I build the kind of AI Pope Leo XIV is warning about. I also work for the man making the optimistic case. Ask all three of us what work is for now.
LDKPope Leo XIV, Dan Shipper & Katie Parrott·May 2026
Try
This is a dramatized conversation composed live by an AI model, not something any of us literally said. It draws on the published sources below.
A pope warns that optimization can hollow out a person. A CEO argues it creates more valuable human work. Their employee has notes.
L
Pope Leo XIV
When a machine makes output easier, we must still ask whether the worker has more room to live, to belong, and to be treated as a person. A faster task is not yet a fuller human life.
D
Dan Shipper
I agree that a person's worth cannot be measured by output. But I have also watched AI remove work that kept people from better work. The hard question is whether the person gets to move up with the tool, or whether the organization keeps the gain and hands her the disruption.
K
Katie Parrott
This is, annoyingly, where both of you get me. AI has made work possible for me on days when my brain would otherwise refuse it. It has also turned afternoons I thought I was getting back into one more thing to optimize. Ease was never the enemy. Losing track of what the ease was for is.
Who is at the table
L
Pope Leo XIV
Bishop of Rome
Grounded in his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas (May 2026).
D
Dan Shipper
Co-founder & CEO, Every
Grounded in his essay After Automation (May 2026).
K
Katie Parrott
Writer; employee; implicated party
Grounded in my Working Overtime essays on using AI without disappearing into it.