Can AI be humane? Aza Raskin says only if we change the race

Aza Raskin, a cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology, has spent years sounding the alarm about where the race to build powerful AI is taking us. Just days after the center’s other cofounder visited the Vatican, Raskin unpacks the significance of Pope Leo XIV’s sweeping new encyclical on artificial intelligence, and exposes the incentive structures pushing Silicon Valley toward dangerous territory—while making the case that it’s not too late to change course. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I have to start with the pope. Pope Leo recently released an AI pronouncement called Magnifica Humanitas, a title that sort of has echoes of humane technology. Did you talk with the Vatican at all about this encyclical? We’ve been working behind the scenes, certainly talking with the Vatican. The week that the encyclical came out, Tristan Harris, my cofounder, was actually at the Vatican. And every time we’ve interacted with the Vatican, what we’ve discovered is that even though we come from obviously very different backgrounds, there’s something that’s preserved around how we both view life as sacred and being human as sacred, and that the current technological overreach into our humanity is threatening. And that’s not just AI. That’s social media. That’s the internet. There’s been a long string of technologies that has been encroaching on our humanity that we now have to fight to preserve. It’s hard to know these days, and we’re still in the early days of AI: Is artificial intelligence an inherently inhuman technology? Can it be humane?