The Pope’s encyclical on AI is not really about AI

Pope Leo XIV issued his first encyclical on Monday entitled magnifica humanitas, On “Human Protection in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” While artificial intelligence is the hook, the problems Liu focuses on are older and more widespread: inequality, war, the erosion of democracy, and the concentration of power in the hands of those who don’t necessarily care whether humanity overall remains great.

In the 200-page document, which the pope presented alongside Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic, Liu argues that technology built and controlled by a small elite cannot, by definition, serve the common good.

“When this power is concentrated in the hands of a few people, it tends to become ambiguous and evade public oversight, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that give rise to new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations and inequalities,” he says.

“Indeed, as with every major technological shift, AI tends to amplify the power of those who already possess the economic resources, expertise, and ability to access data,” the encyclical continues, highlighting concerns that elites could use their power to “shape information and consumption patterns, influence democratic processes, and steer economic dynamics to their advantage.”

The letter comes just days after President Donald Trump delayed signing his executive order on artificial intelligence, which would have given the government oversight of new models before they are released, at the request of venture capital investor and former White House AI czar David Sachs.

Pope Leo called for artificial intelligence to be guided by “clear standards and effective supervision” based on the participation of the communities that will be affected by it. More specifically, Liu called for an end to the AI ​​arms race “for more powerful algorithms and larger data sets” that companies and countries believe will “secure geopolitical or commercial dominance.”

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

Again, these dynamics predate AI. Pope Leo Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter and deployment of the platform to help elect Trump; Hundreds of millions of tech elites are flocking to super PACs to prevent regulation of AI — the kind of pattern that clearly inspired the work of Leo XIV.

The Pope reached the same conclusion as many: that the power and surreal capabilities of today’s artificial intelligence dramatically raise the stakes.

AI-driven disinformation and deepfake “has eroded our ability to recognize what is true and what is not true, and this has consequences for democratic politics,” Paolo Carrozza, a professor at Notre Dame Law School, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and chair of the Meta Oversight Board, told TechCrunch. He added that the tech industry’s practice of “harvesting and processing human data” poses “fundamental challenges to cognitive freedom.”