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The Pope Gets AI Religion
00:19:30
Pope Leo XIV released his AI encyclical alongside Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah. Huawei claims it can match 1.4nm chips by 2031, China imposed travel restrictions on AI talent, cybersecurity hiring surged amid the AI "bug-pocalypse," and American Airlines picked Starlink for in-flight Wi-Fi.
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Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride home for Tuesday, May 26, 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, Pope Leo made some tech news by weighing in on AI. Huawei claims it can make 1.4 nanometer chips by 2031 China imposed travel restrictions on AI talent, Cybersecurity hiring surged amid the AI bugpocalypse, and American Airlines picked Starlink for in flight Wi fi. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Over the holiday, the Pope made some tech news, quoting the Times Pope Leo XIV on Monday set out a sweeping vision for corporate executives, politicians and individuals who will shape and be shaped by the future of artificial intelligence, warning leaders to safeguard humanity from AI's most disruptive effects. Leo's declaration came in the form of a papal encyclical and open letter to quote all people of goodwill that ran to roughly 42 words in its English version. It outlined his desire to protect human dignity and agency in an age in which technology threatens to replace humans in many professional and social roles. He presented it alongside Christopher Ola, a co founder of Anthropic, a major AI developer, in a symbolic gesture of dialogue between leaders of the spiritual and technological worlds. While emphasizing that technology should not be considered in itself as a force antagonistic to humanity, he wrote that the pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically sacrifice sacrifice jobs. Among other things, Leo called for government regulation of the private companies that are driving the development of AI protection and retraining for workers whose jobs are threatened. Education to help students think critically about the technology action to protect children from violent, hypersexualized or fake information online that is often generated by AI safeguards to ensure that humans, not artificial intelligence, remains responsible for all decisions regarding the use of weapons. Above all, he emphasized the importance of retaining a fundamental social role for all human beings. A society that guarantees employment to only a small fraction of the population, despite having a high level of technical development, risks exposing many to forced inactivity, he wrote. This creates a paradox of material progress and anthropological regression that undermines the foundations of a just and stable social peace, he added. Leo, presenting the encyclical to a packed hall at the Vatican, said his views had been shaped by conversations with scientists, engineers, and political leaders. He signaled out Mr. Ola, with whom he pledged to work to find a way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence. What a great sign of hope it is that in our differences we can listen to one another, Leo said. Mr. Ola, who is not Catholic, praised the pope's initiative, acknowledging that companies like his own need moral guidance to avoid being swayed by, quote, a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing. We need moral voices that the incentives cannot bend, Mr. Ola added. Today is just the beginning, the start of a long collaboration between those of us who are building this and those who can see what we from the inside cannot, Mr. Ola said. Both men spoke along with a panel of theologians and Vatican officials before an audience of cardinals, computer scientists, journalists and diplomats, including Brian Birch, the United States Ambassador to the Holy See. In the new encyclical titled Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity, leo warned of the new threat to workers posed by artificial intelligence. Work, he wrote, is more than a way of earning income but a requirement of the human condition, a normal path toward maturity, development and personal fulfillment. He called for the protection of employment opportunities and the irreplaceable role of the individual. The encyclical also called for imposing the most rigorous ethical constraints on weapons developed using artificial intelligence, continuing Leo's and the Vatican's long standing opposition to war. The growing ease with which autonomous weapons systems can be deployed makes war more feasible and less subject to human control, leo wrote. That, he added, contradicted the principle that armed force should be used only as a last resort in cases of legitimate self defense. End quote. Huawei says it'll be able to make cutting edge 1.4 nanometer chips by 2031 using its logic folding technology, which is based on its new Tau scaling law intended to bypass Moore's Law limits. Quoting in Gadget. Huawei has made a bold claim that it can manufacture its own semiconductor chips that are just as good as the competition thanks to a new breakthrough. At a semiconductor symposium in Shanghai, the Chinese company said it will be able to produce chips with transistor density that can match the 1.4 nanometer process that competitors are expected to use like TSMC, Samsung and others. If achieved, this development for Huawei would be a major deal since it's been subject to continually expanding US trade sanctions going back