Pope Leo XIV warned of the dangers of AI and the unfettered power of technology in his first major papal encyclical released on Monday. Magnifica Humanitas is the pope’s document on “protecting the human in the age of artificial intelligence,” in which he discusses the dangers of AI-driven warfare, the effects of AI on the workplace, and the need for new legal and ethical frameworks to govern the technology.
In his papal letter – a kind of open letter from the Catholic Church – Pope Leo emphasized the economic and social chaos caused by the rapid adoption of AI, and the inadequate protection of people who threaten human dignity. He compared the current era of AI to the Tower of Babel, saying society must “avoid the ‘disease of Babel,'” which he described as “the idolatry of profit that sacrifices the weak, uniformity that eliminates differences, and the pretense that a single language—even a digital one—can translate everything, including human mystery, into data and functionality.”
Pope Leo’s book touches on major aspects of modern life that AI is deeply focused on: job losses and workers in general, AI-driven wars, and children being exposed to AI tools and content, among other topics. Above all, the encyclical calls for people’s dignity to be a central part of decision-making and governance. The book is a plea for “a moral and social understanding that protects the value of the person, to ensure that it will always be human intelligence, with conscience and freedom, that directs technological innovations and responsibly determines their use and limitations,” wrote Leo.
The book, with more than 42,000 words, calls for “intelligent, rigorous analysis and, at times, slow adoption of AI” as a “career duty for the responsible human family.” Among some of the suggestions:
The effects of AI on humanity have been an important issue for Pope Leo: He chose his papal name in reference to the industrial revolution, when his predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, issued his own letter to protect workers amid technological advances. Pope Leo has also been involved with the AI industry – Anthropic founder Christopher Olah was present when the pope launched his book on Monday. Politics reports that representatives of Amazon, Meta, and Google met with Vatican officials ahead of the publication of Monday’s letter as the tech industry tries to influence church positions. (There is also a small set trying to “AGI-pill” the pope; Magnifica Humanitas does not clearly speak to general artificial intelligence.)
The encyclical is not a blanket refutation of AI. Instead, Pope Leo calls for the “abolition” of technology – both in the military sense and in the economic and social sense. AI should not be used for a race to amass power or dominate society, he says.
“Disarming means rejecting the assumption that technological power automatically grants the right to rule. Disarming does not mean rejecting technology, but preventing it from ruling humanity.”
