Who holds the power?
Pope Leo XIV has set the Catholic Church against the “… technocratic and post-humanist mentality…” that he warns is guiding the development of Artificial Intelligence and the next generation of Big Tech.
In his first Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, the Pope surveys the current and potential impact of AI, encompassing spiritual health; employment, and what he describes as the risks of ‘a new slavery’; freedom and human rights; and the waging of war.
Explicitly echoing the concerns of his namesake predecessor Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarumresponded to the social injustices wrought by industrialisation by stressing the ‘dignity of work’, Leo XIV urges ethical and regulatory boundaries to protect humanity in the new AI age.
Social justice, the encyclical says, “…demands that we prevent the emergence of new forms of exclusion and deprivation of freedoms: individuals and peoples hindered or denied access to basic technologies, communities exposed to invasive surveillance and social groups penalized by opaque algorithms that perpetuate prejudice and discrimination”.
In a week when the head of a major bank suggested that AI could replace “lower-value human capital” staff, the encyclical expresses concern about ideas and ideologies of transhumanism and post-humanism, setting out that for the Church “…the key issue is not the use of technology as such, but the vision that underlies it. If the human being is treated as something to be perfected or surpassed, it becomes easier to accept that some lives are less useful, less desirable or less worthy. In the name of progress, “necessary sacrifices” may begin to be justified, placing the burden on the most vulnerable in pursuit of a supposed optimization of the species.”
While focused on the new benefits and challenges of AI, the encyclical is relevant to broader debates on the balance between human and machine. “Over the centuries,”, it argues, “technological development has significantly improved the living conditions of humanity. At the same time, each phase of progress has also revealed the ambiguity of tools that can cause harm when not oriented toward the good.” For the pope the key question is “who holds the power” over technological deployment, and how they use it. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html