Can Pope Leo save us from AI?

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0:57Websites are in a free fall right now. This is going to be an absolute crisis. The way that the internet works, that is ending. Welcome to The Interface, the show that decodes how tech is rewiring your week and your world. I'm Karen Howe. I'm Thomas Germain. And I'm Nicky Wolf. Today on The Interface, we'll be talking about whether or not Google is about to destroy the internet. Can the Pope save us from AI? And is Roblox finally facing a Racknet?

1:34So last week, as we were recording our podcast, Google had its big developer conference. It's called Google I.O. We couldn't report on it because we were doing our show. So we're a little bit late, but we're going to talk about it now. And Google made so many announcements. They put out a blog post that said the top 100 things that we announced at this year's I.O. But I think it's really difficult to overstate how significant the changes that Google has made are going to be. And before we get to like the major headline about what this is going to do to the web and to the Internet, I mean, let's talk about what's changing.

2:14So the big thing from Google, they've made this kind of sort of pivot where they're not talking about AI as much as they are specifically talking about agents. right? People probably heard this term, AI agents. It's like a little AI that goes out and does stuff in the world, or at least on the internet, on your behalf. Google has announced a bunch of new agent tools. It's got this thing called Google Spark, which Google calls a 24-7 personal AI agent that's going to be able to run around. And you can set up, it's sort of like a fancy Google alert where it'll go do things for you. It'll look up if your favorite band is in town.

2:53It'll help you monitor stocks. They've got new AI smart glasses. They're putting Gemini in everything, like everything from YouTube to your Gmail is going to want to talk to you now. But I think the biggest change is how they are altering the experience that you're going to have on Google search. And I really think this is probably the biggest tech news that you're going to hear all year in terms of like the consequences that this is going to have. People probably noticed, you know, AI overviews, right? You guys know this like AI answer you get at the top? Yeah, it gives you a kind of answer before you start getting to the search results.

3:33Yeah. So when this came out, everyone was like, oh, it gets things wrong, right? It like told, it was telling people you should put glue in your pizza or saying you should eat rocks every day because it's good for your health. That was funny, right? And also not funny because it's like, not a big problem. It's a big issue if Google is spreading misinformation. But the real shift is that for 30 years, almost, Google has been a search engine where they give you a list of 10 blue links, and they send you to another part of the internet. That's been changing over time. With AI overviews, that was a pretty radical shift.

4:15And instead of sending you to another part of the internet, it gives you an answer. And then the search results, right, those blue links get kicked farther and farther down the page. Now, the search box is going to be this dynamic AI platform, where you ask a question, and you will get a completely different experience, depending on what you're asking for. So not just an AI overview, but Google literally says, for a lot of searches, we are going to build an app in real time, you're going to ask a question, and there's an AI that will build an app right then and there to answer your queries. So they gave an example like, you know, if you're asking how do black holes work, it might build you an app that has like a 3D representation where you can check boxes and move sliders to like learn more about the universe.

5:02Google also says that they're going to have agents, right, little AIs that do things for you built into Google search. So you can like eventually, like this is going to be available immediately, but you can like send a little AI out to do things on your behalf and you can make purchases right from Google even more so than you are right now. The big way to think about this is when Google announced AI overviews, they had this sort of tagline in their big conference where they said, let Google do the searching for you. Now their tagline with this new AI stuff where it's this whole shifting experience is ask Google, right?

5:44You're not asking the internet, you're asking Google, you're interfacing directly with Google. And this is like an asteroid that is pointed at the center of the way that the internet has run for our entire lives. And the big change here is that more and more, and this has already started happening, your experience on Google is going to end on Google, right? It used to be Google would send you to another part of the internet. Increasingly, you're just going to go to Google. You're going to get what you need. You will never visit another website and you're going to stay there. And here's why that's such a big deal.

6:26Essentially, if you have a website, there's three ways you can make money. You can sell things. You can sell products. you can show people ads, or you can charge people for a subscription. That's basically it. But for the entire history of the internet, more or less, or at least the modern internet, all of that activity has started on Google. So something like 80 % of all of the activities, all of the stuff that happens on the internet right now begins on Google search, starts with somebody going to Google and then going and doing another thing. Like the majority, for some websites, it's all the traffic that they get comes from Google.

