What Pope Leo XIV’s First Encyclical Says About the Power of AI
Key takeaways
- But the text is not conceived as an exclusively technological reflection.
- For this reason, the encyclical does not present itself as a technical text about innovation, but rather as an attempt to interpret the digital transformation in light of human dignity and the common good.
- For Robert Francis Prevost, disarming AI means preventing it from becoming a form of power capable of dominating human existence.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Anthropic cofounder Chris Olah shakes hands with Pope Leo XIV ahead of the presentation of the first encyclical.Photograph: Alberto Pizzoli/Getty Images Comment Loader Save Story Save this story Comment Loader Save Story Save this story. An algorithm decides what we see, another filters what we read, and still others enter into the processes that govern work, information, and collective choices. In the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas. the first signed by Pope Leo XIV and published on May 25, artificial intelligence is not viewed as just another technology; it is part of the invisible infrastructure of our contemporary daily lives.
But the text is not conceived as an exclusively technological reflection. Pope Leo XIV places the issue of AI within the tradition of the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and directly invokes—while updating it—the Rerum Novarum of Pope Leo XIII (published on May 15, 1891) in the year of its 135th anniversary. That encyclical addressed the question of labor at the height of the industrial revolution in the late 19th century.
If the “res novae” of that time were factories, labor, and industrial capitalism, today the new issues revolve around digital platforms, algorithms, data, and automation systems that are reshaping power, the economy, and social relations. For this reason, the encyclical does not present itself as a technical text about innovation, but rather as an attempt to interpret the digital transformation in light of human dignity and the common good. Technology, the Pope writes, is not evil in itself; on the contrary, it belongs to human history and creativity. But the current situation is different in both scale and depth: “Never has humanity had so much power over itself,” the text observes, describing technologies that now shape decisionmaking processes, the collective imagination, and social life in an increasingly pervasive way.