The Pope Just Took On Artificial Intelligence And It's Not What You Think!

Added: 2026-05-29

[00:00:00]So, the Pope just dropped a 38,000word document on AI, and honestly, it's a lot more interesting than you might think.

[00:00:07]It's called the Magnifica Humanitas, which I guess is Latin for magnificent humanity. It's the first encyclical from Pope Leo, and it's the first one in, I guess, history dedicated to artificial intelligence. And he signed it exactly 135 years after the last Pope Leo wrote the famous letter responding to the industrial revolution. That timing is not accidental. The Pope is saying that AI is that big of a deal. He even invited Anthropic's co-founder to stand next to him at the Vatican when he released it. That's a pretty big deal.

[00:00:35]So, here's his core argument. AI is not neutral. Meaning, every AI system carries the values of the people who built it, funded it, and deployed it.

[00:00:43]So, the moral question isn't just how do we use AI. It's who's designing it and what are they optimizing for? The Pope lays out some dangers, and honestly, they're not what you'd expect from a religious guy. They're pretty sharp.

[00:00:56]First, he says AI power is being concentrated in the hands of a few big tech companies and that's a threat to democracy. Second, he says AI and warfare needs rigorous ethical limits or we're heading into a technological arms race that nobody can stop. Third, he says mass unemployment is coming and society is not ready. I've been saying this for months. Fourth, he says chat bots aren't dangerous because you might mistake them for people. They're dangerous because you might stop wanting real people altogether. Fifth, he says transhumanism, the idea of upgrading or surpassing humans with tech. He just flat out rejects that. He says you're not a product to be optimized. Then he goes on to frame AI with two sort of biblical images. The first is the Tower of Babel where humans use technology to assert control, dominate, and play God.

[00:01:40]The next one is somebody rebuilding Jerusalem, where humans are using their gifts to build something together in service to each other. He says those two things are basically the choice we're looking at right now. Domination or communion. Now, you don't have to be Catholic to find this interesting. I'm not. But this is one of the most influential institutions on Earth. And they're taking a clear position on the technology that's about to reshape everything. And his bottom line is pretty simple. He says human dignity comes first, not productivity, not profit, not progress for its own sake.

[00:02:10]The real question now is whether anyone building this stuff is actually listening.