What has Pope Leo warned about AI – and why that’s significant
Key takeaways
- The pontiff presented his encyclical at the Vatican alongside AI experts.
- The leader of the Catholic Church presented the encyclical at the Vatican alongside AI experts, including Christopher Olah, the cofounder of the United States-based AI giant Anthropic.
- Encyclicals are letters written by the pope and sent to Catholic bishops.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
The pontiff presented his encyclical at the Vatican alongside AI experts.
xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogle Add Al Jazeera on Googleinfo In the first encyclical of his papacy, Pope Leo XIV warned that artificial intelligence must be 'disarmed' and people protected from its most disruptive effects [File: Tiziana Fabi/AFP]By Priyanka Shankar and The Associated Press Published On 26 May 202626 May 2026Pope Leo XIV says artificial intelligence must be “disarmed” as world leaders and private companies increase the technology’s use in many human activities, including war.
On Monday, in the first encyclical of his papacy, titled Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, the pope warned against “a race for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets” driven by “the desire to secure geopolitical or commercial dominance”.