Magnifica Humanitas: Encyclical on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, by Pope Leo XIV

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Magnifica Humanitas: Encyclical on Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence, by Pope Leo XIV

“It is much easier to start a war than to stop it,” Pope Leo XIV writes in his much-publicized AI encyclical. Is anyone listening at the White House?

Magnifica is focused on the spread of artificial intelligence but takes a wider, theological view. Leo named himself after a predecessor at the Vatican, Leo XIII, whose 1891 encyclical on Roman Catholic social doctrine addressed the problems of poverty and class conflict in the Industrial Age, insisting on the dignity of workers and their right to organize and earn living wages. As Leo XIV restates it, this doctrine “recognizes that persons have a fundamental value that takes precedence over capital and profit”—or any coercive system that pretends to act on their behalf.

The pope applies those teachings to the Digital Age. “Technology should not be considered, in itself, as a force antagonistic to humanity,” he writes. Technology has improved living conditions across the world. “At the same time, each phase of progress has also revealed the ambiguity of tools that can cause harm when not oriented toward the good.”

Will AI be used to promote enlightenment and justice, or to concentrate power and profit in the hands of the few?

Leo XIV’s encyclical is also directed at problems beyond the potential misuse of AI. Magnifica calls out the war-mongering military-industrial complex, the erasure of history (Holocaust, huh?), “the polarizing media narrative … amplified by algorithms,” the neoliberal blind faith in the market and our obliviousness to the working conditions behind our devices.

“Let us cultivate relationships!” he pleas, genuine human connection in a world that extolls the fake and the virtual.

Get Magnifica Humanitas on Amazon here.

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