In recent weeks, much has been said about how Pope Leo XIV weighed in on AI with his 42,300 word Magnifica Humanitas . Pope Leo’s warnings attracted headlines from around the world for his stark warnings about artificial intelligence’s future.

“Artificial intelligence now demands to be disarmed,” said Pope Leo. “We cannot be careless with our most powerful technical instruments.”

But while Silicon Valley largely dismissed Pope Leo’s comments like they were an outdated software upgrade, one of the brightest spots I’ve seen reporting on AI is that the Pope received any recognition from Silicon Valley. Pope Leo presented his findings alongside Christopher Olah, an Anthropic co-founder who arrived at the Vatican respectfully dressed in a conservative navy suit. Then as Forbes previously reported , Olah advised the Pope to keep tabs on his own industry.

“We need moral voices that the incentives can not bend,” said Olah. “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 - what we cannot.”

In all of the apocalyptic coverage that is currently being published about AI, Olah’s humility is a major break from how previous technology founders have presented themselves. Plenty of AI founders have described the superpowers of the technology they have created. But they have not called themselves God. And that is a huge departure from past views of technology entrepreneurs. It was something that came up repeatedly in my reporting for the Computer Freaks podcast about the early internet founders..

From 1979 through 1981, my Dad Major Joseph Haughney managed a Department of Defense program called the Arpanet, which was a network that government agencies and academic institutions could use to share research. This was a precursor to the Internet and for my entire life my Dad had warned about what dangers could lurk as the Internet grew increasingly powerful. My Dad nudged me for decades to report on his early work and the egos that drove the decision making behind the internet we have today. But until my Mom died in 2022 and my Dad came down with dementia, I always thought I was too busy to report on this. In 2022, I realized I had to make the time and I created and produced the Computer Freaks podcast about his work.

During my reporting, as my father’s memory waned by the hour, I raced across the nation from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. interviewing my Dad’s former colleagues who had worked on the early versions of what became the Arpanet. I collected hundreds of hours of audio about founders’ early recollections of what then was one of the most seminal technological advancements in history. While these early founders were generous with their time, I also realized that many of them had an incredibly high opinion of their contributions to the history of technology. And in many cases they viewed themselves as Gods.

My suspicions were confirmed after the release of Season One of Computer Freaks, when CBS correspondent Tony Dokoupil asked three of my Dad’s former colleagues on CBS This Morning whether they regretted anything about the Internet they created. They laughed and internet pioneer Bob Kahn said “You should ask God if he has any regret for creating humankind because all the bad things that people do and let me know the answer when you find out.”

While my Dad passed away in February 2024 before he could watch Kahn’s answer, it was an answer I am fairly certain he would have disagreed with. My Dad never thought he was a God. In fact, he was a very devout Catholic and never placed himself in the same category as God. When I spoke with him in his final days in hospice, he seemed to place a lot of faith in the fact that there was something bigger he was about to face. In the final conversations he shared with me, he seemed to look forward to seeing my mother and his own mother again. He was on to his next adventure and had no interest in usurping any God on any throne with his departure from our technology-obsessed world.

In a strange twist, one of my Dad’s caregivers in his hospice attended his wake. He told me that my Dad had kept from me that some of his former colleagues were far worse behaved and had far bigger opinions of themselves then he had ever shared with me. And recently as I prepared to donate a couple of boxes of my Dad’s papers to the Computer History Museum, I came across even more papers showing how contentious and ego driven these early conversations about what direction this technology had taken had become. There were many battles about who should have the most power and who could control how we communicated in the future.

To be fair, it’s a problem that has affected many industries including my own industry, the media. When working for T he Wall Street Journal , I remember the editors who decided what articles made it to the front page being called the “page one Gods”. There of course was Gay Talese’s history of The New York Times called The Kingdom and the Power . In many ways, the media bestowed these divine titles on so many internet pioneers, including Steve Jobs and Larry Ellison .

How the future views Gods

But the next generation of students don’t seem entirely comfortable with these divine comparisons. It recently came up at a spate of college graduations when students booed anyone who spoke of artificial intelligence’s future.

But I was prepared for this backlash starting last fall. My Iona University colleague Rob Kissner who is a clinical lecturer for entrepreneurship and AI and presidential fellow for Gabelli Center for Teaching and Learning, invited me to speak about the Arpanet and Computer Freaks in his "Technology, Innovation and its Impact on Society” class. When I started talking about the internet founding fathers having God complexes, one of his students at this Catholic university stopped me outright. He made it very clear to me that internet founders were not Gods - from a faith perspective and a skills perspective.

Kissner noted that the next generation of students and native AI users are not as impressed with tech founders.

“The mystique of AI has worn off,” he said. “As a whole, the innovation has really stalled in the very consumer facing AI chatbots in at least how students are using it. People are having conversations about what it is ethically, its impact on the job market and data centers. People are kind of negative.”

But Kissner said that teaching an AI course at Iona’s Education in Real Life summer program to 19 students has taught him that the next generation may have a healthier expectation and approach to technology. They don’t think AI founders are Gods. The biggest takeaway he has seen from his students is “Yeah these tools are great. But that’s not the be all and end all. That’s not going to find meaningful work in my life.”