AI is not some force of nature or hyperrational, ineffable entity. Instead, he reminds us, AI is ultimately another commercial product, one emerging at a point in history when excessive power over commerce and the wider society has amassed in a vanishingly small number of hands.
Demystifying AI as 'another commercial product' is a counter-narrative to both the techno-utopian and techno-dystopian frames that dominate public discourse. By locating AI within existing structures of capital concentration, the encyclical sidesteps the AGI debate entirely and grounds the ethical question in political economy: who owns the technology and who profits from it.