7:08And Google is sending out less and less and less of that traffic, less people to other parts of the internet than ever before. The editor-in-chief of The Verge came up with this term. He calls it Google Zero, which is we're trending towards a world where Google is sending zero traffic to most of the other parts of the internet. what that means is websites are in a free fall right now this is going to be an absolute crisis i was talking to an expert about this a couple years ago and i was saying like we're going to have like an extinction event on the internet and he was like extinction is too strong of a word i think we should use the word decimation instead i think that's a little more accurate like That's a little too strong.

7:52But in practical terms, what this means is the way that the internet works. Like if you have something that you want to say, if you have a business that you want to create providing information, it used to be you would do that with a website. That is ending, right? The model that has supported that is going away. And this ecosystem of the open web is in a serious crisis. And I don't think it's really going to turn around. and I think we are at, in a very dramatic way, the end of an era. And to think about the sheer scale of this, for a media company, when I was working on the Guardian's news desk, there was a whole department, I think lots of media companies had this, whose entire job was optimizing headlines for search engine in order to go.

8:44Yeah, search engine optimization, yeah. For a long while, say you are having a dinner party and you want to cook spaghetti bolognese, you go on Google, you say spaghetti bolognese recipe, and a lot of the time you will find nine pages of essay about the concept of spaghetti bolognese before you get it. Right, it's like, what is the history? People have been like, what's going on there? What is pasta? And that is because part of the Google page rank, which is how I found it, was responding well to something structured that way. So that's how much Google's way of doing things affects all content that needs people to find it.

9:28Yeah, people often, I always hear this term, people talk about mommy bloggers, which like not just condescending, but also super sexist, right? They're like, oh, these idiot mommy bloggers with their recipe website. They don't know that I don't want to hear about how, you know, their family liked the spaghetti. Right. They're not stupid. They know that you don't want to read that. It is in order to please Google. It is because Google has created the system where you have to play by its rules if you want Google to send people to you. Basically, the whole game of having a website was pleasing Google.

10:02Of course, Google would disagree with this, but the courts in the U.S. have said that Google has an illegal monopoly over the search engine business. You have to play their game or you're going to die. And now, even if you do play their game, you're going to die. The CEO of Condé Nast recently, and like maybe this is a little journalism insider baseball, but Condé Nast is one of the biggest media companies in the world, certainly one of the most important. They own The New Yorker and Vogue, like a bunch of like the big publications that you can think of, recently said that he's operating under the assumption that Google will be sending his websites zero traffic and they need to completely change their business model in order to, you know, work with that new paradigm.

10:44And on a recent interview with the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, he was asked about this and they were like, you're kind of like, you're going to kill the open web with all these products. He's like, no, no, no, the web is going to be great. But basically what he says is like, you know, websites can charge subscriptions and we'll send people who are more likely to subscribe to websites. So that's one of the big changes that I think you're going to see. it's already started, right? You know how more and more websites have a paywall up or if you want to access their content, used to be free. It used to be free because of a business model that Google was supporting, right?

11:18That Google would send people to your site, enough of them that you could, they could look at the ads and you could make money. That's getting harder and harder to do. And you were going to have to pay for stuff that used to be free. That's one of the things that's going to be different for you. I think it's important to underscore to people who don't really, you know, recognize the economics of the internet, that the production of high quality information is really expensive. I mean, journalism is a canonical case because I think people generally are more familiar with how journalism works is you need either subscribers or you need ad revenue to pay your reporters to go out into the world to collect news and information.

11:58But it's not just journalism. This is how a lot of websites online are able to keep their content completely open is that they are getting some kind of revenue from that open model. And that's what you're saying is ending, Tom, is that if there's no more revenue from keeping your websites open, and in fact, it's undermining your business by keeping that information open because Google can just scrape it wholesale, ingest it into their AI model and deliver it directly to the user without driving traffic to your site, then you have to put up a paywall. You have to put up some kind of blocker. And that's what kills the open web.

12:38Google also thrives off of an open internet, you know, especially in the age of AI, they need to, they scraped off the open internet in order to train their models and have continued doing that to train the next generation of their models. If Google's own actions are leading to the complete shuttering of that open internet, is that also going to come to bite Google in its back? It's a great question. And I think there's two answers. One is like, it isn't going to be a complete shuttering, right? Like the open web, the parts, the websites that exist outside of the coffers of a tech company, it isn't going to be completely gone.

