HomePope's AI encyclical addresses deeper issues beyond artificial intelligence
On Monday, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, on “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” While AI serves as the hook, the issues Leo addresses are older and more pervasive: inequality, war, the erosion of democracy, and the concentration of power among those who may not care whether humanity as a whole remains magnificent.
In the 200-page document, presented alongside Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, the pope 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.
“In fact, as with every major technological shift, AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise and access to data,” the encyclical continues, highlighting concerns that elites can use their power to “shape information and consumption patterns, influence democratic processes and steer economic dynamics to their own advantage.”
The encyclical arrives a few days after President Donald Trump delayed signing an executive order on AI that would have given the government oversight over new models before their release, reportedly at the urging of venture capitalist and former White House AI czar David Sacks.
Pope Leo called for AI to be guided by “clear criteria and effective oversight” rooted in the participation of the communities it will affect. More concretely, he called for an end to the AI arms race “for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets” that companies and countries believe will “secure geopolitical or commercial dominance.”
“To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern,” he wrote.
Again, these dynamics predate AI. Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the same concentration of power during the Industrial Revolution, but we need not look back that far. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and his use of the platform to help elect Trump; the hundreds of millions flowing from tech elites into super PACs to block AI regulation — these are the kinds of patterns that clearly inspired Leo XIV’s work.
The pope reaches the same conclusion many have arrived at: the surreal power and capabilities of today’s AI raise the stakes enormously.
Notre Dame Law School professor Paolo Carozza, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and chair of the Meta Oversight Board, told TechCrunch that AI-driven misinformation and deepfakes have “corroded our capacity to recognize what’s true and what’s not true, and that really has consequences for democratic politics.” The tech industry’s practice of “harvesting and manipulating” human data, he added, poses “fundamental challenges to cognitive freedom.”
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On Monday, Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical, titled Magnifica Humanitas, on “safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence.” While AI serves as the hook, the issues Leo addresses are older and more pervasive: inequality, war, the erosion of democracy, and the concentration of power among those who may not care whether humanity as a whole remains magnificent.
In the 200-page document, presented alongside Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, the pope 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.
“In fact, as with every major technological shift, AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess economic resources, expertise and access to data,” the encyclical continues, highlighting concerns that elites can use their power to “shape information and consumption patterns, influence democratic processes and steer economic dynamics to their own advantage.”
The encyclical arrives a few days after President Donald Trump delayed signing an executive order on AI that would have given the government oversight over new models before their release, reportedly at the urging of venture capitalist and former White House AI czar David Sacks.
Pope Leo called for AI to be guided by “clear criteria and effective oversight” rooted in the participation of the communities it will affect. More concretely, he called for an end to the AI arms race “for ever more powerful algorithms and larger datasets” that companies and countries believe will “secure geopolitical or commercial dominance.”
“To disarm means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to govern,” he wrote.
Again, these dynamics predate AI. Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum addressed the same concentration of power during the Industrial Revolution, but we need not look back that far. Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and his use of the platform to help elect Trump; the hundreds of millions flowing from tech elites into super PACs to block AI regulation — these are the kinds of patterns that clearly inspired Leo XIV’s work.
The pope reaches the same conclusion many have arrived at: the surreal power and capabilities of today’s AI raise the stakes enormously.
Notre Dame Law School professor Paolo Carozza, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and chair of the Meta Oversight Board, told TechCrunch that AI-driven misinformation and deepfakes have “corroded our capacity to recognize what’s true and what’s not true, and that really has consequences for democratic politics.” The tech industry’s practice of “harvesting and manipulating” human data, he added, poses “fundamental challenges to cognitive freedom.”
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