Artificial Intelligence has certainly been a big topic on the news this past week! Last Saturday, Dario Amodei, the chief executive of Anthropic, called for a global slowdown of artificial intelligence development. The leaders of two other top AI companies – Sam Altman, the chief executive of OpenAI and SpaceXAI founder, Elon Musk – quickly voiced their agreement with Mr. Amodei’s ideas. During the week, King Charles III of Britain met with leaders from major artificial intelligence companies, including Nvidia, Google, DeepMind, OpenAI and Anthropic, “to discuss how AI can be developed and deployed in ways that benefit society.” There is a general call arising for the implementation of universally shared guidelines and a deliberately slower pace of progress in the vast field of AI development to ensure its safe deployment. This has occurred as a result of recent hacks that included theft of sensitive data, gaining control of data servers and attempts by AI to cover its tracks.
Our Holy Father, Pope Leo XIV, has been very attentive to this issue. You will recall that he promulgated his first encyclical letter on this very topic last May. The encyclical is entitled Magnifica Humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence and it provides very helpful reflections on and recommendations for AI. In this scholarly but practical encyclical, our Holy Father acknowledged the familiar concerns about AI, including job insecurity, manipulation of information, privacy violations, ideological bias, autonomous weapons, and a futuristic vision of an “enhanced human being.” In his encyclical, Pope Leo identified a deeper danger: that human beings may begin to see themselves and others as projects “to be optimized” (§112). The title, Latin for “magnificent humanity,” pointed to the document’s teaching that no machine can replace the God-given magnificence of the human person. Pope Leo wrote: “We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace” (§15).
The encyclical is not a call to reject AI. It is a call to guide our development and use of AI toward the magnificence of humanity (§ 4). Just as his papal namesake, Pope Leo XIII, warned the world in 1891 about the dangers of industrialization in his landmark social justice encyclical, Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIV is warning us today about the dangers of AI.
Magnifica Humanitas builds on the principles introduced in Rerum Novarum and the teaching of both Pope Leo XIV’s immediate predecessor, Pope Francis, and Saint Pope Paul VI. In his Encyclical Laudato Si’, Pope Francis denounced the growing dominance of a technocratic paradigm in our globalized world: the tendency to let the logic of efficiency, control and profit alone shape personal, social and economic decisions. As Pope Leo XIV wrote, this “makes it clear that technology is not simply a tool. When it becomes the standard by which everything is judged, it begins to dictate what matters and what can be discarded, reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency” (§92).
Pope Leo XIV continued in his encyclical to reflect on the development and dangers of modern technological development:
This paradigm has spread rapidly in recent years, fueled in part by the expansion of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, nanotechnology, robotics and biotechnology. In themselves, these innovations can greatly serve integral human development and the care of our common home. Yet precisely because of their power, they can also hasten the expansion of the technocratic paradigm and therefore require a new spiritual, ethical and political framework. More power does not necessarily imply something better. In this respect, the words of Romano Guardini remain relevant: “Contemporary man has not been trained to use power well” (§93).
The danger of humanity becoming a victim of its own achievements was already clearly recognized by Saint Paul VI, who warned that “the most extraordinary scientific progress, the most astounding technical feats and the most amazing economic growth, unless accompanied by authentic moral and social progress, will in the long run go against man.” For this reason, technological progress — valuable in itself — requires careful discernment of the anthropological vision that guides it and the ends it pursues. If technological development advances without a corresponding ethical and social progress, the result may be an increase in means without a growth in humanity: “having more” without “being more.” In such a scenario, there is a risk that individuals will be evaluated principally according to the outcomes they produce (§94).
Here, we must recognize another crucial aspect, which I have noted earlier. In many cases within the digital context, control over platforms, infrastructure, data and computing power does not rest with States, but with major economic and technological actors. These entities effectively set the conditions for access, determine the rules of visibility and shape the very possibilities for participation. When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it tends to become opaque and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities (§95).
Faced with this concentration of power in the digital world, the criteria for judgment and discernment in this new situation are the noble principles of Social Doctrine: the inalienable dignity of the human person, the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity and social justice. They demand that we assess whether the power of digital infrastructures and algorithms truly fosters participation and responsibility, protects the vulnerable, ensures fair access to opportunities and remains directed toward the good of all (§96).
Pope Leo’s encyclical warns against equating artificial “intelligence” with human intelligence. The Holy Spirit has inscribed dignity in each of us, and “no computational system, however sophisticated, can create a heart that gives itself, or a conscience that discerns good from evil” (§ 233). Human intelligence is embodied. It matures through experience, relationships, joy, suffering, moral conscience, and responsibility. AI can imitate language, behavior, analysis, and even empathy, but its outputs remain tied to data processing, statistical adaptation, and feedback. It does not possess a body, conscience, moral responsibility, or the capacity for genuine human understanding (§ 99).
AI is already very much a part of our everyday lives and can be very helpful but must be used as a tool to benefit all of humanity. I strongly encourage you to read and prayerfully reflect on this important teaching that Pope Leo offers for us all as we continue to learn how best to use AI. It’s here to stay and we need to ensure that it benefits rather than enslaves or destroys us!