13:18There will still be millions of websites. There'll be a lot of them. I think the big players will survive, right? People are going directly to the New York Times and the BBC and maybe recipes.com because they like those sites. they're seeking out their content, you know, one-to-one without an intermediary. But yes, like AI models, you know, writ large, and also Google's whole thing is built on taking this information that people are putting online. And there's going to be a lot less of it. So you might think like, oh, well, now Google's screwed. They're sowing the seeds of their own demise. Well, not really, because they have YouTube.

13:58This is what's going to happen, right? People who used to be like, it used to be like, oh, I want to start making media. I want to start, you know, make like writing or whatever it is used to be, you'd start a website. Now what you would do if you were doing that today is you would start a social media account. You would go on TikTok, you go on Instagram, you go on YouTube. Google, I think can just scrape the contents, you know, of whatever internet, whatever open web survives and YouTube and be perfectly fine and have all the information they need. And by the way, they're also taking all of the YouTube videos and scraping that content for their AI without compensating or giving users any option there.

14:38And they also have this new thing where like, you're going to be able to ask YouTube questions the way you talk to a chatbot, and it will pull information from the videos, give it to you directly. And, you know, sometimes send you to like a particular moment in a video and other times just give you the answer. and then the people who made the YouTube videos who get paid for views or whatever aren't going to get those views. So the economics of that is changing in a really dramatic way. I feel like while there is this dire demise of the open internet, simultaneously we are seeing this other trend where more and more people are actually willing to pay directly for high quality information now.

15:17And obviously newsletters is also a huge, not just independent publications, independent journalism, but newsletters where you just subscribe, you know, five bucks a month to the person that is going to then use that money to create that high quality information. And of course, podcasts, subscribing directly to the podcast and having it delivered to you rather than through Google. I think there are all of these other different ecologies of information that are kind of popping up that are, I think, have made, is a symbol of people recognizing that the original game of getting high quality information for free was always a little bit not quite.

16:01sustainable. And people are starting to actually just put their money where their mouth is in terms of supporting real people, real creators that are delivering them value. I do think that's kind of hopeful. It is not necessarily all terrible, right? It's not the apocalypse. Maybe it's just the asteroid. We all can agree that housing is expensive. Rent, mortgage, it doesn't matter which one you're paying, it stings every month. But Built can make you feel a little better. Let me explain. Built started out rewarding members on their rent. Now, as of 2026, Built members can also earn points on mortgage payments wherever they live.

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17:21That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash podcasts. Make sure to use our URL so they know we sent you. If your best finance people are doing expense reports, chasing receipts, or spending time on month-end clothes, it's time to get Brex AF, a Gentic finance that eliminates that work before it starts. Learn more at brex.com slash AF. Organic Valley Protein Plus Ultra-Filtered Milk is pasture-raised from cows that might take more steps than most people. That's a plus. and it has 50 % more protein and 50 % less sugar than regular milk. That's a big plus. And the fact that I didn't make a pun about moving, also a plus.

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18:19Karen, what do you think God would make of that story?

18:25Well, now we know. I don't know that I can really get into God's mind. But there's someone who does. We do. But we do have a window now into the Pope's mind because he just wrote an over 80-page opus on all of his thoughts on AI and essentially how he thinks all Catholics and pretty much all people around the world should be thinking about AI in its current form and how that form challenges human dignity itself. It's the first encyclical that Pope Leo XIV has put out as part of his papacy. And what's an encyclical? Yeah, so an encyclical is an extremely important document in the Catholic tradition that is essentially a, it's sort of like a directive that the Pope issues to Catholics all around the world saying, this is how you should approach a particular subject.

19:27And people - It's like an all-hands memo. Yeah, it's like an all-hands company meeting. Catholic, like Google Alert. So, yeah. Yeah, okay. People might remember that when Pope Leo XIV chose to be called Leo, it was actually a direct reference to AI because Pope Leo XIII was the Pope during the Industrial Revolution. And Leo XIV said, I'm adopting the name Leo because I believe we are in another industrial revolution where there will be great challenges facing humanity. And I have to say, I am really obsessed with this document. It's called Magnifica Humanitas. I don't know. It's beautiful. My language is not great.

