We are not the loop

On the why behind the most consequential what

In San Francisco, you can’t go anywhere without running into some AI-related conversations these days. Even (or especially) the hottest weekend brunch spots aren’t safe from it. In between some egg benedict and home fries, I heard everything from heated doomsday predictions to fairly banal examples of how people are trying it out in their day to day. Not to be outdone by the brunch crowd, Pope Leo XIV just published his encyclical letter on AI – a thorough and thoughtful call to think about the why behind the what of it all, and ponder this question: what does it mean to be human?

One of the most ubiquitous phrases you will hear tech and business leaders utter while on the topic of AI is “human in the loop.” With the best of intentions, “human in the loop” still undermines the role of people as one piece of the grand equation that is the social, political, and economic system. We exist to play a part in this loop, not the other way around. The encyclical letter is essentially the papal version of this phrase, except that he reminds us the loop is ours to define and build to our vision, not a nameless and faceless system that we compliantly file in and fit into:

“...the key issue is not the use of technology as such, but the vision that underlies it. If the human being is treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable or less worthy. In the name of progress, ‘necessary sacrifices’ may begin to be justified, placing the burden on the most vulnerable in pursuit of a supposed optimization of the species…It is one thing to integrate technology within a human-centered, relational vision; it is quite another to be guided by an outlook that devalues human limits and promises a purely technical form of ‘salvation.’”

He’s pointing to something that most leaders gloss over, which is that our current starting point for the future already divides people into a version of have’s and have-not’s. Inside of the companies I’ve worked for, I couldn’t necessarily tackle and successfully address an entire society’s value problem. What we tried to do was to build a better vision of it inside of our own company, product, and brand. That’s why at LinkedIn, we championed the voices reflecting the changing shape and aperture of modern workplaces. That’s why at Visible, we held firm to our simple and transparent pricing and customer service policies. There was dignity in counting each customer as a person with context and choices, rather than a high or low margin unit. There was also a cost to doing so, which made these everyday, principled decisions to realize our vision that much more consequential.

The encyclical letter may have come from a religious leader, but the questions he is asking are far from theological. They are operational, they are here, right now. The choices we’re making today with AI will become the algorithmic reality of our tomorrow, and that of the next generation. We shouldn’t ignore the backlash at graduation speeches or plummeting consumer sentiment as a case of misunderstanding. They’re not asking whether AI is useful. They’re asking who decides what it’s for, and whether the people most affected by that vision and answers are anywhere close to the decisions that are being made today. They’re asking the uncomfortable and necessary questions: what does it look like to build with humans – with me – at the center of the why?