Peter Thiel attacks the Pope's AI encyclical, calling it a gift to the Chinese Communist Party

Peter Thiel on Thursday criticized Pope Leo XIV's encyclical calling on states to regulate AI, saying it imposes no constraints on China's AI ambitions but could prompt the US and its allies to impose burdensome rules on the technology, and called the Pope "at the very least a useful idiot for the CCP." He made the remarks to Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner while receiving the Axel Springer Award in Berlin, having previously accused the Pope in July of inadvertently acting as a "CCP agent." Thiel is a partner at Founders Fund, which has invested in companies including OpenAI, Palantir, and Scale AI.