The Chicago Pope is not having any of that tech bros bullsh*t
Tolkien, Beethoven, MLK Jr., and Hannah Arendt: The Voices That Resonate in ‘Magnifica Humanitas’
The co-founder of a prominent A.I. company was nearby as the pope implored A.I. leaders to slow down and consider the technology’s possible perils.
Pope Leo XIV has been a major global critic of immigration crackdowns and war, staking out a moral agenda that has at times challenged the political leadership of his home country.
Now Leo, the first pope from the United States, has added to that list artificial intelligence, taking on American power brokers of another kind — this time in Silicon Valley.
Leo’s papal document, titled “Magnifica Humanitas,” or “Magnificent Humanity,” and made public on Monday, is the defining theological statement so far of his young papacy, and the most significant moral intervention on A.I. to date from a religious leader. It also is an effort to inject Catholic moral values into a famously secular, and significantly American, industry that is transforming the world at lightning speed.
“Crucial questions impose themselves on our conscience and can no longer be avoided: Where are we going? Toward what goal do we wish to orient ourselves? What direction should we choose as a people and as a human community?” Leo wrote.
Leo specifically called for A.I. to be “disarmed,” similar to the church’s support for nuclear disarmament, meaning “freed from logics that turn it into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death,” he explained in a speech at the Vatican.
The document’s release in the synod hall was styled as a branded launch event, with bright yellow banners and a splashy introductory video, produced with EWTN, an American Catholic network with global reach.
Seated three seats away from the pope on the dais was a high-powered A.I. pioneer, Christopher Olah, a co-founder of the American company Anthropic. The Vatican’s invitation to such a business executive was a rarity. It signaled an attempt to expand Leo’s influence, and his priority on dialogue even among unlikely partners, presenting a friendly posture alongside an ostensible adversary.
For Leo, the way forward must involve collaboration, said Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, Leo’s hometown, who sat in the front row.
“I think that openness on the part of Mr. Olah, as well as the Holy Father, can be the bridge by which all that can happen,” he said in an interview on his way out of the synod hall. “There is a need for the wisdom that the church’s tradition can bring to this discussion of how to use A.I. in a way that preserves human dignity.”
But Mr. Olah’s presence also underscored that significant power lies not only with governments, but “with major economic and technological actors,” as Leo noted, and that the Vatican is prioritizing these relationships in an almost official diplomatic capacity.
Leo opened his remarks with a special thank you to Mr. Olah, almost as if he were a head of state. “In turn, in the name of the church I accept your invitation to walk together to listen and to speak and together to find the way for humanity in this time of artificial intelligence,” Leo said.
The Vatican is acutely aware of technology’s power to upend existing political and religious order. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century famously preceded the rise of nation-states and the Protestant Reformation, remaking the power of the Catholic church.
The Vatican has been an instrumental force over the last decade in generating a global conversation about the value of the human in the A.I. age.
Church leaders under Pope Francis regularly held meetings called the “Minerva Dialogues” with technology leaders to discuss A.I. developments. Pope Francis met with the Group of 7 leaders in 2024 and urged regulation, and also called for the banning of lethal, autonomous weapons.
Leo’s document, called an encyclical, is in many ways a culmination of that effort.
“At key moments in history, the Church is called to decipher the ‘new things’ in the light of the Gospel and the dignity of the human being,” Leo said on Monday. “Today we find ourselves facing a transformation of similar magnitude, with perhaps even greater consequences. “
A moral critique of A.I. has been growing within some religious communities in the past few years. The effort to elevate a broader discussion has grown more urgent as the technology’s impact for war and on children becomes more pressing. Powerful companies including Anthropic are on a path to becoming trillion-dollar ones.
“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,” Leo wrote.
With this document, Leo is offering a way for efforts to congeal into a united movement to defend what he describes as human flourishing.
Catholic universities in the U.S., including Georgetown and Santa Clara, have taken significant steps to advance the conversation about A.I. and Catholic moral values in academic and public circles.
The University of Notre Dame received a $50 million grant from the Lilly Endowment in December to develop faith-based ethical frameworks for A.I. through its Institute for Ethics and the Common Good.
Meghan Sullivan, the director of that institute, said she often hears a concerning view when she meets with A.I. developers in Silicon Valley — “that only a few hundred people on earth actually matter right now: the ones building frontier models and the politicians powerful enough to regulate them.”
“This encyclical is a direct rebuttal to that worldview,” she said. “The Church is insisting, as it has for 2,000 years, that the people of Wichita and South Bend and Nairobi and Manila are not bit players in someone else’s technological revolution.
“I think that we are seeing with Pope Leo in this encyclical, finally an institution that’s powerful enough to stand up for those ideas.”
The document has a particularly American appeal. Leo specifically references the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops — the only national conference to get a callout — in a section about caring for young people facing job insecurity. He quotes J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Return of the King,” a novel beloved by many in America, particularly young men.
