Engineers make money selling redemption letters.

The expression “engineers make money selling “redemptive letters” is a metaphorical connection between the history of the Catholic Church and the modern world of AI technology. To understand this metaphor, it is important to first look back at the historical context.

In medieval Europe, the Catholic Church sold a document called the “Letter of Atonement”. Many believers bought them because they could obtain forgiveness of sins by paying a sum of money. At this time, most of the general populace was not literate and could not read the Bible. Therefore, the church and its representatives served as the only source of religious knowledge and information.

This practice was one of the important sources of income to support the authority of the church, but it was also seen as a symbol of corruption and abuse of power. Martin Luther opposed this practice of the church and initiated the Reformation. He translated the Bible into the language of the people, giving ordinary people the opportunity to understand religious knowledge firsthand.

Given this historical background, the expression “technologists make money selling redemptive letters” implies a situation in which modern technologists (especially experts in the field of AI) provide complex technical information and knowledge that is difficult for the general public to understand as “redemptive letters” and profit from being the exclusive custodians of that knowledge. This metaphor emphasizes the point that the expertise and information possessed by the technicians corresponds to the religious knowledge possessed by the medieval church, which they sell to the general populace who have a limited ability to understand and utilize this information.

This metaphor raises the issue of the knowledge gap that exists between experts and the general public in AI and other highly technical fields, and how to share and democratize that knowledge.

---

This page is auto-translated from /nishio/技術者が贖宥状を売って儲ける using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.