Pope Leo XIV called Monday for robust regulation of artificial intelligence and for its developers to work for the common good relatively than profit, issuing a sweeping manifesto on safeguarding humankind because the technology impacts all the things from work to war.
“Magnifica Humanitas” (Magnificent Humanity), Leo’s first encyclical, has been eagerly awaited ever since history’s first U.S.-born pope announced days after his election that he considered AI to be the largest challenge facing humanity today.
Within the text, Leo denounced the “culture of power” driving the AI race, especially in developing ever more sophisticated methods of distant warfare. He declared that it was “not permissible” to entrust irreversible, lethal decisions to AI systems, organising one other 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, free of 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 authoritative forms of teaching documents a pope can issue.
Experts within the tech industry, academia and Catholic morality said the document will likely develop into a benchmark in the controversy over AI, a degree of reference for policymakers, researchers and odd folk alike. It comes because the near-daily developments within the technology trigger concerns rise over AI replacing human jobs and even human intelligence.
“It lends itself to people who find themselves on the forefront of those tools and capable of see the incredible things that they’re capable of do, to have questions on their very own ‘What does it mean to be human?’” said Taylor Black, a Microsoft AI executive and director of Catholic University of America’s AI institute.
Pope calls out AI firms whilst 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 a part of its decade-long effort to interact Silicon Valley in dialogue over the human cost of AI.
And yet in his text, Leo repeatedly blasted the concentration of power and data within the hands of so few people within the private sector as a danger, especially to children and probably the most vulnerable, and called for external regulation of their work.
“It will not be enough to invoke ethics within the abstract; robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that doesn’t abdicate its responsibility are required,” he wrote. “A more moral AI will not be enough if that morality is set by just a few.”
Leo appealed several times to AI developers and political leaders answerable for regulating them to only decelerate and reflect on what they’re doing. He urged them to make use of ethical and spiritual guidelines to make the selection to work not for their very own profit or power, however the betterment of humanity.
AI competitors OpenAI and Anthropic are the second- and third-most helpful U.S. private firms, each valued at tons of of billions of dollars, greater than the GDP of many countries.
Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah welcomed Leo’s criticism and concern. He said such external checks on AI and the researchers behind it were fundamental to the technology “going well” for humankind since there’s a lot at stake — “an actual possibility that AI will displace human labor at a really large scale.”
“We’d like 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 greater direction,” Olah said. “We’d like informed critics who will tell the labs after we are failing. We’d like moral voices that the incentives cannot bend.”
Experts say the text will develop into a benchmark
In a methodical text, the maths major pope traced the history of the Catholic Church’s social teaching and applied its core concepts — justice, solidarity, the dignity of labor and the universal destination of resources — to the digital revolution.
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“I’m convinced that this may 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 transparent, comprehensive, and coherent voice urging us to take responsibility for constructing a world wherein technology will serve humans relatively than degrade them,” he said.
In its strongest chapters, Leo denounced how AI had helped speed up the “normalization of war” by desensitizing people to its cost. He didn’t name specific conflicts, but cited “opposing imperialisms, between powers that want to preserve their supremacy, and people who aspire to seize that supremacy.”
He demanded transparency and accountability by AI developers in order that the chain of decision-making command in ordering strikes with AI weaponry is at all times known. He declared that the Catholic Church’s “just war” theory, which provides specific criteria for when force could be justified, was now “outdated” given the technological advances of warfare.
A text within the church’s social justice tradition
Leo signed the text May 15, the one hundred and thirty fifth anniversary of the publication of “Rerum Novarum” (Of Recent Things), an important teaching document of Leo’s hero and namesake, Pope Leo XIII. That document addressed employees’ rights, the bounds of capitalism, and the obligations that states and employers owed employees because the Industrial Revolution was underway.
It became the inspiration of contemporary Catholic social thought, and the present pope cited it in the beginning of his pontificate in relation to the AI revolution, which he believes poses the identical existential questions that the Industrial Revolution posed over a century ago. “Magnifica Humanitas” thus becomes the most recent chapter in a century-long history of popes adapting “Rerum Novarum” to the social questions of their times, often dwelling on the dignity of labor for human flourishing.
AI is evoking each existential fears and utopian vision amid an intensifying debate on whether it’s going to develop into a catalyst that enriches humanity or a technological toxin that dulls human intelligence while wiping out hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs.
“The pursuit of greater profits cannot justify selections that systematically sacrifice jobs, since the human person is an end, not a way, and the economic order must remain subordinate to human dignity and the common good,” Leo wrote.
Leo prolonged 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 exactly contributed to Leo’s encyclical. But Vatican and church officials have been engaged in a dialogue with Silicon Valley tech firms for a decade. Toward the tip of his pontificate, Pope Francis began speaking out more about AI and the risks it poses to humanity.
The choice to incorporate Anthropic on 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 U.S. agencies to stop using Anthropic’s technology for its refusal to permit the U.S. military unrestricted use of it.
Brian Boyd, U.S. faith liaison for the nonprofit Way forward for Life Institute, read the inclusion of Anthropic’s co-founder Olah as just like a papal audience with a head of state: not an endorsement.
“I believe it’s more like a recognition of (how) that is an especially powerful company that’s currently winning this race to switch human employees,” Boyd said.
Anthropic is an “enormous corporation that’s taking onto itself an unlimited risk and responsibility,” Boyd continued, but said the corporate has “demonstrated real goodwill and integrity and interest in dialogue.”