to 2019. The restrictions have held Huawei back behind the competition as it doesn't allow access to specialized equipment that other companies are using to achieve that 1.4 nanometer level. On the other hand, TSMC revealed its 1.4 nanometer process that will enter production in 2028. While Huawei would be five years behind the leading company, it could offer a more cost effective solution. He Ting Bao, Huawei's head of its chip department, said its process is feasible and affordable, according to the Wall Street Journal. Currently, China's biggest semiconductor manufacturer, Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. Offers chips with a 7 nanometer processor, which can be seen in Huawei's Mate 60 smartphones. End Quote. Sources say the Chinese government has begun imposing overseas travel restrictions on individuals involved in advanced AI work, including Alibaba and Deepseek. Quoting Bloomberg Beijing has for years imposed travel restrictions on key personnel, from prominent college researchers to nuclear scientists and executives at state firms. The government is now specifically targeting talent within the AI sphere. Among the key industry professionals who've been informed they'll be subject to such restrictions are a mix of startup founders, researchers and executives, the people said. In China, state owned enterprises are known to hold the passports of their senior executives and Communist Party officials. What's unusual is for the government to extend travel restrictions to private firms. The authorities are also adding individuals to the list based on assessments of their critical importance to the country rather than just their seniority or place of employment, the people said. The move highlights how elite AI engineers are now seen as strategic assets to the world's second largest economy. Much of China's pool of top flight AI talent emerged in the post ChatGPT era, and mostly at the country's tech giants or private startups. Such restrictions, however, risk undermining the ability of AI firms in China to to recruit and retain talent. They may also add to concerns about the extent of government intervention in an industry still coming to grips with Beijing's demand for Meta to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of Manus. End quote. Just noting that SpaceX is seemingly about to corner another market, American airlines has picked SpaceX's Starlink for in flight Wi Fi on more than 500 planes. SpaceX already has contracts with United Airlines, Southwest and quoting CNBC, American Airlines plans to outfit more than 500 of its narrow body aircraft with Starlink, handing another win to Elon Musk's SpaceX unit that has made inroads with major carriers for in flight Wi fi. American was evaluating Starlink and Amazon Leo as recently as March for the service. The airline announced Tuesday it would install starLink on about 500 of its narrow body Airbus planes like the A321neo starting early next year. American spokespeople said the carrier doesn't have immediate plans to change providers on its Boeing fleet, which uses a mix of Viostat and Panasonic. American in January rolled out free in flight Wi Fi for members of its frequent flyer program, following Delta Airlines, United Airlines and others. Delta in March said it would use Amazon LEO for in flight Wi Fi for hundreds of jets starting in 2028. United Southwest Airlines and Alaska Airlines, which merged with Hawaiian Airlines in 2024, have selected Starlink. Carriers are battling for higher spending customers, including by upgrading once slow, expensive and clunky in flight Internet to higher speeds. They have also been weighing other revenue streams like ads for travelers. End quote. As AI tools like Mythos create a so called bugpocalypse, Glassdoor says that Q1 cybersecurity job postings rose 11% year on year, quoting the Times. Demand is so fierce that some search firms have said they are turning away clients post partly because there are too few qualified candidates to go around. Cybersecurity job postings in the first quarter were up 11% from a year earlier, according to Glassdoor, a job search platform Hiring of security experts has surged as tech workers increasingly use AI to generate code, sometimes introducing bugs and vulnerabilities in the process. And leading AI labs have warned that their latest technologies, like Anthropic's Mythos model, could be used to find and exploit software vulnerabilities that would make it easier to hack into companies infrastructure. The hiring frenzy shows how AI can also help create some jobs, even amid dire warnings that the technology could replace vast parts of the workforce. We're going to need people to deal with the bugpocalypse, said Leah Kistner, the chief information security officer at LinkedIn. I don't think we're really going to understand how to do AI security in a sustainable, long term way. For at least several years, Dr. Kistner said, they had scoured the market to hire engineers with technical skills, the open mindedness to navigate the ambiguity and confusion that comes with the AI revolution, and an understanding of how complex corporate infrastructure works. The job market for security people is getting hotter and hotter, Dr. Kistner added. Cybersecurity is not the only area where AI has spurred a hiring boom. It is also creating jobs in private equity and venture capital firms, recruiters said. As investors look to cash in on the AI boom and use the technology to assess and enhance their portfolios, the AI industry itself is hiring. The