The pope’s AI encyclical isn’t really about AI
Key takeaways
- Throughout the 200-page document, which the pope presented alongside Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, Leo argues that technology built and governed by a small elite cannot, by definition, serve the common good.
- Pope Leo called for AI to be guided by “clear criteria and effective oversight” grounded in participation from communities that will be affected by it.
- “To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern,” he wrote.
Why this matters: a development in AI with implications for how people work, create, and decide.
Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical on Monday, dubbed Magnifica Humanitas, on “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” And while AI is the hook, the problems Leo focuses on are older and more pervasive: inequality, war, the erosion of democracy, and the concentration of power in the hands of those who don’t necessarily care whether humanity writ large remains magnificent.
Throughout the 200-page document, which the pope presented alongside Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, Leo argues that technology built and governed by a small elite cannot, by definition, serve the common good.
“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,” he writes.