Essay published on **Gates Notes** on **August 26, 2026** by **Bill Gates**, co-founder of **Microsoft** and chairman of the **Gates Foundation**, ~4,500 words, announced as the first in a series. The text poses an alternative — AI will be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice — and a finding: no plan exists for entering this period. **(A) Three risks**: the lasting disappearance of entry- and mid-career jobs, white-collar as much as blue-collar, within a decade rather than several generations, because this time the substitution targets **cognition**; the weaponization of malicious actors (cyberattacks, bioterrorism, fraud, deepfakes), coupled with a concentration of power among those who already hold it; the effect of compagnons IA on children's development and on critical thinking. **(B) The benefits**, located in five domains — research, health, agriculture in low-income countries (the impact the author calls the fastest), public services, education — with a reservation carried on the verb: *"the operative word is 'can'"*. **(C) Three proposals** open the series: building an unprecedented national and international institutional framework, borrowing from the nuclear inspection regime, aviation regulation, and ozone agreements; reserving certain occupations for humans, a domain named **Human Reserved**; **taxing AI tokens and robots** to rebalance the taxation of labor and capital. Gates discloses his financial ties to the industry and the transfer of his profits to the foundation. The text extends executive essays on the distribution of AI's value — [[nadella-frontier-ecosystem-human-token-capital-2026-06-12]], [[zuckerberg-meta-future-is-for-everyone-superintelligence-2026-08-10]] — by focusing on public power rather than the firm.
#AI and equity#transition to the AI era#cognition substitution
Bill Gates — cofondateur de Microsoft · président du conseil de la Gates Foundation. Blog personnel Gates Notes. Page non capturable par `curl | lynx` (403 Akamai) : extraction navigateur.
First social encyclical of **Pope Léon XIV** (Robert Francis Prevost), dated **15 May 2026** (Rome, near St. Peter's, 2nd year of the Pontificate), published for the **135th anniversary of *Rerum Novarum*** (Léon XIII, 15 May 1891) and explicitly presented as a **continuation of the Church's Social Doctrine into the AI era**. Canonical subtitle: *"on the protection of the human person in the age of artificial intelligence"*. **245 paragraphs**, structured as **Introduction + 5 chapters + Conclusion**. **Pivotal thesis** organized around two **biblical icons**: the **Tower of Babel** (Gen 11) — technological uniformity without God, *"absolutization of the human"* — versus **Nehemiah's reconstruction of the walls of Jerusalem** (Neh 2-6) — shared responsibility stone by stone, listening, coordination among families. *"The first choice is not between a 'yes' or a 'no' to technology, but between building Babel or rebuilding Jerusalem"* (n. 9). **Canonical concepts**: (1) **AI "cultivated" rather than "constructed"** — *"developers do not directly design every detail, but create an architecture on which the AI develops"* (n. 98), a remarkable theological formulation that echoes recent ML-research vocabulary; (2) ***"Disarming AI"*** (n. 110) — *"removing it from the logic of armed competition, which today is no longer only military but also economic and cognitive"*, making AI *"habitable, by restoring it to the plurality of human cultures"*; (3) **Radical critique of "alignment"** — *"We cannot content ourselves with invoking the moralization of the machine, what is called the 'alignment' of AI with human values, without having the courage to add a further condition: the possibility of debating the ethical code to be used"* (n. 107). ***"A more moral AI is useless if that morality is decided by a handful of people."