fastest growing job title for recent college graduates is AI engineer, according to LinkedIn. We need more software engineers than ever, nick Fox, the senior vice president of knowledge and information at Google, said on a panel at the company's marketing conference last week. But engineers roles have shifted to managing AI agents, or bots that act as assistants in accomplishing various tasks, he said. That's a change to the work of a software engineer, he said. But it doesn't mean the job of a software engineer goes away. Still, those areas of growth are unlikely to offset widespread job cuts in other parts of the tech industry. On Wednesday, Meta laid off 10% of its staff, or about 8,000 people, as it reallocated spending to AI. Amazon cut 16,000 jobs in a recent round of layoffs. Other tech companies, including Stripe, Snap and Block, have also shed thousands of workers for businesses seeking highly technical security executives has gotten more and more common since Anthropic began previewing Mythos, said Michael Piacente, a managing partner at Hitch Partners, an executive search firm that specializes in security. His firm has been flooded by these requests. The increase since the fall of last year has been five, may, maybe sevenfold, he said. We've turned down quite a number of searches. As a result, some cybersecurity experts are brushing up on AI to make themselves more marketable. Brian Gaudenti, a security engineer, left his job detecting and investigating cyber threats at a large tech company in November. Despite more than a decade of experience in the field, he initially struggled to find a new gig. But at a cybersecurity conference in March, he noticed that other engineers were using AI tools to write code, a practice called Vibe coding. He used AI to make music, web apps and software and added these projects to his portfolio. Demonstrating his AI chops helped him find a new job last month, building out an AI Startups security team. People who are not doing that and waiting for their old jobs to reappear, they're not going to find them again, he said. I don't think there's going to be a net loss in jobs, but people are going to have to adapt to what their next job is going to be 100%. Workers landing interviews for top security jobs have significant bargaining power, recruiters said, and pay packages are spiking, though not as high as for top AI researchers who can net pay packages of, say, $250 million. Mr. Cohen said that 7 million or $8 million packages were becoming more common for security executives. That would knock someone out of their chair a few years ago, he said. There's this recognition that there's so few people who have the skill set, so we have to go and get them, end quote. Finally, we'll end today on a review the Google Fitbit Air review, the gadget that Google is positioning as a cheaper whoop Alternative reviews say it is surprisingly good, quoting Engadget Aside from the Gemini powered coach and the fact that it's a screenless wearable, you can easily drop in a variety of bands. The Air isn't very different from your average Fitbit. It's a thinner, lighter version of the Inspire 3. And since the Google Health app is set to replace the Fitbit app anyway, owners of the company's older activity trackers may get to experience much of what's new soon. Despite that, it's easy to see why the Fitbit Air is an intriguing device. It's a fairly obvious attempt to recreate a Whoop, which first launched a screenless wearable in 2015. In March this year, Whoop raised $575 million, which put the company's valuation at a whopping $10 billion. There's clearly plenty of interest in the category, not just from Silicon Valley and investory types, but also among people looking to pay closer attention to their health. Since it doesn't have a display, most of the Fitbit Air experience revolves around the Google Health app and AI coach. I'll spend a portion of this review evaluating the device itself and a lot of it discussing the software at the heart of it all. Skipping to the conclusion now, Google is entering a new category of devices with the Fitbit Air. It's the first screenless wearable for the company, which makes the app experience all the more important if you're the sort of person that wants to be able to glance at your wrist to see the time or your heart rate while working out this entire product type is not for you. In this space, Google's main competition is Whoop, which delivers a rich suite of information that users love. Whoop's fatal flaw is arguably its subscription model. You can't buy a Whoop device without signing on for one of its memberships. They'll cost either $200, $240 or $360 a year, while the Fitbit Air just costs $100 for the hardware. You can use the AI coach and most of the basic functions of Google Health for free, while a premium plan unlocks all other bonuses for $10 a month. There are many other screenless wearable fitness devices like the Hum brand, the Amaze Fit Helo strap, or even the now defunct Amazon Halo brand, but none of them have the same level of granular appeal as Whoop. Google arguably has an advantage when it comes to AI and software, and Fitbit has established dominance in the land of heart rate trackers. The Fitbit Air feels like a natural marriage of the two companies strengths and presents a compelling alternative to Whoop at the as long as Google maintains support for this latest device and continues to improve its software, it might have a winner on its hands. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.