The pope’s AI encyclical isn’t really about AI

Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical on Monday. Titled Magnifica Humanitas, it is about “protecting the human person in the age of artificial intelligence.” And while AI is the hook, the problems Leo focuses on are older and more pervasive: inequality, war, the erosion of democracy, and the concentration of power in the hands of those who don’t necessarily care whether humanity grows up remains brilliant.

In the 200-page document, which the Pope presented together with Chris Olah, co-founder of AI company Anthropic, Leo argues that technology built and controlled 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 scrutiny, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities,” he writes.

“In fact, as with any major technological shift, AI tends to increase the power of those who already have 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 comes a few days after President Donald Trump delayed signing his executive order on AI, which would have given the government oversight of new models before they are released. reportedly at the urging of venture capital investor and former White House AI czar David Sacks.

Pope Leo called for AI to be guided by “clear criteria and effective supervision,” rooted in the participation of communities that will be affected. More concretely, Leo called for an end to the AI ​​arms race – the drive to build “ever more powerful algorithms and larger data sets” that companies and countries believe will “secure geopolitical or commercial dominance.”

“Disarming means discrediting the assumption that technical power automatically confers the right to rule,” he wrote.

Again, this dynamic predates AI. Pope Leo Think of Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and his use of the platform to help elect Trump, or the hundreds of millions flowing from tech elites to super PACs to block AI regulation – patterns that clearly inspired the work of Leo XIV.

The Pope comes to a conclusion that many have already reached: the surreal power and capabilities of today’s AI dramatically raise the stakes.

Paolo Carozza, professor at Notre Dame Law School, member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and chair of the Meta Oversight Board, told TechCrunch that AI-driven disinformation and deepfakes “have compromised our ability to recognize what is true and what is not true, and that has real consequences for democratic politics.” The tech industry’s practice of “collecting and manipulating” human data, he added, poses “fundamental challenges to cognitive freedom.”