*** (4) **Epistemic asymmetry** and **new AI monopolies** (n. 109) — *"in a world where a few actors concentrate data, computing resources and regulatory power"*; (5) **Invisible labor** of data labelers/moderators/rare-earth extractors (n. 109, 173) — *"bodies marked, mutilated, used so that the flow of computation never stops"*; (6) **Data colonialism** (n. 178) — *"it dominates not only bodies, but appropriates data"*, *"new rare earths of power"*; (7) **AI and war** (n. 197-200) — *"No algorithm capable of making war morally acceptable"* (n. 198), three criteria: traceable personal responsibility, refusal to shorten the time for moral judgment, protection of civilians; (8) **Critique of transhumanism/posthumanism** (n. 115-117) as *"an archipelago of conceptual islands linked by the same ocean of assumptions: the centrality of technique and the dream of surpassing the limits of the human condition"*; (9) **Work in the transition** (n. 150-156) — *"contrary to the advertised benefits of AI, current approaches to technology can paradoxically deskill workers, subject them to automated surveillance"*, access to work as a public priority, anticipation of the transformation, setting social criteria for innovation; (10) **Canonical question drawn from John Paul II** (Redemptor hominis 1979): ***"does AI make human life on earth 'more human' in every respect? Does it make it more 'worthy of man'?"*** (n. 129); (11) **Authentic "more than human"**: not transhumanism, but grace — *"we manage to be fully human when we are more than human, when we allow God to lead us beyond ourselves"* (n. 128, citing Francis, *Evangelii gaudium*); (12) **Disarming words** (n. 214) — *"Let us disarm words and we will help disarm the Earth"*. **Addressees**: *"To all Catholic faithful, to all Christians, to all men and women of good will"* (n. 16) — a **universal** register in line with *Pacem in terris* (John XXIII 1963), *Laudato si'* (Francis 2015) and *Fratelli tutti* (Francis 2020). **Special appeal to AI developers** (n. 111): *"every design choice expresses a vision of humanity"*. Key **magisterial source** cited: *Antiqua et nova* (Dicasteries for the Doctrine of the Faith + Culture and Education, 14 January 2025) + *Quo vadis, humanitas ?* (International Theological Commission, 9 February 2026). A major document of the **2026 social Magisterium**, at the junction of Social Doctrine ↔ AI ethics ↔ big-tech geopolitics ↔ critique of microworker labor/rare-earth extraction. Implicit convergence with **Mensch / Mistral** (AI energy sovereignty), **Sun / NYT Permanent Underclass** (cf. labor→capital shift), **Wallace-Wells / NYT AI Populism** (cf. critique of tech oligarchs), **Mollick × roon** (cf. ASI and internal politics). First encyclical by a Pope to explicitly take AI as a **central, structuring subject** rather than one theme among others.
#Léon XIV#Robert Francis Prevost#social encyclical
**Léon XIV** (de naissance Robert Francis Prevost) · 267e Pape de l'Église catholique · élu le **8 mai 2025** · premier pape américain de l'histoire (né à Chicago, USA, 1955 ; double nationalité américano-péruvienne). Augustinien (ancien Prieur général de l'Ordre de Saint-Augustin 2001-2013) · ancien évêque de Chiclayo (Pérou) puis Préfet du Dicastère pour les Évêques (2023-2025). *Magnifica Humanitas* est sa **première encyclique sociale** · signée *« Donné à Rome · près de Saint-Pierre · le 15 mai de l'année 2026 · la deuxième de mon Pontificat »* — date choisie pour **coïncider avec le 135e anniversaire de *Rerum Novarum*** (15 mai 1891) de Léon XIII · dont il a explicitement repris le nom de pontificat en référence à la tradition sociale lancée par son prédécesseur du XIXe siècle. La référence augustinienne est centrale dans le document (citations massives des *Confessions*, du *De civitate Dei* — *« deux amours ont fait deux cités »*, des *Enarrationes in Psalmos*, des *Sermones*). Trace de paternité collective : multiples références à *Antiqua et nova* (note conjointe DDF + DCE, 14 janvier 2025) et *Quo vadis · humanitas ?* (CTI, 9 février 2026) · suggérant un travail conjoint entre la Secrétairerie d'État · le Dicastère pour la Doctrine de la Foi · le Dicastère pour la Culture et l'Éducation · et le Dicastère pour le Service du Développement humain intégral.