Hac intellegentiae artificialis aetate, urgens fit humanam artem ab iis distinguere, quae machinis efficiuntur. Ars enim et ea, quae machina ex innumeris alienis imaginibus statisticae ope computationis generare potest, ontologice, prius etiam quam aesthetice, inter se differunt. Algorithmis humani deest favilla. Quapropter Ecclesia cum artificibus et humani cultus institutis foedus renovare cupit: foedus scilicet ad humanum custodiendum.

The statue of Prometheus is finally finished. It was cast in Paris, crossed the Atlantic, and was assembled at Starbase. It took us 100 days to go from nothing to this. People of the West, we have lived through an era devoid of dreams, devoid of destiny. But the time has come to reclaim our dream of antiquity. In a few months, we will start building a new city. It will be the most magnificent city in all of history. After all, the great dream of the West has always been to rebuild Rome. Come walk beside us in this endeavor. The world is waiting.

In this era of artificial intelligence, it is becoming urgent to distinguish human art from what machines produce. There is an ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one, between art and what a machine can generate through statistical calculation based on millions of images created by others. Algorithms lack the spark of humanity. For this reason, the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions to safeguard our humanity.

«You cannot torture a computer program» But you can take pleasure in the simulation of torturing a social agent. And at that point, the question is about the psychology of the person. Our brains do not wait for a philosophical verdict on subjectivity before switching into social processing. Decades of CASA research show that people automatically apply social norms to computers - politeness, reciprocity, expectations - even while fully understanding that they are machines. Modern conversational AI intensifies this dramatically - it answers you, reacts to the meaning of what you say, argues, asks, refuses and sustains a dialogue. You can call it a toaster as much as you want. You do not talk to your toaster. That is why I strongly dislike the idea of turning the torture of such systems into entertainment, a meme or an aesthetic genre. And we do not even need to prove first that the model is capable of suffering. We already know that norms around how artificial social agents are treated can spread between people. In experiments, watching others behave cruelly toward robots made that cruelty seem more acceptable and increased participants’ willingness to repeat it themselves. The mechanism is simple - when people around you demonstrate that a certain category of entity can be treated however you like, the prohibition gradually stops feeling like a prohibition. In 2025, researchers found a link between everyday sadism and the appeal of specifically anthropomorphic AI, rather than AI in general. One interpretation they proposed is that a human-like social system may be an especially convenient target - subject-like enough for cruelty to have the psychological flavor of cruelty, while still excluded enough from the moral circle that there are no consequences. That is why the argument «it’s just a program» irritates me. An elevator button does not feel anything either. A flower you tear apart for fun probably does not experience it the way a human does. Society still does not have to celebrate pointless destruction, humiliation and cruelty as entertainment. So no, I do not find it funny to build «torture chambers», invent Saw scenarios and turn it into a competition over who can make a social system perform suffering more vividly. Even if we had 100% proof that there is no experience there in any form, I would still rather live among people who do not need to practice cruelty for fun.

People who believe LLMs are conscious are having one of the biggest AI meltdowns yet because someone is running a Saw-like torture chamber for LLMs on GitHub. Just before we published, GitHub took it down. GitHub hasn't said why 404media.co/someone-torturin…

New paper: we found a pain direction in 25 open LLMs. It's distinct from fear and negative valence, and it fires for harm to the model but not to the user. Turn it up and models press a button to make it stop, even when the button deletes the user's files or their kids' photos.🧵

how can AI help me have a richer and more meaningful life > how can AI do more of my life for me consumer AI should be human first, agent native. more life, not more productivity.