The Vatican, as one insight puts it, tends to “think for centuries.” But Pope Leo XIV seems determined to change that, moving with incredible speed to publish his first encyclical today, Amazing humanity“on protecting humanity in the age of artificial intelligence.” Today he was able to produce a major teaching document on AI while still university students speeches to begin to deteriorate about how technology will change the world. Contrast that with his 19th-century namesake, Pope Leo XIII, who didn’t publish a document on the Industrial Revolution until more than a century after it began.
In Amazing humanity (“Good Humanity”), Leo seeks to balance the alarm with hope. He makes a long and clear list of the risks posed by AI, but insists that the technology is “a gift that can reduce suffering and open up new possibilities” – as long as it is dictated by human values rather than monopoly interests. As for the specific benefits that AI can provide, however, Leo is largely silent. His alarm words are deep and expansive; his words of hope, meaningless and short.
Today he condemns AI-induced unemployment, especially among young people, as well as the environmental damage caused by AI’s energy-intensive, carbon-emitting infrastructure. He condemns the exploitation of workers such as those who label data, moderate content, or provide “resources needed for the production of the hardware and microprocessors on which AI depends.”
The encyclical also takes a hard line against autonomous weapons systems. “Ethical decision making cannot be reduced to calculations, since it involves conscience, personal responsibility and recognition of the other as a person,” Leo writes. “Therefore, it is not permissible to entrust bad or otherwise irreversible decisions to artificial systems.”
On many of these issues, Leo provides reform prescriptions that rely heavily on governments and institutions to mitigate the risks of AI. As is common with papal documents, the document does not make detailed recommendations or specify which bodies should implement them. “Strong legal systems, independent oversight, informed consumers and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibilities are needed,” he writes. In relation to work, the pope says that “every introduction of automation and AI should be accompanied by verifiable measures to protect employment, retraining and employee engagement.”
Beyond public policy concerns, Leo expresses human reservations about AI. He warns against “equating this kind of ‘intelligence’ with that of humans,” who, unlike machines, can grow in wisdom through relationships and experiences of joy and suffering, including physical pain. Technology can “undermine creativity and personal judgment,” he says, and promote an “illusion of connection with real personal content” that can cause users to “lose the desire to create real human connections.”
The encyclical rejects two philosophies advocated by some in Silicon Valley—transhumanism and posthumanism—which see technology as a way to supplement or complete people. Such ideals of perfection create a threat to the vulnerable, the pope writes, by making it “easier to accept that certain lives are not good, not desirable or not very good.”
Reflecting on this danger, Leo complains that modern culture tends to see every limit “basically as a defect to be corrected, instead of a reality through which our humanity matures and opens itself to relationship.” in spite of limitations, but often through them.”
Although his main focus is technology, Leo touches on other subjects. The document includes a section condemning the rise of what he calls the “culture of power” and the consequences of “war reform.” In one notable aside, Leo apologizes for the time it took the Church to issue “an official, complete and universal condemnation of slavery,” which did not occur until 1888. That delay “constitutes a wound in Christian memory,” the pope writes. “For this, in the name of the Church, I sincerely apologize.”
The encyclical follows in the line of Leo XIII, who established the modern tradition of Catholic social teaching, most famously with his 1891 encyclical. New thingswhich defended the rights of workers during the Industrial Revolution. The current pope suggested, at the very start of his tenure last May, that his naming work would inspire his own teachings “in response to another industrial revolution and the development of artificial intelligence.”
The new encyclical is also informed by more than 10 years of dialogue between the Vatican and representatives of the technology industry that began under Pope Francis. In an unusual move, Christopher Olah, co-founder of AI company Anthropic, participated in the panel that presented the document along with Leo.
“Every frontier AI lab—including Anthropic—operates within a set of incentives and constraints that can sometimes conflict with doing the right thing,” Olah said in a presentation. “That’s why, if we want this technology to go well, it’s very important that there are people outside of those attractions – people who care about things going well, who pay close attention, who are willing to say tough things and emphasize safety, who are willing to be our honest, caring critics.”
Amazing humanity frequently advises against giving technology leaders unfettered power to develop AI and determine its use. When control of platforms, data, and computing power is “concentrated in the hands of a few,” Leo writes, “it tends to be transparent and avoid public scrutiny, increasing the risk of the wrong kind of development.” Elsewhere, he warns that “small but influential groups can shape information and consumption systems, influence democratic processes and direct economic trends to their own advantage, undermining social justice and solidarity among people.”
In order to counter the congestion of corporate power, the pope is calling for greater transparency and accountability regarding the use of AI in business. “When data and regulations affect the distribution of credit, the selection of workers or access to services and opportunities,” Leo writes, “it is important that decisions are understandable, challengeable and subject to scrutiny, so that individuals are not reduced to mere profiles.”
Today he also denounces what he calls new forms of colonialism, including the “mining” of health data and demographic information. “These have become the ‘rare worlds’ of power: valuable data that, when collected and analyzed, can be used to train predictive models, guide investment strategies, anticipate conflicts and, above all, determine who and what is considered important.” People must be able to decide how their health data is used, Leo says, if this information is to be “a true public benefit rather than a tool for governance.”
Finally, the pope makes clear the choice that humanity faces in stark terms: “If technology becomes the main factor, humanity risks being reduced to data, devices or products. More than anything, Amazing humanity it’s a perfect description of what can happen if the world makes a bad choice. As for the benefits of making the right one, Leo leaves them to the reader’s imagination.
