Pope Leo XIV published his first encyclical on Monday. The book, entitled Magnifica Humanitas, is about the protection of humans in the age of artificial intelligence. And while AI is the hook, the problems Leo focuses on are older and more widespread. Inequality, war, erosion of democracy, and the concentration of power in the hands of people who don’t necessarily care whether humanity remains great.
Throughout the 200-page document submitted by the Pope with Chris Oler, co-founder of the AI company Anthropic, Leo argues that technology built and controlled by a small elite does not, by definition, serve the public good.
“When such power is concentrated in the hands of a few, it becomes opaque and tends to escape public scrutiny, increasing the risk of distorted forms of development that create new dependencies, exclusions, manipulations, and inequalities,” he writes.
“In fact, like any major technological change, AI tends to amplify the power of those who already have economic resources, expertise, and access to data,” the encyclical continues, highlighting concerns that elites could use that power to “shape information and consumption patterns, influence democratic processes, and steer economic dynamics in their favor.”
The encyclical was issued days after President Donald Trump, at the urging of VC investor and former White House AI czar David Sachs, delayed signing an executive order on AI that would have given the government oversight before new models were released.
Pope Leo called for AI to be guided by “clear standards and effective oversight” rooted in the participation of the communities affected by it. More specifically, Leo called for an end to the AI arms race, encouraging companies and countries to build “ever more powerful algorithms and larger data sets” that he believes will “secure geopolitical or commercial advantage.”
“Disarming means discrediting the assumption that technological power automatically confers governance,” he wrote.
Again, these dynamics predate AI. There is no need to look back that far, as Pope Leo Consider Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and its deployment of the platform to help elect Trump, or the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing from tech elites to super PACs to block AI regulation—patterns that clearly inspired the work of Leo XIV.
The Pope reached a conclusion that many have already reached. That said, the surreal powers and capabilities of today’s AI make the stakes much higher.
Notre Dame Law School professor Paolo Carozza, a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and chair of the Meta-Monitoring Commission, told TechCrunch that AI-driven misinformation and deepfakes are “eroding our ability to know what is true and what is not, and that is really impacting democratic politics.” He added that the “collection and manipulation” of human data in the technology industry poses “fundamental challenges to cognitive freedom.”
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