VATICAN CITY — Pope Leo XIV called Monday, May 25, for robust
regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for
the common good rather than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on
safeguarding humankind as the technology impacts everything from work to
war.
“Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), Leo’s first
encyclical, has been eagerly awaited ever since history’s first US-born
pope announced days after his election that he considered AI to be the
biggest challenge facing humanity today.
In the text, Leo
denounced the “culture of power” driving the AI race, especially in
developing ever more sophisticated methods of remote warfare. He
declared that it was “not permissible” to entrust irreversible, lethal
decisions to AI systems, setting up another flash point between the
American pope and the Trump administration, which has worked
aggressively to deregulate AI development.
“Artificial
Intelligence now demands to be disarmed, freed from logics that turn it
into an instrument of domination, exclusion and death,? the pope told a
special Vatican presentation of the encyclical, one of the most
authoritative types of teaching documents a pope can issue.
Experts
in the tech industry, academia and Catholic morality said the document
will likely become a benchmark in the debate over AI, a point of
reference for policymakers, researchers and ordinary folk alike. It
comes as the near-daily developments in the technology trigger concerns
over AI replacing human jobs and even human intelligence.
Taylor
Black, a Microsoft AI executive and director of Catholic University of
America’s AI institute, said the document would prompt people “at the
forefront of these tools” to ask questions such as “What does it mean to
be human?”
Pope calls out AI companies even as he hosts Anthropic
The
Vatican launch also included remarks by the co-founder of Anthropic,
which is currently locked in a legal battle with the Trump
administration over access to its AI technology. The Vatican decided to
involve Anthropic as part of its decade-long effort to engage Silicon
Valley in dialogue over the human cost of AI.
And yet in his text,
Leo repeatedly blasted the concentration of power and data in the hands
of so few people in the private sector as a danger, especially to
children and the most vulnerable, and called for external regulation of
their work.
“It is not enough to invoke ethics in the abstract;
robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a
political system that does not abdicate its responsibility are
required,” he wrote. “A more moral AI is not enough if that morality is
determined by a few.”
Leo appealed to AI developers and political
leaders responsible for regulating them to slow down and reflect on what
they are doing. He urged them to use ethical and spiritual guidelines
to make the choice to work not for their own profit or power, but the
betterment of humanity.
AI competitors OpenAI and Anthropic are
the second- and third-most valuable US private companies, each valued at
hundreds of billions of dollars, more than the GDP of many nations.
Both companies are heading toward near-trillion dollar IPOs.
Anthropic
co-founder Christopher Olah welcomed Leo’s criticism and concern. He
said such external checks were fundamental to the technology “going
well” for humankind since there is so much at stake — “a real
possibility that AI will displace human labor at a very large scale.”
“We
need more of the world — religious communities, civil society,
scholars, governments — to do what His Holiness has done here: to take
this seriously, to look closely, and to push events in a better
direction,” Olah said. “We need moral voices that the incentives cannot
bend.”
Experts say the text will become a benchmark
In
a methodical text, the math major pope traced the history of the
Catholic Church’s social teaching and applied its core concepts —
justice, solidarity, the dignity of work and the universal destination
of resources — to the digital revolution.
“I am convinced that
this will prove to be a defining document for our era, a profound and
prophetic document,” said Paolo Carozza, law professor at Notre Dame Law
School and chair of the Meta Oversight Board.
“Pope Leo is
offering a clear, comprehensive, and coherent voice urging us to take
responsibility for constructing a world in which technology will serve
humans rather than degrade them,” he said.
In its strongest
chapters, Leo denounced how AI had helped accelerate the “normalization
of war” by desensitizing people to its cost. He didn’t name specific
conflicts, but cited “opposing imperialisms, between powers that wish to
preserve their supremacy, and those that aspire to seize that
supremacy.”
He demanded transparency and accountability by AI
developers so that the chain of decision-making command in ordering
strikes with AI weaponry is always known. He declared that the Catholic
Church’s “just war” theory, which provides specific criteria for when
force can be justified, was now “outdated” given the technological
advances of warfare.
A text in the church’s social justice tradition
Leo
signed the text May 15, the 135th anniversary of the publication of
“Rerum Novarum” (Of New Things), the most important teaching document of
Leo’s hero and namesake, Pope Leo XIII. That document addressed
workers’ rights, the limits of capitalism, and the obligations that
states and employers owed workers as the Industrial Revolution was
underway.
It became the foundation of modern Catholic social
thought, and the current pope cited it at the start of his pontificate
in relation to the AI revolution, which he believes poses the same
existential questions that the Industrial Revolution posed over a
century ago. “Magnifica Humanitas” thus becomes the latest chapter in a
century-long history of popes adapting “Rerum Novarum” to the social
questions of their times, often dwelling on the dignity of work for
human flourishing.
AI is evoking both existential fears and
utopian vision amid an intensifying debate on whether it will become a
catalyst that enriches humanity or a technological toxin that dulls
human intelligence while wiping out millions of high-paying jobs.
“The
pursuit of greater profits cannot justify choices that systematically
sacrifice jobs, because the human person is an end, not a means, and the
economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common
good,” Leo wrote.
Leo extended his concern for upholding human
dignity in labor to issue the first-ever papal apology for the Holy
See’s own role in legitimizing slavery by giving European sovereigns
explicit authority to subjugate and enslave “infidels.”
A decade-long dialogue with Silicon Valley
Vatican
officials declined to say who contributed to Leo’s encyclical. But
Vatican and church officials have been engaged in a dialogue with
Silicon Valley tech firms for a decade.
The decision to include
Anthropic at the Vatican launch was criticized by some who considered it
a papal stamp of approval of the AI firm, which is currently suing the
Trump administration after it ordered all US agencies to stop using
Anthropic’s technology for its refusal to allow the US military
unrestricted use of it.
Brian Boyd, US faith liaison for the
nonprofit Future of Life Institute, read the inclusion of Anthropic’s
co-founder Olah as a recognition of its prominence in the field and as
similar to a papal audience with a head of state: not an endorsement.
Anthropic
is an “enormous corporation that is taking onto itself an enormous risk
and responsibility,” Boyd said, adding that the company has
“demonstrated genuine goodwill and integrity and interest in dialogue.”