Peter Thiel said the US is chiefly responsible for rising anti-AI sentiment, arguing China is not driving it, though it may fuel some anti-AI content in the US. On Mathias Döpfner’s podcast, he said, “This is mainly what we’re doing to ourselves.”
Thiel also criticized Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical, published in May, calling it anti-AI. He said Americans were more likely to listen to the Pope than to social-media posts from China, giving the Pope the “effect” of working for the Chinese Communist Party. Thiel said he was not calling Leo a communist agent, but called him a “useful idiot for the CCP.” The Holy See did not respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
