燃料，并奴役受尽折磨的半兽人。

If anything, this allegory better suits Pope Leo’s critique of the tech-bro elite as those who would sow division and inequality, bend their resources toward war, ravage the environment, and seize power at any cost. (Neither Thiel nor Musk immediately returned a request for comment on the encyclical.) 如果说有什么不同的话，这个寓言更适合教皇利奥对科技精英的批评：他们播种分裂与不平等，将资源转向战争，蹂躏环境，并不惜一切代价攫取权力。（蒂尔和马斯克均未立即回复关于该通谕的置评请求。）

Thiel, at least, appears somewhat self-aware on this point, given his preferred Tolkien allusions and Palantir’s collaboration with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Musk, even if he sees himself as one of the heroes of the story, oversaw the bulldozing of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), leading to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths around the globe and likely millions more to come. And both continue to support a Trump administration that has leveraged AI for everything from racist propaganda to planning where to drop bombs in Iran—and, of course, have used Lord of the Rings to promote and valorize ICE. 至少蒂尔在这一点上似乎有些自知之明，考虑到他偏爱的托尔金典故以及 Palantir 与美国移民及海关执法局（ICE）的合作。马斯克即便将自己视为故事中的英雄之一，却主导了对美国国际开发署（USAID）的拆解，导致全球数十万人死于本可预防的灾难，未来可能还有数百万人受害。两人都继续支持特朗普政府，该政府利用人工智能进行从种族主义宣传到规划伊朗轰炸地点等各种活动——当然，他们也利用《指环王》来宣传和美化 ICE。

In that context, Leo shouting out Gandalf could be seen as very deliberate. 在这种背景下，利奥引用甘道夫的话可以被视为非常刻意的举动。

A quote from this beloved character in a treatise condemning a society that prizes efficiency above all else, and concentrates immense power and wealth in the hands of a few, scans as a direct message to those people—whether intentional or not. But with their reading comprehension, who knows if it can get through. 在这一谴责将效率置于一切之上、并将巨大权力和财富集中在少数人手中的社会的论著中，引用这位深受喜爱的角色的话，无论是否有意，都像是直接传达给那些人的信息。但以他们的阅读理解能力，谁知道这能否传达到位呢。