Image Credit: NYT.
Pope Leo XIV’s encyclical can be found here.
Note: All quotes are from Magnifica Humanitas unless otherwise specified.
“Technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, are not neutral, for they can either foster participation and justice or exacerbate inequality, control, and exclusion. For this reason, they must be evaluated by asking a crucial question: Do they truly help individuals and peoples to become more humane and fraternal, while respecting our common home and future generations?” – Pope Leo XIV, Magnifica Humanitas
Tower or Temple
Pope Leo XIV offers two conflicting conceptions of AI development modeled on biblical building projects. Either we cooperate in the construction of another Tower of Babel, a dehumanizing undertaking pursued out of hubris and as an attempt to transcend humanity’s limitations, or we collaborate in the rebuilding of Jerusalem, “a project of shared responsibility.” Today we are, for the most part, complicit in the prideful pursuits of Silicon Valley technocrats: robust regulation is yet to be written, models remain controlled by a small circle of elites, and many are convinced AI can and should replace individuals. To prevent the exacerbation of inequality, we need greater democratic control over the future of AI-related innovation. In the first encyclical of his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV offers thoughtful theological wisdom for navigating the ongoing transition.
New(er) Things
Since the first industrial revolution and the publication of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum (New Things), the Vatican has assumed the responsibility of guiding the Catholic community through technological upheaval. In Magnifica Humanitas, Pope Leo XIV contributes to the tradition begun by his predecessors: Through the application of Social Doctrine–moral guidance focused on preserving human dignity and promoting the common good through solidarity and subsidiarity–Pope Leo examines the AI revolution. The pope spends a substantial portion of his 50,000-word argument grounding the reader in the guidance of past pontiffs. The literature review hints at his broader perspective. Rather than treating the proliferation of AI as a novel challenge with no known parallel, the pope illustrates the similarities between AI adoption and the Industrial Revolution. Both threatened occupations across sectors but promised that—if harnessed while centering the principles of social doctrine—they would improve working conditions, prolong human life, and promote social mobility. Integral development, innovation that prioritizes the well-being of all people and the entire person, holds tremendous promise.
Pope Leo maintains that there are five interconnected principles that institutions must consider when constructing, regulating, and employing AI: the preservation of the common good, the universal destination of goods, subsidiarity, solidarity, and social justice. The common good, which AI must serve, is “not the sum total of individual benefits, nor the intersection of their particular interests.” Rather, it is the “greater good,” an indivisible whole of which we are all custodians and have a responsibility to nurture and protect. The needs of society must take precedence over the interests of frontier labs and their founders. The global community is best served, the pope contends, when the natural resources that God has provided for a universal destination are used to advance all of humanity. The emphasis placed on the usage of resources for collective advancement is not a repudiation of private property. On the contrary, private property can better serve society than collective ownership, provided it is acquired and wielded for the benefit of all. Today, we must also include technological innovations, data, and patents among the “goods” intended for universal destination.
Solidarity, “the concrete recognition that the future of each individual is connected to the future of all,” must guide innovation centered on social justice and the dismantling of inequality. The state should pass regulations to prevent structural injustice perpetuated by surveillance, misinformation, and optimization while contributing to the devolution of responsibility through subsidiarity, ensuring that distant authorities do not undertake projects that locals are better equipped to execute. Serving the common good should not come at the cost of local autonomy and the preservation of individual dignity. Pope Leo is right. In the US, the government does have a responsibility to find new vocations for those who lose their profession; a welfare state that provides for the needs of the unemployed while recipients of checks remain unable to contribute to collective advancement undermines the dignity of the individual. The federal government should spearhead retraining initiatives and fund trade schools.
Beyond a fulfilling occupation, citizens must have access to the truth. A flood of deepfakes and posts meant to disseminate misinformation is washing over social media, sites millions of Americans have come to rely on for information. Truth has become increasingly hard to discern, and yet, as Leo contends, it has rarely been as important that we are capable of distinguishing what is true from what is not. As power concentrates in the hands of lab founders capable of influencing model outputs, the power of the consumer, the individual, recedes, and subsidiarity collapses. Not only are chatbot responses far from unbiased, but reliance on these systems also destroys the capacity to think critically and examine the facts they present
The proliferation of misinformation is not the greatest threat. “Indifference to the truth,” reinforced through mental outsourcing, is far more dangerous. Totalitarian states, newly empowered by an astronomical expansion in data processing capacity, thrive in control of populations “for whom,” as Hannah Arendt articulates, “the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience and the distinction between true and false) no longer exists.” AI already threatens the dignified occupations of millions. In obscuring the truth and eroding our interest in discerning it, we risk losing autonomy—the very essence of our dignity.
Disinformation campaigns carried out by foreign actors or domestic radical political elements produced from false footage and ludicrous claims risk fomenting resentment towards minorities and foreigners. Impatient citizens, unwilling to wait for diplomatic cooperation to yield progress, may pressure politicians to use force. It is within this tense, explosive environment that governments are steadily developing and employing systems capable of autonomous combat.
The use of AI in war is an existential threat to human dignity. When people are automatically reduced to data points, inputs in an algorithm’s calculations, Leo describes how disregard is institutionalized. The decision to use force becomes inevitable once certain criteria are met. AI is not capable of assigning moral weight; it should not have the ability to desecrate human life: “Moral judgment cannot be reduced to calculation, for it involves conscience, personal responsibility and the recognition of the other as a person.” We must retain the ability to reconstruct decision-making processes, “so that accountability and blame are not collapsed into ‘the machine.’” Elected and appointed officials and, by extension, the people should remain in control of lethal force.
Embracing Humanity
The American pontiff expresses concern over the growing popularity of posthumanist and transhumanist currents of thought. The human form, proponents argue, is a limitation that can be defeated through Promethean projects. But it is precisely in our imperfection, Pope Leo proclaims, that we find our humanity. Relationships built with one another and with the divine must be founded on humility, on the belief that we must find within others—and in God—what we cannot find within ourselves. Solidarity can only be embraced in a world without inherent hierarchy. If man can be perfected, then there must be groups that are closer to the apex than others. At the societal level, we must avoid building a Tower of Babel and endlessly pursuing an unattainable utopia of abundance while sacrificing the dignity of millions. As Pope Leo articulates, “true fulfillment is not achieved by eliminating weakness but through harmonious [collective] growth,” modeled after the reconstruction of Jerusalem. For only when entrepreneurial “freedom and responsibility are intertwined with mutual care and true solidarity,” can innovation serve the common good.