20:11It's so dramatic. Magnifica Humanitas. Yeah. I like that. But it is actually such a deeply considered document on AI development and its state today. It talks about many, many of the themes that we've touched on in this podcast, including the concentration of power in the hands of a few corporations developing this technology, the datification and quantification of human existence, the exploitation of labor and the hidden human supply chains that exist behind the production of this technology. It talks about data centers, my favorite topic, hope after my own heart. It talks about the corrosion of economic opportunity and specifically also this idea that there needs to be more public education and more journalism to counter the way that AI is spreading misinformation and eroding the information ecosystem.

21:06And one of the most validating ones for me personally was it also articulates this idea that AI as is currently conceived as a power concentrating force for Silicon Valley is essentially threatening to turn the world into a new colonial world order, which is basically the argument of my book, Empire of AI. So it does seem like the Pope or some of his vice popes read your book for sure looking at this document yes the vice the assistant popes yeah and this is also not the first um time this pope has addressed the concept of ai right he put out their pronouncement yeah earlier on saying that ai should not be used in writing sermons years ago the the vatican like put out this document and then like put me on the phone with a priest to like get his take on AI.

22:03It's like something they're taking very seriously and have been for a while. Wait, sorry, what? Yeah, so like, I think like two or three years ago, the Pope announced, I don't know what they call Pope projects, right? Like an initiative where they were going to be taking AI really seriously. And I wrote an article about it. I reached out for Common. They were, oh, we would love for you to talk to one of our guys. When it's like a company, they put you on the phone with an executive. But because it's the Catholic Church, They put me on the phone with a priest. That's incredible. And I was like, am I supposed to call this guy father?

22:36You know, like it was weird. Can I ask a super dumb question? Was that under this pope? Actually, previous pope. The Catholic Church has been thinking and like focused on AI for a while. Yeah. So under Pope Francis, the previous pope, there was this effort to essentially start a series of conversations and convenings with AI experts around the world about how the Catholic Church should think about AI. I know a number of professors that have actually been part of these conversations, and they also called Silicon Valley executives to come and have these conversations. That was all under Pope Francis.

23:13And Pope Leo basically took all of the ongoing convenings and discourse and has continued to add on to that, but he's really made AI a central feature of his papacy, Whereas Pope Francis thought it was an important thing to keep track of. Pope Leo was like, it is the thing to keep track of. And this document is essentially his manifesto on how everyone else should be thinking about this. And frankly, you know, like, I'm not Catholic, I'm not religious, but I think that everyone should be reading this document. It is a really, really great articulation of not just the constitution of power in profit-seeking actors, but it's actually this essentially reminder that technological progress needs to always be in service of strengthening human dignity, which, frankly, we just don't hear as a perspective enough in society.

24:09And he's essentially calling out all the ways that currently technological progress is undermining human dignity. And he's trying to assert, hey, that is actually literally the opposite of what we should be doing here. And we should re-engage in the collective pursuit of making our lives better. Which is, I assume, what is meant by, that is summed up by the name Humanitas. Exactly. Yeah, magnificent humanity. I assume that's what it means. The question that I have here, it's kind of like, what's the goal? What he's trying to do is provide like a moral and ethical framework upon which he hopes that regulations will come.

24:58Like governments will look at this and be like, okay, this, we're going to, here's, the Pope said this is bad and that we should be upset. So here, like, is this going to work, right? Do you think that this is going to have the influence that he wants it to or that the media is acting like it will? This is such a good question because the Catholic Church is such a weird institution. I mean, like for a very long time in recent years, it completely lost its moral authority, right? There were a lot of these investigations about the horrible depravity of the Catholic Church and the abuses that were happening to children within the Catholic institutions.

25:35And this led to the Catholic Church really losing its influence, particularly in the Western world. Simultaneously, I believe Catholicism is actually increasing in terms of the number of followers globally. Apparently, yeah. More people are converting than they have in a long time. Yeah. So it is in this weird plate. Like the Catholic Church is simultaneously waning in influence in certain corridors of the world while gaining influence in others. and still just a massively influential institution. And it is kind of, it plays an interesting role in the AI discourse because there are really only a few authorities in the world that, you know, society organizes itself around.

26:20There's the nation states. There's like, I don't know, sports teams. And then there's like religious institutions, right? Like that, they, religious institutions are the ones that transcend nation states and are meant to try and cohere many different factions of people that share a particular common belief. And so I do think that there is something really important and influential that comes of a pope making a stand like this and saying, by the way, peoples of the world, Catholics of the world, we need to remember that human dignity is like the ultimate purpose that we are trying to sustain and help flourish.