How effective Leo’s efforts will be, and how much impact a papal treatise can have even in Catholic circles, remains to be seen.
Societies like the United States once held constitutional conventions to have robust public conversations about such critical topics, noted Ron Ivey, a longtime writer and research fellow with Harvard University’s Human Flourishing Program.
Too often the prevailing narrative is that humans have no choice but to accept the widespread required use of A.I., he said.
“We need to have a public conversation, in our libraries, in our civil society, whatever is still strong in that area,” he said. “Why are we building this thing, and who is it for, and how do we make it work for our flourishing?”
Elizabeth Dias is The Times’s national religion correspondent, covering faith, politics and values.
More on Pope Leo XIV
First American Pontiff: For some Catholics, the American identity of Pope Leo XIV has become one of his greatest assets: It has allowed him to soothe Catholic divides in the United States as well as act as a stronger counterweight to perceived U.S. military overreach. Here’s how he is shaping the U.S. Catholic Church.
When the Pope Calls Customer Service: About two months after Robert Francis Prevost, a Chicago-born cardinal, became Leo, he put in a call to his bank back home, according to a friend, saying that he wished to change the phone number and address that the bank had on file. He was told he would have to come to the branch in person.
Archbishop of Canterbury Meeting: The Most Rev. Sarah Mullally, the first woman to lead the Anglican Communion, prayed at the Vatican with Pope Leo XIV, projecting a powerful image of female ecclesiastical authority within an institution that maintains a male-only priesthood.
Attacks From Trump: Pope Leo XIV condemned the “absurd and inhuman violence” unleashed by fighting that has further destabilized the Middle East. President Trump responded by scorching the first American-born pontiff on social media and then taking personal credit for Leo’s ascension to the papacy. Trump’s attacks have made the pope more combative.
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Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence
Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical letter yesterday; it’s entitled Magnifica Humanitas Of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV On Safeguarding the Human Person In the Time of Artificial Intelligence. It is very long and I haven’t been able to read the whole thing; here’s a taste:
Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence
Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical letter yesterday; it’s entitled Magnifica Humanitas Of His Holiness Pope Leo XIV On Safeguarding the Human Person In the Time of Artificial Intelligence. It is very long and I haven’t been able to read the whole thing; here’s a taste:
It is not possible to provide a single, comprehensive definition of AI. What can be stated, however, is that we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of “intelligence” with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields. Yet this power remains entirely tied to data processing. So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. Even when these tools are described as capable of “learning,” their way of doing so is different from that of a human person. It is not the experience of those who allow themselves to be shaped by life and grow over time through choices, mistakes, forgiveness and fidelity. Rather, it is a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback, which can be very effective, but does not imply inner growth.
You can replace “AI”, “tools”, and “systems” in that paragraph with “a certain sort of amoral tech billionaire like Musk, Andreessen, and Thiel” or “a data-driven business focused solely on maximizing shareholder value” and it’s no less true. (“It’s just business.”)
Simon Willison’s notes on the encyclical are interesting; he calls it “some of the clearest writing I’ve seen on the ethics of integrating AI into modern society”. I noted this part as well while skimming through:
For individuals as well as for nations, development is both a duty and a right. Minimum conditions are required for enabling every person and people to flourish in accord with their dignity, without being kept in a state of dependence or excluded from access to necessary goods. Development is truly human when it places people at the center instead of the accumulation of wealth, and when it concerns peoples as well as individuals. Justice demands the recognition of the rights of society and the rights of peoples, and includes a responsibility toward future generations. Development is not truly human if it increases consumption for some while shifting costs and burdens onto others, or relegates entire regions to subordinate roles, preventing them from realizing their full potential.
And:
The use of AI is never a purely technical matter: when it enters processes that affect people’s lives, it touches on rights, opportunities, status and freedom. Important and sensitive decisions — concerning employment, credit, access to public services or even a person’s reputation — risk being fully delegated to automated systems that do not know “compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and above all, the hope that people are able to change,” and can therefore give rise to new forms of exclusion.
The Catholic Church is the Catholic Church, but plain language with some real thought and tradition behind it is welcome in the AI discussion. As Tim Carmody says:
I’ve said it before but it’s something else to watch a gifted author (with a team of talented researchers) discuss AI with the weight of a 2000-year intellectual and moral tradition behind them, both reckoning with that tradition and trying to project far into the future. Very different from “how will this affect Nvidia’s stock price”.
And Chris Xu:
Skimmed the encyclical and was repeatedly struck by how shocking (good) it feels to read a coherent institutional vision / strategy for how to maneuver through These Times rooted in common sense and firm principles. We have been intellectually failed and starved by so many other institutions.
You can read the whole thing in English (and nine other languages) on the Holy See’s website or read a summary.
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