Peter Thiel slams pope’s AI encyclical as gift to Chinese Communist Party

Tech billionaire and artificial intelligence investor Peter Thiel criticized Pope Leo XIV on Thursday, accusing the pontiff of serving as a “useful idiot for the [Chinese Communist Party]” by calling on world leaders to regulate AI. During an interview with Mathias Döpfner, CEO of POLITICO’s parent company Axel Springer, the PayPal co-founder said the pope’s May encyclical would do nothing to rein in China’s AI ambitions — but could cause the U.S. and its allies to place onerous rules on the technology. “The Communist Party of China is not going to listen to the pope,” Thiel told Döpfner, “There’s a chance people in the U.S. will. And so in effect, the Pope’s encyclical was working for the Communist party.